After our midnight stroll in the graveyard, we were pretty tired and ended up sleeping till about 10:00 AM, obviously too late to get Washington Monument tickets . . . still we were at least able to get tickets to the Capitol.
We got in a little more time at the Air and Space Museum before catching our mid-afternoon Capitol tour . . . just way too much to see in our nation’s capital. The capitol tour ended up being pretty short, so we went back to the Air and Space Museum before heading out to RFK Stadium.
RFK Stadium is one of the three reasons we decided on a northeast baseball tour this year, as it is one of three parks which will be gone in a few years (the others being Shea and Yankee Stadiums). Upon entering the park, it was easy to see why the Nats need a new park . . . RFK is an aging stadium–nowhere near the hole that Shea is, but in definite need of replacement. On a positive note, it was nice to see an outfield fence which was perfectly rounded–not something you normally see.
Concessions at RFK were nothing special. The hot dogs were below average, however the lemonade was better than at other parks.
The biggest surprise of this game was that Cubs fans outnumbered Nationals fans, and were incredibly vocal. Now I’d been to games at Anaheim in the past (1980s and 1990s) where there were insane amounts of Yankee and Red Sox fans, but their volume couldn’t compete with that of the Cubs fans at this game.
Overall, we were rather disinterested with this game–we were more or less there for the stadium experience. The most exciting thing for us was the race between the former presidents (theme park-styled fuzzy characters dressed as the four presidents from Mount Rushmore). George Washington won this particular race, and the following day the promotional give-away was a George bobblehead . . . we considered just coming back for the bobblehead and leaving.
When we decided to do the stadium walk (the walking tour we take of a new stadium, typically right after the fifth inning), the fans near where we were seated thought we were leaving. We originally planned on returning to those seats just to show those fans up, but were pleasantly surprised to find several open seats on the bottom level directly behind home plate. We decided to take advantage of the better seats, and it couldn’t have come at a more opportune time, as it began raining in the late innings, and our new seats were covered . . .
When all was said and done, the Cubs won the contest 3-1.
The most entertaining part of the evening for us was the vendor on the walk to the Metro station immediately following the game. I can’t accurately describe his delivery for effect in this narrative, but his whole schtick was “Two for five! Two for five! I need to buy my fireworks for Fourth of July! Two for five!” We of course had to take him up on it–such a value . . .
This time we made it to the Metro station in time . . .
