As he left his home the other day, a couple of blocks from Nationals Park, Ben Method, a construction worker, thought he heard — could it be? — someone in the distance singing America’s song.
“Then I realized, they were rehearsing, and it made me stop,” Method, 51, resplendent in a bright red Nationals jersey, recalled hours later as he stood outside his apartment at the James Creek public housing complex, where he has lived for more than a decade. “It was like, ‘Damn, all this is going on right here.’ Gave me chills.”
Since its opening in 2008, Nationals Park has evolved into an enticing destination for the region, a place to enjoy baseball and marvel at the surrounding area’s sparkling new towers, waterfront park and litany of restaurants that have become a symbol of the city’s economic might.
Yet for residents who live closest to the stadium, many of them tenants of public housing several blocks west of the ballpark, the Nationals are their backdrop for half the year, injecting magic — and a few headaches — into the humdrum of their daily routines.
If they can’t afford tickets, they can open their windows and mute their televisions, as Vernelle Burnett does on game days, to revel in the roars coming from the stadium. “I hear everything — the singing, the music, the cheering,” said Burnett, 74, a retired nurse, smoking a cigarette outside her apartment on Half Street SW, two blocks west of the ballpark. “It’s all very exciting.”
On Friday night, Quanne Chase, 40, a hairstylist, stood on Half Street SW to take photos as pregame fireworks lit the sky. The stadium’s center-field video screen was visible through an opening between buildings and the grates of a fence and she could see a whirl of Nationals highlights and the players being introduced.
“I was going to go to MGM [casino] but this is better,” said Chase, a former James Creek resident who was visiting her cousin. “I’m going to sit here and enjoy the game. Best seat in the house.”
Rene Hawkins, 37, a James Creek resident, said she sometimes mistakes the fireworks for gunshots, which are also an occasional part of the neighborhood’s soundtrack. In recent weeks, in separate incidents, a 15-year-old boy and a 27-year-old man were killed.
“I hear the ‘Boom! Boom! Boom!’ and if I don’t hear the crowd cheering I have to make sure everyone’s okay,” said Hawkins, a housekeeper. “If I hear the roar, then I know it’s not gun shots.”
South Capitol Street, the major North-South thoroughfare, bisects the neighborhood and acts as a sort of dividing line between the new, sleek Washington and its older, grittier self.
To the east, where the ballpark is located, are new luxury apartments, waterfront restaurants, sculpted waterfalls and lawns with brightly colored Adirondack chairs. To the west, south of M Street SW, is the city as it has existed for generations: hundreds of units of public housing, privately owned rowhouses, a liquor store and a Chinese carryout where bulletproof glass separates the owners from their patrons.
“I think of the other side of South Capitol as being like New York,” said Rhonda Hamilton, an Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner who lives at the Syphax Gardens public housing community and grew up in Southwest Washington. “I think of this side as D.C.”
On Hamilton’s side of South Capitol Street, public housing residents fret about whether they can remain as the neighborhood becomes more affluent.
They see familiar places shuttering — a McDonald’s or a neighborhood gas station — as evidence that their city is vanishing and being replaced a more expensive version. “Over time, it ends up pushing people out,” said Malik Richard, 48, a contractor who also lives at Syphax Gardens. “They don’t want all this around here.”
Others celebrate their rising property values.
A 70-year-old retired paralegal who identified herself as Naomi X bought a rowhouse on Half Street SW 28 years ago for $80,000. Now it’s worth at least five times that amount, according to records. She described herself as among the last black homeowners on her side of Half Street, which she said is now largely occupied by whites.
“It’s a mixed bag, living near the stadium,” she said as she sold Nationals T-shirts on Friday night outside Cap Liquor, across from the ballpark. “But as long as my property value goes up, it’s cool. Everything has to change.”
Everyone complains about game day traffic and fans — easily identified by their “Scherzer” and “Soto” Nats shirts — who take the neighborhood’s street parking. They wish police officers — ubiquitous when the Nationals are playing — would be equally visible when the team is away.
“They want that money to be safe,” Curon “Gambino” Salsibil, 47, who lives at Greenleaf Gardens, a public housing complex, said of the police presence when fans stream into the area. “I need them to be here when there is no game.”
Residents said the Nationals have been generous neighbors, distributing free tickets and sponsoring youth baseball camps and no-cost dental care for children, and donating school supplies, holiday toys and turkeys. Many residents have gotten jobs at the stadium concession stands.
“They are revenue,” William Nelson Pickett, 61, who described himself as homeless, said of the team as he directed cars into lot Friday night. He said he typically earns at least $60 for a shift. “I ain’t missed one game.”
Linda Brown, 60, who lives at Greenleaf Senior housing, said she earned an hourly wage at the Stadium’s team store several years ago. But she said she left her job because it did not pay enough. “It wasn’t a position where you could move up,” she said. “A lot of the jobs that the community had were more entry level. There’s not a lot of opportunity beyond that.”
The ballpark is part of an explosion of new development that has remade the waterfront on both sides of South Capitol Street, from the Navy Yard to the Wharf. At Buzzard Point, a few blocks from James Creek, 20,000 seat Audi Field opened last year. Nearby, a Cambria hotel is going up, a portion of it on land once occupied by low-cost rentals.
“One day you saw people and then they were gone,” Hamilton said. “There’s no security for us. How do we make sure we can be here?”
The collective toll of the construction — the dust, traffic and commotion — has jangled nerves, she said. Too few neighborhood residents have gotten construction jobs or jobs at the new hotels and eateries, she said. “I would expect to see a lot of our residents working when I go to those places, but I don’t. It’s very disappointing.”
In recent weeks, as the Nationals marched toward the World Series, residents said the hoopla surrounding the team has been a pleasant diversion from their usual worries. On Friday night, Andre Gethers, 36, a James Creek resident who works as a car detailer, strolled around the neighborhood in a Nationals jersey, “Z-i-m-m-e-r-m-a-n” printed across the back.
Over the years, Gethers has attended only a couple of games. But he said that living close by — close enough to hear “Baby Shark” music when Gerardo Parra steps to the plate — makes him feel like he’s somewhere special.
“Otherwise there’s nothing going on over here,” he said.
Just before the game began, Gethers took what he said was a rare walk to the other side of South Capitol Street — the ballpark side — hoping to watch the game on the big screens at the Bullpen, a popular open-air gathering spot for Nationals fans.
But the line to get in was far too long. Soon, he and his friends turned and walked back to their side of South Capitol.