Nationals Bandwagon Is Starting To Fill Up
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By DERON SNYDER
The Washington Nationals didn’t shine in their first coast-to-coast broadcast since Nationals Park opened in 2008. ESPN’s audience for Sunday Night Baseball saw Philadelphia deliver a 9-3 beating and watched Washington outfielder Jayson Werth suffer a broken wrist.
To the uninitiated, the five-time NL East champs simply routed the perennial also-rans, inexplicably featured in prime time. But well before Jordan Zimmermann’s first pitch that evening, observers across the country knew that Washington is an up-and-coming force.
Residents of our metropolitan area might be slower to realize the Nats’ new status, which is perfectly understandable. Considering the team’s losing ways since it relocated from Montreal, and the 33-season drought in D.C. prior to 2005, would-be fans’ recent options merely went from no baseball to bad baseball.
That’s OK. The Nats have an entire summer to get locals up to speed and show that things have changed.
As my colleague Patrick Hruby reported in Tuesday’s article on the Nats’ standing in D.C., there’s a long way to go. But unlike critics who bemoan the attendance, like when phenom Bryce Harper made his home debut last week, I think the market is coming around reasonably well.
