Wednesday was my first trip to Nationals Park in Washington DC. The game was between the Nats and the New York Mets. Edwin Jackson started for Washington and Jeremy Hefner started for the Mets. It was a good game, Washington won 5-3 and the Mets had only 3 hits. It was cool to see Bryce Harper play, he definitely stands out but the real interesting thing for me was the stadium. I love going to new stadiums, I’ve been to quite a few around the country and I love seeing how different teams and different cities do things. Right off the bat, I’ll tell you that my favorite stadium is PNC Park in Pittsburgh and my least favorite is Progressive Field in Chicago. All things considered, Nationals Park does it right.
The stadium is nothing special, it doesn’t have any particularly defining features (other than a bullhorn that blows from time to time leaving the crowd wondering what that noise has to do with the Nats) it just keeps things simple and does everything pretty well. The layout is quite good, the store is behind home plate where you’d expect it and the passage ways are wide enough to accommodate everything. You cant walk all the way around the park on the second level which is a little annoying but there are some really cool spots to sit up there if for some reason you don’t want to watch the game. One of my favorite things was an area in centerfield called the Strike Zone (right next to the Build-a-Bear Workshop believe it or not). It had a couple of speed pitch games and this really cool batting simulator where you got to hit off of major league pitchers like Randy Johnson, Jeremy Bonderman, Roger Clemens, and Scott Kazmir, to name a few. The game was fun but the rubber balls they used were totally unpredictable and rarely got within 6 feet of the batter, unless they hit you.
The food was pretty good. There were a ton of areas and good diversity. They had these stands which sold steak sandwiches that looked really good. There was a nacho place in center and a Jamaican place near the Strike Zone. On the second deck, Blue Smoke, a New York favorite, had a stand near another popular restaurant who’s name I can’t remember. They also had these places that served favorites from cities all over the country with baseball team’s. They had New York Pastrami Sandwiches, Miami Cubans, Baltimore Crab Cakes and more. They even had listing for a local favorite from wherever the visiting team is from, which I thought was very cool.
Tickets were really cheap ($5 for the upper deck) and there was this really cool bar/hangout area outside the field.
One of the stranger things about the stadium was the banners all over the concourse depicting Hall of Famers. The players on the banners were some of the best in the history of the game but had nothing to do with Washington or the Nationals, there didn’t seem to be a reason for them. Also, mascots of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abe Lincoln, and Teddy Roosevelt raced between two innings but it was a relay race with half of them on bikes and half of them on Segways.
All in all, the park was real nice. It was very clean, well organized and fun to be at. My seats were high up but you could see everything really well. There is a special eating/ sitting area in dead center called the Red Porch that was really cool. I wouldn’t rank Nationals Park at the top of my stadium list because of its lack of any true defining feature but it’s certainly nowhere near the bottom. I’ll definitely be going back as often as possible this summer.
