The archived ramblings of my time as a world traveler up to my current life in Washington, D.C.RFK
I finally made my way out to RFK Stadium to see the Nationals in late July.
There isn't anything particularly remarkable about RFK. The Saturday afternoon game seemed to have a crush of people on the Metro and walking up to the main gate of the stadium. However, the crowd was well dispersed inside. The announced crowd was just shy of 32,000 in the 56,000-seat RFK (I can't imagine what the crowd outside would have looked like when the Redskins were playing here). Such a crowd will seem larger next season, when the Nationals move into a new 41,000-seat stadium in southeast D.C.
The Nationals did do one thing perfectly. The outfield seats are just $5, which makes a trip to the park an easy decision. It's the cheapest regularly-priced ticket I've seen since coming back to the States. It looked like that $5 ticket could get you a seat anywhere in the house, since I didn't' see any signs of ushers checking tickets. I didn't test the theory; our group talked about moving down, but ended up satisfied in our perch.
The seats are worth $5. There are a few quirks of seeing a game in RFK, not least of which is the fact every outfield seat is in the upper deck. The cookie-cutter stadium's rounded shape doesn't allow space for any lower-level or bleacher seats in the outfield, at least not in the current configuration. The yellow, wood-and-steel seats do feel properly worn. Cracks in the wood show through the paint job. The concrete deck shows its weather-stained age. For me, such touches generally add rather than detracting from the overall experience. Not enough to make up for the generally bland character of one of the last cookie-cutters still used for baseball.
The group for this afternoon game was far more interested the event as a social outing than the game itself, which also made for an enjoyable time. The game, as it was, had few moments of interest until the Nationals scored a few in the late innings for a 3-0 win. Not a positive result, as I was there primarily because the Rockies were in town.
I did notice one glaring absence from RFK. We sat up above the left-field foul pole, so I wasn't sure if it was below me and I just couldn't see it. But on our exit from the stadium, I walked down to the lower deck behind home plate and looked around. Nowhere. There wasn't an out-of-town scoreboard to be found. A deficiency I'm sure will be fixed at the new place.
There isn't anything particularly remarkable about RFK. The Saturday afternoon game seemed to have a crush of people on the Metro and walking up to the main gate of the stadium. However, the crowd was well dispersed inside. The announced crowd was just shy of 32,000 in the 56,000-seat RFK (I can't imagine what the crowd outside would have looked like when the Redskins were playing here). Such a crowd will seem larger next season, when the Nationals move into a new 41,000-seat stadium in southeast D.C.
The Nationals did do one thing perfectly. The outfield seats are just $5, which makes a trip to the park an easy decision. It's the cheapest regularly-priced ticket I've seen since coming back to the States. It looked like that $5 ticket could get you a seat anywhere in the house, since I didn't' see any signs of ushers checking tickets. I didn't test the theory; our group talked about moving down, but ended up satisfied in our perch.
The seats are worth $5. There are a few quirks of seeing a game in RFK, not least of which is the fact every outfield seat is in the upper deck. The cookie-cutter stadium's rounded shape doesn't allow space for any lower-level or bleacher seats in the outfield, at least not in the current configuration. The yellow, wood-and-steel seats do feel properly worn. Cracks in the wood show through the paint job. The concrete deck shows its weather-stained age. For me, such touches generally add rather than detracting from the overall experience. Not enough to make up for the generally bland character of one of the last cookie-cutters still used for baseball.
The group for this afternoon game was far more interested the event as a social outing than the game itself, which also made for an enjoyable time. The game, as it was, had few moments of interest until the Nationals scored a few in the late innings for a 3-0 win. Not a positive result, as I was there primarily because the Rockies were in town.
I did notice one glaring absence from RFK. We sat up above the left-field foul pole, so I wasn't sure if it was below me and I just couldn't see it. But on our exit from the stadium, I walked down to the lower deck behind home plate and looked around. Nowhere. There wasn't an out-of-town scoreboard to be found. A deficiency I'm sure will be fixed at the new place.
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