Nationals at RFK Stadium Is Summer's Hottest Ticket

On the Fourth of July at Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium, hundreds of fans with furrowed foreheads turned away from the Washington Nationals ticket booths with puzzled expressions on their faces. They held up their hands, indicating with their fingers how many tickets they wanted to buy. "Need three" or "Need two," they yelled to the thousands of other luckier fans who headed into the old ballpark.

Several were asked what the problem was.

"Sold out," came the responses.

The crowd of 44,331, which came to welcome the first-place Nationals after their three-game sweep of the Cubs in Chicago, was the largest paid attendance of the season, surpassing Opening Day. Only scattered single tickets were available at odd spots around the park. Anybody who wanted more was out of luck.

Just past the midway point of the 162-game baseball season, the Nationals -- waiting to be sold to a permanent owner, playing in an antiquated stadium, fielding an under-funded roster of players -- have exceeded all expectations, and interest in the team has skyrocketed as well. Already 41,880 tickets have been sold for Thursday's 1 p.m. game against the Mets -- a time slot baseball calls a "businessperson's special" and regards as a tough sell.

By winning 26 of their past 32 games before yesterday's 5-2 loss to the New York Mets, the Nationals have a record of 50-32 after losing 95 games as the Montreal Expos a year ago. A team that drew 748,550 fans for its home games all of last season and ran a $10 million deficit has sold more than 1.3 million tickets, though yesterday, and is projecting a profit of at least $20 million.

On Independence Day, a crowd eager to see if the Nationals could keep it up was packed with every type of fan, from new converts to those who saw the last game in RFK in 1971 and have waited a third of a century for baseball's return.

U.S. Air Force Lt. Col. Ted McClesky, who has recently returned from Baghdad where he was training Iraqi military and police forces, brought his wife, Kim, and their two children, Claire, 11, and Steven, 7, down to the box seats before the game to get autographs from players such as Jamey Carroll, who ignored the summer heat to sign for hundreds of fans.

The newspaper "Star and Stripes is free in the combat area. I kept looking at the standings to find out how the Nats were doing and it was hard to believe," said McClesky, who returned to the United States about the same time the Nationals moved into first place.

"Now that he's home, hopefully forever, maybe the Nats will never lose," said Kim McClesky. As if on cue, the U.S. Air Force Singing Sergeants walked down the aisle past the McCleskys to prepare to sing the national anthem.

Nearby, Peter Eason and his 8-year-old son, P.J., were living out an old dream.

"I was here for the last [Senators] game in '71," said Eason, of Kensington. "After they left, it took me four years to go to an Orioles game. Now, I don't go to [Oriole Park at] Camden Yards anymore."