Finally, a Foundation Built for Winning

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Nationals Park: Opening Night

The Washington Nationals open their new stadium in Southeast D.C. with Sunday's regular season opener against the Atlanta Braves.

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Sorry, just wait a minute until I compose myself. Bud played a crucial role, all right. For 20 years baseball used Washington in its carrot-and-stick games with other cities when it wanted to get new ballparks built. The unwritten rule was: Use Washington, protect Baltimore. After the District finally made the ultimate Offer-You-Can't-Refuse and promised baseball a $611 million, publicly funded ballpark, Selig had the gumption to stand up to Peter Angelos and . . . well . . . give the Orioles owner a guaranteed ($375 million) purchase price for the Orioles and hand over 90 percent of the Nationals' cable TV rights to MASN.

That one's for you, Shirley.

However, it's also true that once then-mayor Anthony A. Williams got on board baseball's backroom plan for circumventing the Baltimore Issue, Selig was delighted to facilitate it. A $611 million stadium and a $450 million purchase price by the Lerners, all going straight to baseball: What's not to like?

For decades, any problem that could derail Washington's best baseball efforts always succeeded in causing maximum damage. Could that be changing? For example, for 22 months, grave concerns were voiced about this night. The park wouldn't be finished on a tight design-as-you-build schedule; the District might face tens of millions in penalties to MLB. The budget would be blown, leaving a shabby facility in its wake. Metro service would be insufficient or agonizingly slow. Parking would set records for misery. A free shuttle bus from the RFK parking lots would be a bad joke, not a 10-minute solution.

Instead, this game's only significant delays were associated with presidential security that caused extra waits of as much as an hour-and-a-half. Does that mean the next 80 games, when no metal detectors will be needed, might actually run fairly smoothly? Don't say it yet, not by a long shot. Wait for a full-house game on a weeknight. Then let out your breath.

"Maybe the best news of the two nights is that the RFK Express seems to be working really well," said team president Stan Kasten of one of Ted Lerner's best ideas. "It took my wife three minutes from the time she parked her car until the wheels of the bus were moving and the trip over here took 10 minutes. That's the standard we want."

If Washington is truly to break with its often-bleak baseball past, one more thing is necessary, crucial to the building of a far larger fan base, essential to making Nationals Park a central part of the Capital Waterfront's grand designs.

"We have to win," said the elder Lerner emphatically. "How long do we have?"

"The park's open. Honeymoon's about over," I said. "So, you've probably got until the sixth or seventh inning tonight."

Lerner laughed. If young pitchers like Ross Detwiler, Josh Smoker, Jack McGeary and Collin Balester don't pan out, it will be tough in a year or two even to break a grin. But, for the moment, the Nationals look somewhat improved this spring. And heroics like Zimmerman's can give a team a gradually accumulating sense of self-confidence.

"I've never hit the ball out of the infield against that guy [Peter Moylan]," said Zimmerman, who is on an enormous photo that covers almost the entire back of the scoreboard, showing him jumping into the arms of his mates after a walk-off homer in '06. "I guessed right . . . I was talkin' to that ball a little on the way to first base. You can't really write it better than that."

Is the next Goose Goslin, Sam Rice or Bucky Harris already in the current crew, disguised in a jersey that says Zimmerman, Milledge or Acta? Does a pitcher with a smidgen of Big Train in him already toil for the Class A Potomac Nationals? The lower concourse of this park is adorned with all their portraits and deeds.

But honor is also given, in blown-up baseball-card montages, to all the diligent mediocrities of the '50s and '60s that kept baseball alive here, if barely breathing. Surely, the fate of Nationals Park can't be 50 more years of Herb Plews and Dick Hyde.

Time goes fast counted in decades, but, mercifully, passes quite slowly when gauged by summer evenings in a ballpark. Each one can seem like a miniature eternity, a stay against time. With a new and sparkling park, Nats fans will no doubt discover at least one more summer of patience after enduring so many of them. But for baseball in Washington, the clock has finally started again. Expectations should be raised accordingly. Patience, even in this town, won't be infinite. That clock is ticking.