When it comes to ball parks, there are great ones, good ones, bad ones, pieces of shit, and then there is RFK Stadium. I made my first trip to ole RFK earlier this week while I was on travel for work in DC. What made me want to go watch a meaningless ball game in a horrible ball park? Well, I was in DC with nothing to do and I’ll watch any baseball game that comes my way.

On my way to the park, riding the Metro blue line, I was eagerly anticipating the game while shrugging off some bearded vagabond who had sidled up next to me. In my travels I’ve tried to make it a habit to hit up all the ball parks I can. I’m accustomed to watching games at Busch Stadium, let’s just say that RFK fell a bit short.

To give the stadium some credit, it is the fourth oldest stadium behind Wrigley Field, Fenway Park, and Yankee Stadium. She’s an old girl, past her prime and it shows in every nook and cranny. Luckily, for Nationals fans a new ball park is being built and should open in 2008. I had all kinds of problems finding my seat. Apparently, it was hidden in some type of labyrinth or portal or something like that. After walking approximately four miles, I finally found a beer and my seat. Luckily, the sun was directly in my eyes, so I moved back a couple rows to the safe confines of the shade. Unluckily, I ended up next to a man and a women who had a 10 minute conversation on which team was actually in the field. Riveting stuff right there. I wanted to bash their heads together while screaming that the NATIONALS were in the field you imbeciles!

The sun went down, as did I to my original seat and began enjoying the game. The mighty Nationals were fearlessly taking on the gallant Reds. It was a clash of the titans, a game for ages, and all 3,000 people there knew it, and the electricity in the air was Electric!. It turned out to actually be quite a decent game. Nook Logan almost made a hell of diving catch but lost the ball when he slid over the top of his glove. Ronnie “Afro Puffs” Belliard completed some kind of circus act to pull off a force at second. There were some hard hit balls and a decent amount of offense. It was nice to Griffey play. It had been a couple or so years since I’d seen him.  

I’ve got a little ditty about Griffey. A couple of years ago we had a group head over to the The Great American Ball park to watch the Cards and the Reds. We had 4th row tickets in right center field. They were a lot better seats than I had expected. My significant other at the time decided that she needed dipping dots, right then and there. That meant that I had to walk all over the ball park to find these tiny frozen pellets of wonderfulness. As we were walking around, Adam Dunn hit one out and I was just thrilled that I missed it. On the home stretch, walking down the first base line, Griffey then hammers a ball to right center field. We could see where it went out and it looked like it was right by our seats. We scamper back to our seats to find out that the guy sitting directly behind me caught the ball. I missed my first chance at catching a homer, from a future HOF mind you, to get freaking dipping dots. My only solace was that I think the guy broke his hand catching the ball. And yes Jack, I would have kept the ball all to myself had I caught it.

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