My Blogs: Nationals Baseball Fan

As mentioned earlier, my interest in writing about the MLB Nationals popped up early on my EU blog. While sitting in the stands taking in a baseball game, it occurred to me that a Nationals specific blog seemed to make since. So, Nationals Baseball Fan was born. As a season ticket holder, I had almost constant access to Nationals games (as opposed to non-season ticket holders, who had to rely on unreliable radio, nonexistent tv broadcasts (ok, some tv broadcasts) and occasional trips to the stadium to keep up with the Nationals), and a vague desire to process my thoughts through blog posts. Except for occasional month-long breaks, I posted almost 1 entry a workday. My posts tended to include recaps of past games (mostly 1 to 2 games per entry), and previews of future games (occasionally I went about a week into the future), and very rarely thoughts and reactions to commentary from the various news agencies (Washington Post, etc) and sports commentators.

Before the 2005 baseball season, I was a live-long fan of baseball that paid attention, generally, to how my team was doing, but didn’t spend that much time obsessing about my team (which, prior to 2005, would have been the Baltimore Orioles; which, as one trial witness noted, despite the relative short drive between Washington DC and Baltimore, is very much a separate market in all ways, despite some who create a mega-city encompassing suburbs of Northern Virginia and Maryland, around, and between the cities (and including the cities, if that wasn’t clear)). After I started my 2005 Nationals blog, I really found myself paying a lot closer attention to the game, and despite the relative weak performance of the team in the end, closely watched the team throughout the season, and hoped for the playoff race that would quite unlikely include the Nationals (and in the end, did not include the Nationals). In frustration and annoyance at the Nationals owners (MLB) and city (WDC), I didn’t watch the playoffs, nor have I paid much attention during the off-season. I know, though, from my 2005 experience that I’m going to be closely watching the Nationals in 2006, regardless of divisional rank/position. A success or a failure, my Nationals blog succeeded in at least bringing me closer to baseball during MLB’s experiment in returning baseball to Washington, DC. Now if we could just get an owner already (and a stadium lease).