So yesterday, Saturday, March 29th, we were able to experience two aspects of the Nationals preceding the Monday opening day game against the New York Mets in New York.
We first attended the rainy ribbon cutting ceremony for the opening of the Nationals Youth Baseball Academy in Southeast Washington, http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/nationals-journal/wp/2014/03/29/ribbon-cut-on-nationals-youth-baseball-academy-in-southeast/.
It was a wonderful event organized by the Washington Nationals Dream Foundation, run by Marla Lerner Tanenbaum. The cost of $17.7 million was funded by the DC Government, the Nationals and private contributions.
The goal of the Academy is to reach out to inner city young people, http://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/nationals/washington-nationals-to-unveil-youth-baseball-academy-in-southeast-dc/2014/03/26/d21c700a-b4ca-11e3-8cb6-284052554d74_story.html, helping both with athletic and academic mentoring.
I have always felt that professional sports teams should be located in and focused on urban areas. This is one example of why. The Lerner’s are to be congratulated for this wonderful program.
After the ribbon cutting we headed over to Nationals Park for the last Spring Training game. We went over to the Arsenal/Blue Jacket bar/restaurant (one of the names sort of refers to the bar and one to the restaurant, but to be honest I am not sure which is which). Ellen got to pick out a new beer which she liked and we shared vegetarian and chicken burgers (the chicken was better).
At Nationals Park, Ellen was picked to be part of the first contest of the year, the beer cup contest. The way it works is that three contestants are each given a stack of plastic cups, all one color (blue I think) except for one cup (red). They need to take the cups one at a time from the top of the stack to the bottom. The winner does one round going through all of the cups, the red cup letting everyone know when the cycle is complete.
Ellen, had a slight advantage, having just experimented with beer, though with glasses, not plastic cups. This proved enough of an edge however, along with Ellen’s previously undiscovered cup manipulative skills to have her be the winner. She took home a bag, a tee shirt, a scarf, and a Davey Johnson bobble head. Davey Johnson?
We noticed four major changes when walking around the stadium.
- They painted the steps and the areas at the top of the steps
- All of the concessions have electric signs, including the items and prices
- There are an increased number of vegetarian options including an expansion of the stand near our regular seats in Section 116 (vegetarian cheese steak anyone?)
- You can now buy for the low price of $25 a chicken tenders tub (Is America great or what?)
In the end the rain picked up and the game was canceled. But even so, still a great day.