Phillies @ Nationals-One man's real life experience

As I stood waiting for the Metro, DC's version of SEPTA but only 1000 times cleaner and better run, I took on the brutal wrath of the nasty Nationals fans. I was standing, minding my own business in my Cole Hamel t-shirt, when a 20 something man with a Nationals hat walked by me and said with a smirk, "How did Cole Hamels pitch last Friday versus the Braves?" What a stinging comment. It was then and there I realized that every Nationals fan is probably gay. I also quickly pointed out that the Nationals lost and are still in last place. I didn't even bother pointing out that Cole pitched on Saturday and the Phillies actually won that game.

Besides the douchebag's lame attempt at mocking me, my experience at Nationals Park was a win for me. I rode into DC on the Metro with my brother from Maryland. The train/subway made SEPTA look like it was run by a bunch of idiots. Go figure. As we got off the train, which took you directly to the stadium, we walked up and bought tickets twenty minutes before game time. We ended up in centerfield three rows back from the fence.



Entering the park, the first thing I noticed was, there was no security. I was not patted down, no one was checking bags. For the nation's capitol, I was expecting some kind of check coming into the stadium, but I was wayyyyyyy off. We made our way to the concession stand where I purchased a hebrew NATIONAL dog. A very clever pun. My kosher hot dog was delicious to say the least. I'll give them an advantage in hot dogs by far over Citizens Bank.

Once we arrived to our seats, we saw Brett Myers warming up within twenty feet of us. Instead of yelling at him for his horrible start, I gave him a nice pep talk and encouraged him on a strong showing. My pep talk obviously worked cause Brett pitched like someone that was actually good at pitching.



In the beginning of the game, Lastings Milledge set up shop in centerfield. My row consisted of about seven Phillies fans in a row and we right away started heckling the jerk. At one point someone told Milledge that he was playing a road game on the road with all the Phillies fans in the stadium and he turned to us and shrugged his shoulders and nodded. I almost felt bad for him. Upon receiving confirmation that he could hear every word we said, we continued to berate him throughout the rest of the game.

Since we sat in centerfield, we could not see the scoreboard which was located behind us and a tier above us. The Nationals ballpark designers apparently thought that the people below the scoreboard do not need to know any information regarding the game. There was a spot to see the hitters' names and their averages and the score, but there was no complete inning, run, hit, error section. There was no name of the pitcher, and no radar gun. Their fans also decided it was okay to arrive after the first four innings. The stadium was half full until the around the fourth inning, when it settled on being three-quarters of the way full.

With Brett Myers mowing through the Nats order, the game flew by. Thankfully, Chase decided to help everyone out with a two-run shot to right field, giving us the only runs of the game. Scoring ahead of Chase was Jimmy Rollins, who got on base and ACTUALLY RAN out a ground ball at one point in the game. I was stunned. I didn't know he did that anymore.

As the game went on the, "LETS GO PHILLIES" chants grew louder and more frequent. There were no Nationals chants during the entire game and their fans just sat there like a bunch of idiots. At one point after they scored their only run of the game, I heard a girl yell, "We Scored a Point!" The loudest cheers of the game however were for Brett Myers as he walked off the mound after his stellar performance for his first win since May. Which actually isn't that impressive when you realize that the Nationals had no players on the field with over 8 home runs and most of their hitters had lower batting averages then Ryan Howard.

JC and Durbin did a solid job getting the Phillies out of a two on and no out jam in the eighth with only allowing one run, and Brad Lidge came in the game to close the book on the Nationals in the ninth. How great is that guy by the way? Brad Lidge has been amazing. Thank the Lord for him. It's nice to have one of the best closers in the game signed on for the next couple years.

So anyway, what I learned from the game was that the Nationals suck, their fans are piss poor, Brett can pitch well against a bad team, and their subway is not bad. Also, if the Phils lose any game in this series they should fire Charlie Manual cause there are more Phillies fans in that stadium then DC fans and the Nationals are just a pathetic, pathetic team with absolutely no talent.