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The opening of the new baseball park for the Washington Nationals will signal the end of the Expos era in Washington; an era which officially begin on September 29, 2004 with the announcement that the team would be moving from Montreal to Washington. No one thinks of the Nationals as "the old Expos" any more, but the final period on the end of the sentence will be the move from Robert F. Kennedy Stadium to the new park on South Capitol Street.
The controversies about who and how the approximately $600 million would be provided to build the stadium which consumed the DC City Council for the better part of a year are long forgotten. The stadium will be one of the few - maybe the only - public/private project to come in on-time and on-budget since the Feds gave Alexandria and Arlington back to the Commonwealth of Virginia.
Nats president Stan Kasten has had total responsibility for working out the details of getting ready for the 2008 season. At one point during the winter, the Nats had a press walk-through to show the progress which was being made.
Back at the office building across the street, Kasten unveiled the new seating plan which included the new pricing plan.
With a flourish, Kasten pulled back the cloth covering the large, full-color seating chart and began talking about the per-game price of the different sections. The seats in the area behind home plate, for example, are $300 per game.
This was at the time when the new ethics rules, which put a hard ceiling of $50 for any gift was a very, very hot topic just a couple of blocks away in the Capitol building. When Kasten asked for questions, I raised my hand and asked: "Stan, if there is a $50 limit and the seats are $300 per game does that mean every Member of Congress and Senator will have to get up and leave in the middle of the second inning?"
Being the president of a major league baseball club is no easy matter.
On opening day during the Nats second season at RFK the media staff passed out a sheet of fun facts supplied by the company which had the catering concession. At one point the materials said they would sell some tens of thousands of hot dogs. In another section it said that the "most popular" menu item was a sausage sandwich - of which they predicted they would sell considerably less.
I pointed out this discrepancy to my colleagues in the press box one of whom said there ought to be an investigation by the SEC into the company's accounting procedures.
Someone else said, "This is the only press box in the United States where a joke about the SEC is understood by everyone to be about the Securities and Exchange Commission, not the Southeastern Conference."
Leaving RFK yesterday after picking up my credentials for the 2008 season, I looked up at the façade facing East Capitol Street where the large banner proclaiming "Taxation without Representation" has been hanging - largely ignored - for the past three seasons.
It hasn't had the same effect on the US Congress in the 2000's as it did on the Continental Congress in the 1750's.
New ballpark. New era. New memories waiting to be formed.
This is why baseball is still America's pastime.
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