Photo Blogging: Nationals Park - Reds vs. Nationals

On Thursday, June 11 I attended the Cincinnati Reds vs. Washington Nationals game in Washington D.C. This was my first trip to Nationals Park - and my second professional ballgame of the season.

At Nationals Park, they open up the centerfield gates 2 1/2 hours before game time, plenty of time to get some food (Nachos preferably of course) and catch batting practice.

The concourse inside the ball park was quite nice. The entire ballpark had a professional "feel" to it, even though the team doesn't! The ushers were all quite nice - I was with 5 of my family members (most of us with Reds gear on) and the ushers still told us to "sit wherever we'd like, it's not a sellout." Pittsburgh ushers could learn a thing or two from Washington in that regard...

In case it's hard to read in the photo below, this is the Nationals goal as stated on a wall in the visitor's center: "The goal of the Washington Nationals Baseball Club is to provide the finest Guest Services in Major League Baseball."

Two things: First, they provided much better guest services than Pittsburgh did for me earlier this year, so they are #1 out of 2 at least. Second, notice that nowhere in their goal is there any mention of winning a ballgame or hiring a GM who doesn't skim bonuses off of Latin players. Just sayin'.

An interesting little mobile hanging in one of the main walkways.

I liked the scoreboard quite a bit, though our seats were in the outfield next to the National's bullpen so we couldn't really see the scoreboard during the game.

I walked around the stadium and snapped a couple of pictures of the views from different areas - this is obviously section 135 if you ever plan to go there.

Batting practice - that's Stormy Weathers down there. A few minutes later I would just about break my hand (or so it felt) as I caught my first ever batting practice ball. I had seam marks on my hand for 36 hours after catching the ball!

The actual game, a shot of Bruce and Phillips.

And then the weather started to roll in...unfortunately, it didn't rain in time to keep the Reds from blowing the game in the last couple of innings.


More ominous weather - something that wasn't so much fun to drive back to Pennsylvania in...

Overall, the game itself was a dud (the Reds lost, there wasn't a single homerun or even extra base hit)! However, I still enjoyed my time at Nationals Park. I think I would rate it behind Pittsburgh (except for the ushers) but ahead of most other parks I've visited...one major negative thing though is that parking is 40 dollars!! No wonder they don't get many fans usually...