Barry Jive wrote:

Grotewold wrote:

Barry Jive wrote:Citizens Bank Park is a fabulous place, but their selection's pretty poor, especially when you consider that Philadelphia is one of the best beer cities in America.

I disagree, but maybe it's just because I'm a hop head -- they have Dogfish Head, HopDevil, Sierra Nevada, etc.

Where are these available? The only micro I've seen is Flying Fish, which is okay, I guess.

I forget the name of it, but there's a stand on the lower level concourse (behind home, kind of?) and one up near 321 that serve good beer. "Brew" something?

edit: Brewerytown, behind Sections 113, 139, 204, 209, 323 and 329

Also I think they're only $6/$6.50 or so. A buck more than the Miller Lite

I'd say that extra buck is worth it. I just wish I'd seen these spots before.

uncle milt wrote:they do have $5 seats available on all game nights, and email out "buy one get one free" deals for basically every home series to people who've bought tickets online. the issue is the team, even if the park's a B-. it really is essentially what the vet was when new- just like all the other newish parks- but it's a good place nonetheless to watch a game. and it has ben's chili bowl, five guys, and funnel cakes. beer selection isn't great.

Yeah I haven't had the Five Guys there, but it's presumably good. If I'm eating at the game, I'm having a half smoke, and they haven't disappointed. My roommate got a sausage and peppers sandwich last week that looked good, and the people I went with to Johnson's 300th win got cheese steaks that actually looked OK for the area anyway.

I would like for there to be hoppier beers though. I'm trying to think what they have on the specialty carts. Bass, Newcastle, Stella, Blue Moon, Leinenkugel and Peroni I think were the six relatively near the section I was in last Thursday. Decent beers and all, but an under representation of the type of beer I generally prefer to drink.

And seeing Grote's post about how the expensive beer at CBP is $6.50 makes me sad. Are those 12 ozs or 16? I think everything at Nats Park is $7.50, although the Bud/Miller cups are at least 20 ozs, might be 24.

You know, part of the problem is Washington is a shitty city as cities go. It's a nice place to visit, sure, with free museums and such, but no one is from there. It's going to be hard for the Nats to really build a following. Lots of fans, like our own Jerseyhoya, who live in the area are going to maintain loyalty to their hometown teams. It's going to be tough to build a fan base.

TenuredVulture wrote:You know, part of the problem is Washington is a $#@! city as cities go. It's a nice place to visit, sure, with free museums and such, but no one is from there. It's going to be hard for the Nats to really build a following. Lots of fans, like our own Jerseyhoya, who live in the area are going to maintain loyalty to their hometown teams. It's going to be tough to build a fan base.

Lots of people like me! We are really in a first and second generation DC population situation beyond the poverty stricken. DC has been highly transient with federal workers that needed to move around their organization to climb the ladder. Regan and Bush consolidated federal enterprise into DC which brought jobs and grew the economy making a stable workforce. The Redskins are the anomaly with a loyal fan base, but this has not really translated to the other sports teams.

There are enough people in the area who would quickly jump on the bandwagon if they got good. Look at the Caps this year. No one cared about them forever, and then all of a sudden it became the toughest ticket in town. And people really do care about the Redskins.

The fact that a lot of people here either have lingering loyalty to the O's or their home town teams is a big hurdle for the Nats to overcome, but there are enough young kids in the area who would probably fall in love with them even if they could just have a random year like 1993. Washington's up to the 9th largest metro area in the country, and it's growing pretty rapidly compared to a lot of other northeastern metro areas.

Government is not getting any smaller/going out of business. It's a better prospect than Detroit et al. One good season will produce a bandwagon effect.

i don't know why, but there is a cleveland indians flag flying along the first base line. just a random, big, top-of-the-stadium flag with the logo. there are no other team flags. my buddy's wife noticed it last night at the game and we (and folks around us) were totally confused. maybe they're shooting a new major league there? it makes no sense. will make MS paint when i get to work.

I kinda remember there being flags for all the baseball teams along the top of the stadium.

The recession has hit DC hard, they had to "downsize" to one flag. Not surprising they didn't want to keep their own...

Houshphandzadeh wrote:I kinda remember there being flags for all the baseball teams along the top of the stadium.

They do still have the division standings flags out in the centerfield area.

Marion wrote:

Houshphandzadeh wrote:I kinda remember there being flags for all the baseball teams along the top of the stadium.

They do still have the division standings flags out in the centerfield area.

Yes

So Stephen Strasburg and everybody's favorite agent Scott Boras were at the game last night to get his Golden Spikes award. Boras made sure to mention that Strasburg and the Nationals are still very far apart.

That's his job

I look forward to seeing Strasburg in a matchup against Drabek someday.

our softball fields are in the same park complex as the potomac natinals' stadium, literally right next to it (we use the bathrooms when there aren't games). so last night, out of nowhere, you hear over the loudspeaker, "now batting- outfielder lastings milledge", and everyone just sort of did a wait what, then joked about how awful he is. there isn't a pirates thread so i put this here.

remember how we should've gotten him for abreu

The Nationals, if they were at all competent as a team, should be successful. This notion that there are not enough people from Washington seems oddly misplaced to me - the Redskins have no problem filling a 91,000 seat stadium. 91,000! The differences, among other things, is that the Redskins have had past success and have been in Washington for 70 years or so now (they left Boston in the 30s I think?).

I'm not sure how baseball allowed a partnership of owners to buy the club that is operating on a shoe string budget, as the Nationals have at times been reported to be doing, after bleeding from the city an agreement to build a FREE $600M stadium for the team when it was owned by MLB> MLB had a responsibility, at that point, in exchange for this wonderful stadium, to identify owners who could compete with the big boys in the NL, but Selig, once again, dropped the ball. So, the Nationals have owners who apparently have trouble affording he necessary elements of a well-run baseball team (scouting, minor leagues, all these things), even though those same owners got one of the best stadium deals in all of MLB. Washington baseball fans have had done with owners trying to get things done on a by-the-seat-of-their-pants budget, and who can blame them after years of the Griffiths (Senators I) and whoever the hell owned the Senators II and moved them ten years after a new stadium was built and only 11 years after they were founded? I would be immensely POed too if I were a Washington area baseball fan.

I blame Selig and the ownership search committee. Mark Cuban, for example, is evidently hot to get a baseball team. There must have been other, more worthy candidates. Who the Nationals got is really a disgrace.

Bucky wrote:remember how we should've gotten him for abreu

beats what we got

Another thing about hte Nationals: when that franchise was in Montreal, they were one of the best player development organizations in baseball. Randy Johnson, Gary Carter, Tim Raines, Andre Dawson, Larry Walker, Marquis Grissom, Moises Alou, John Wetteland, Delino DeShields, Vladmir Guererro, Jose Vidro, and that's just off the top of my head. Big names that came up through the Expos system. Obviously, once they were taken over by MLB, that started to suffer, but since moving to Washington they've shown no signs of having the same type of player-producing farm system they once had. It's been Zimmermann, Zimmerman (if you want to count someone so young), and a cast of thousands.