Heavy Hitters Swing for the Seats

Paul Begala went to his wife's friend's friend. (File Photo)

Other VIPs said their first call was to a member of the quasi-independent D.C. Sports and Entertainment Commission, which oversees RFK. Those who took this route include Al Hunt, the Washington managing editor of Bloomberg News, who got his group tickets behind third base, and D.C. Council member Jack Evans (D-Ward 2), who wound up along the first base line.

Evans also has seats with other council members in the city's box at RFK. The stadium is owned and maintained by the city.

All this connectedness has some Nats fans feeling left out. In vitriolic posts on Internet message boards, some have blamed "fat cats" for shoving them out to the outfield or up to the highest decks. "Us super-fans are going to be the lifeblood of this team and they already stuck us with bad seats," one fan wrote.

Disappointment with tickets isn't limited to the rank-and-file, though. Consider a group of well-known journalists: William Kristol and Andrew Ferguson of the Weekly Standard and David Brooks of the New York Times. The three are sharing tickets and were assigned seats along the third base line that Brooks described in a column as being "somewhere south of Montreal" -- where the Nationals played as the Expos from 1969 to last year -- "but nowhere near home plate."

Ferguson complained to the team but got nowhere. He said he'd been consoling himself by thinking about Novak's original bad seats.

"I thought, well, this is a nice egalitarian thing, to know that Bob got screwed just as much as I did," he said.

He hadn't heard about Novak moving to better seats.

"Are you kidding?" Ferguson said. "Oh, that son of a gun."

Staff writer Barry Svrluga contributed to this report.