Washington Nationals: Our staff’s favorite Nationals Park memories
By Drew Douglas
Sam Phillips, Staff Writer
I remember bragging to my friends, I was going to be at the first game ever to take place at Nationals Park. No, not opening day, the exhibition against the Orioles the night before.
It was late March, and my dad and I were in the upper deck on the right field side.
The wind whipped its way through the stadium as it never did through the concourses of RFK, the team’s previous home. I do not remember who pitched. In fact, I don’t really remember who played at all, except Zimmerman of course.
What I remember is the physicality, the feeling of actual quantifiable evidence that DC had a baseball team, a baseball team that has a stadium and, a baseball team that wasn’t leaving. In this moment Washington, a town with some very complicated relationships with its sports teams, let all the disappointment slip away. The city had a new hope for a championship.
That year, they lost 102 games and the team set to take the field for the pre-season exhibition 10 years later is a drastically different one. But I can still feel the hope and pride of that moment and the wind fighting through the bleachers.