Dave’s Midlife Blog

A week ago, March 30, it was cold and cloudy in Washington, DC. Nevertheless, Barbara and I dressed warmly and went down to Nationals Park for the official opening game of the Nationals’ 2008 season. Although it was around 49 degrees all day long, we got to the park at 3:30 for an 8:15 game, because the President of the United States would be throwing out the ceremonial first pitch. Security lines would be forbidding, we were told, so it was a smart idea to get there early.

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After our arrival home from Florida on Wednesday night, Thursday was a free day for me. I decided I’d go downtown into DC and take a look at Nationals Park.

Looking back at the archives of this blog, I am astounded to note that it has been a whole year since I was last down at the ballpark site with my camera. I have been following the progress of construction on the construction cam (to which I won’t link, since it might not be online for very much longer), but I haven’t seen it in person since March 17, 2007.

I expected it to be different–and it was. Where there were once deep pits in some blocks of the neighborhood, there are now high-rise buildings emerging.

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Today was the last baseball game of our trip. We’ve had kind of a bummer experience watching the Nationals play so far. They lost to the Dodgers on Saturday, the day we arrived. Then on Sunday, while we were exploring the American space program at Kennedy Space Center, the Nats were in Ft. Lauderdale losing egregiously to the Orioles 11-3. (Alas, yes, it was 11-3, not 8-2 as I reported on Sunday.) Then yesterday they lost rather decisively to the NY Mets, 7-3.

So it was with a bit of trepidation that we drove across the Florida peninsula today to Lakeland to watch the Nationals take on the Detroit Tigers–a formidable team, the American League champions of 2006–in the Tigers’ spring training camp in Lakeland.

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We got an early start today and got over to the Nationals’ spring training site, Historic Space Coast Stadium in Viera, about a half an hour from our hotel in Melbourne. We thought we were early, but we were not at all the first ones there. Today being March 17, there was a St. Patrick’s Day thing going on–everybody (besides us) seemed to be wearing green. Even the teams wore green caps. We thought that looked pretty doofy, but I guess we were in the minority.

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About a year and a half ago, my wife suggested it would be a fantastic vacation if we could travel to Florida for spring training for our beloved Washington Nationals.

This year, Easter is early enough that my spring break from schoolteaching coincides with spring training. So here we are in Melbourne Beach, Florida, about a half hour away from the Nats’ spring training camp in Viera. (more…)

Well, I’ve not been here. I notice that the last post I wrote was right after the Blacksburg shooting. Since then, my daughter has matriculated at Virginia Tech, my house has undergone a major renovation, and I saw a lot of baseball games.

Nothing much that many people will be interested in, I guess–but plenty has gone on.  Baseball has consumed a lot of my attention this summer. The Washington Nationals had a much, MUCH better season than anybody predicted, finishing with a record of 73-89. That doesn’t sound so good, unless you consider that the major sports press predicted before the season that the Nationals would be “historically bad.” For example, Gary Graves in USA Today compared the Nats with the 1962 Mets. (more…)

Two weeks ago, I walked around the neighborhood of the new Nationals Park with Bob Wright of the Baseball History Podcast. I posted a few pictures back then that I took without knowing much about what I was seeing.

Today Jacqueline Dupree, the pre-eminent documenter of the development of Near Southeast DC, led a walking tour of the stadium neighborhood for anybody who showed up.

Although it was very windy and temperatures were in the 30s, the front of 20 M Street SW, a building owned by Lerner Enterprises, showed a temperature of 58 degrees.

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I’m not an official Baseball Blogger (see the navigation column at the right for some good ones), so I have to get my information from those other guys and gals.

Today the Nats released a wonderful animated video tour of the new baseball stadium. NBC4 has it posted on their website. (Sorry about the possible commercial right before it; they’re a commercial TV station, after all.)

Thanks to the generosity of the contractor who did some work on our house, I got to see the Nats play the Baltimore Orioles from the club level of Oriole Park at Camden Yards last June. The club level in this video (with the nice bar, opening out to the picnic-table seating) is very similar to the one in Baltimore. Nice!

The most reliable reason to go to a Washington Nationals game the past two years has been the chance to see Ryan Zimmerman play. He’s truly the star of the team, the face of the franchise. Because he has less than three years of major league service, the Nationals own him the way every team used to own every player before free agency.

The Nats had until March 11 (tomorrow) to sign him. He was the only player on the team still unsigned. Zim and his agent have been in negotiations with the Nats for weeks, with the possibility of a multi-year contract looming. The Nationals could have offered big bucks, or could have simply renewed last year’s contract with no change–or anywhere in between. (more…)

Prompted, I am quite sure, by the stunning photos posted on Dave’s Midlife Blog two days ago, NBC4, the local NBC owned-and-operated TV station, took a crew into the stadium site to photograph its progress.

I have to admit they got better pics than I did. But then, they were allowed to crawl all over the upper deck, while I had to peer in from outside.