Washington, DC

I just got back from attending the exhibition game of the Baltimore Orioles at the Washington Nationals. This is the first game they are playing at their new stadium (more info on the stadium will be in this week’s Special Topic Tuesday after I do some more first hand exploring of the stadium tomorrow at Opening Day), although tomorrow’s game is being called the Inaugural Game. Today’s game was surprisingly slim on fans. It was still a decent crowd for an exhibition game. I am sure the turnout tomorrow will be much better even if the person throwing out the first pitch is disliked by many (I overheard people on the Metro debating whether or not President Bush will be booed as he throws out the pitch).

Before today’s game they had a ribbon cutting ceremony. The opening pitch was thrown out by D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty. Below are a few photos of the new stadium and ribbon cutting. I left before the end of the game because I was getting really cold (I will wear layers tomorrow). They were winning 3-0 when I left at the 7th inning stretch.

By the way Metro did a fabulous job before and after the 7th inning stretch rush getting the fans through the system efficiently. Oh, and Metro riders part of game day traffic were friendly (extremely friendly compared to my experience this morning). They did, however, cause some confusion to fans who got on a special train (including me) at L’Enfant Plaza. It was supposed to go straight to the Navy Yard station, but instead it appeared to accidentally missed the station and stopped at Anacostia. They were going to turn the train around and go back to the Navy Yard station, but instead the next Green Line going towards Navy Yard came by and we transferred across the platform to that. This was a very minor kink and the Metro employees handled it very well and hopefully this practice day will help them do an even better job tomorrow.