My First Look at Nationals Park

This past Thursday night, I was lucky enough to get to experience the new Nationals Park – not quite a month into its inaugural season. As I’m sure is the case with all new stadiums, everything felt neat and clean and the park had a number of nice features not seen other places (such as the huge HD video screen in the outfield.

Our seats were in the “Red Porch” center field lounge section of the stadium and I was very impressed with the experience. I wouldn’t normally think of the last row in center field as a great seat for the game, but as you can tell from the picture, the view was very good. In fact, all of the seats look as though they would have a pretty much unobstructed view of the field. Due to the more vertical nature of the upper deck construction, those seats also have a closer view of the field than older stadiums.

The center field lounge seats offer in-seat food and beverage service from a limited menu (burgers, hot dogs, chicken tenders, snack foods, beer, wine, and mixed drinks). The Thursday night crowd in the section wasn’t huge, so I would worry about the service level if it were packed, as they only had two servers to take orders. Our server indicated that she had been the only server the previous night and the section had been full! The good news is that once your order is placed, the food and beverage seem to magically appear with almost no wait time.

Another great aspect of the center field lounge seats was the ability to stand up, hang out and watch the game. In fact, I never sat down throughout the entire game, although the padded seats looked comfortable. The $67 ticket price included $20 worth of food or merchandise credit, which won’t get you very far at the game, but overall was a decent value for the seating, view of the game, and the service.

The Nationals have a beautiful new stadium, so let’s hope they can put a decent product on the field for the local fans. Even if you’re not a Nationals fan – which I’m not – it’s worth a trip to check out the stadium and have a good time!

Another Year of Chicago Cubs Baseball!

As pretty much a lifelong Cubs fan (I was a south-sider for a while in my early years), each season brings new hope that this will be the year.  Of course, I’ve been disappointed for many years now.  So how are things shaping up this year for the Cubs in my opinion?

• The addition of Kosuke Fukudome has brought a lot of excitement to the team in the early going.  He looks to be an all-around good player, both in the field and at the plate.
• It looks like Ryan Theriot and Mike Fontenot will be around all year.  Theriot seems like he gives maximum effort on every play, which I enjoy in a player.
• Kerry Wood’s move into the closer role is off to a pretty good start.  I’ll be glad if he can play all year without injury.
• The bullpen in general has been fairly suspect in the early going.  Luckily, the team has been scoring runs.  Hopefully Bob Howry can work through his early-season problems.
• The one position that concerns me the most would have to be catcher.  Geovany Soto is a good, young player, but Henry Blanco makes me a little uneasy as his only back-up – particularly at the plate.  Last year, he was almost a guaranteed out.  This year, he has impressed me a little bit more, so I hope that’s a sign of things to come.