Introduction

As an introduction let me be clear that I have no frame of reference for what will follow. I grew up a committed Red Sox fan exactly 42.1 miles from Fenway Park. I went to my first game in May of 1986, that glorious year of heartbreak. I watched the Red Sox clinch the World Series for the first time since 1918 alone in a dingy office on a 9 inch television in Spartanburg, South Carolina last October. When Keith Foulke ran half way to first and lobbed the ball, underhanded and uncertainly to first base for the final out I fell to my knees, wept, and then ran outside waiting for hoots and hollers from closeted southern Sox fans – I heard none, everyone was probably watching home watching highlights of the local high school football scrimmage – but soon after fielded congratulatory phone calls from five different New England states, New York City, Nevada, and Australia. Then I walked down to the bar and drank myself senseless. It was less than a week before the election that I had relocated for back in June and remains the most memorable moment of my time in South Carolina. I am a Red Sox fan and that will never change.

Five years ago I made a permanent home in Washington, DC and that probably won’t change anytime soon either. Like seemingly every baseball fan in North America – with the exception of the Baltimore Orioles owner – I agreed that the lack of a major league team in DC was an injustice akin to Jose Cancaco winning the 1988 MVP. Back then optimism was growing about landing a team, quite possibly by 2001 or 2002. As I remember it, either the Expos or the Marlins would relocate to Washington. But there was also talk of league contraction. When I asked lifelong Washingtonians (who aren’t hard to find, contrary to popular opinion) they were pessimistic about ever seeing a team inhabit the District again but discussed the possibility whimsically. It was like Red Sox fans discussing the team’s chances of winning the World Series in February and March – hey, it could happen, but we don’t expect it and life will go on if it doesn’t. Of course, these discussions didn’t take on the same passion of a dialauge you strike up at O’Leary’s Pub on Beacon St. in Brookline, Mass. Still, baseball fans in DC, especially those who remember the Senators (in their last days managed by the greatest Red Sox ever, Ted Williams) were hopeful.

It’s April of 2005 and it’s officially next year, the year it happened. The Red Sox are world champs and Washington has a ball team again. I’m a Red Sox fan and that will never change. To write about the Washington Nationals, to root for the Nationals, or to follow the Nationals with the same passion and precision that I would about the Red Sox is impossible. Still, what will follow are observations of the rare opportunity to be a baseball fan living in a baseball starved city that has just been given a bounty of big league baseball.