When I first heard that Washington D.C. would be awarded the Montreal franchise, the first thought that crossed my mind was this one: will fans in the nation's capital really take to a team that was simply dumped on them from Canada? They've already got the Orioles and the city has a couple of franchises in other sports who have seen marginal, if insignificant, success (the Capitals made the Stanley Cup finals a while back, the Wizards just made the playoffs for the first time in a long time, and the Redskins? Oy). But after spending a weekend in D.C. and a night at RFK Stadium, I'm convinced that this city, not Las Vegas, deserved the Nationals.

I spent most of my pre-game Saturday on the Mall, walking around and taking in the sights, but even before high noon, I noticed something right off the bat: I saw A LOT of Nats wear. It wasn't as hardcore as Boston, where everywhere you look, guys have their beat-up hats they've worn everyday for 14 years or the standard tee-shirts. But I saw scripted W's on heads throughout the city, from the guys on the Metro to the parents pushing their kids around the National Gallery. I also ran into a few kids with Nats jackets. People seemed to have embraced this team and made it their own. I figured out pretty quickly that this wasn't the Ex-pos in Washington; you could almost say that people act like this team has been around for years.

The more curious sight around the Mall was the amount of Mets jerseys I saw. I ran into between six to ten Mets hats and shirts while walking around. I asked one of the owners of said hats if he was going to the game and he said he wasn't. Hmm. Very weird, but somehow comforting (more on that later).

That night, five of my friends and I planned to go to RFK Stadium and watch the game. Naturally, I wore my Mets jersey and prepared for the ribbing that comes with territory of visiting a ballpark. But from the moment I stepped into the Metro, I started smiling. The red and white of the train's fans was peppered with orange "NY"s and a couple of grey away jerseys. Niiiiiiice. I started pointing at these lucky fans and giving that look that says, "We're in this together." And right when I got off the train, I heard those Queens-tinged baritones singing, "Meet da Mets! Meet da Mets! Dah dah dah dah and greet da Mets." Of course, I joined in and filled in a few lyrics. When we started a "Let's Go Mets" chant, however, I got a taste of what was to come: "Let's go Nationals, let's go! (clap clap)." I was thoroughly impressed at the Washington pride I was hearing.

I'll be the first to admit that I've never been to the 45,000+ seat RFK Stadium and I found it pretty easy to navigate. We bought the $10 nosebleed tickets and headed in. Five minutes later, we were between home and first and a lot closer than I thought we'd be in the upper deck of a football stadium.

One of my favorite things to do at any baseball game is chat with the section. You meet all kinds of fascinating/weird/crazy personalities at any sports venue, but I always feel that baseball stadiums are better places than, say, basketball or hockey games since there's a lot of downtime and the pace is leisurely enough that you can chat between pitches or during inning breaks.

I found myself surrounded by a few fellow Mets fans (suffering already as Victor Zambrano proved once again that he will never be worth Scott Kazmir), but the Nats boys were serious fans. They started trash talking with me from the minute I began clapping it up for New York, who looked like they were confused by Tomo Okha from the first pitch of the game. "We'll be there in September, you can bet." "$100 million for Beltran? I'll take Brad Wilkerson any day for 1/10th of the price!"  My response? "Let's go Expos!!" I heard a smattering of laughs and felt the dirty looks.

When the Mets finally showed a bit of life in the eighth, I heard the steady roar and standing O's from a real big contingency of NY fans. I guess with Washington so close, perhaps there were a bunch of fans who decided to make a trip, or there were some displaced folks who didn't have a team to root for and decided to embrace their neighbors to the north. Yes, I also notice that at most games wherever you go, there are fans rooting for the opposing team. But this was way above average for a visiting team. That's NYC for you: no matter where you go, our voice is still heard.

As many of you saw on Saturday, the rain kept coming down (thank God for nosebleed seats - we got an overhang!) and the poor understaffed grounds crew had some serious trouble with the tarp. Having watched them slip, slide, and fail at getting the tarp on the field during the first rain delay, I knew that when the umps called the Mets off the field and I saw them splash through the infield puddles, there was going to be a biiiiiiiiiig problem getting that field covered.

So I was reduced to root for the tarp (Go! Go! Go!), which took almost an hour to unfurl and drag through the now-torrential downpour. In fact, me and my buddies were so gung ho about the game being called that we ran down and tried to get on the field to help the grounds crew, who had to call to the bullpen for extra bodies from the Nats' version of the Party Patrol (too bad it's considered trespassing for a fan to step foot onto a field - we didn't want to spend the night in jail). I'm really glad to hear that the Mets protested the game because of the rain delay debacle (Bud Selig is probably laughing at that one), but having been there, you gotta feel it for the crew, who didn't have the manpower to deal with that kind of mess. And about half the fans who came (announced attendance was around 41,000) stuck around and cheered.

All of this means that baseball in Washington is definitely for real. Any concerns that fans wouldn't flock to RFK are absolutely gone. Not only that, but these aren't apathetic rooters. They really believe in this team and don't seem to be concerned that they're stuck watching baseball in a converted football stadium. And as I've said in previous columns, it must be a big help to guys like Wilkerson and Jose Vidro to hear more than 5,000 cheers from the stands. It certainly reflects in the wins column (at least thus far). You may actually see a packed stadium in September as the Nationals attempt to do the unthinkable: compete for (GASP) a playoff spot. Do you think the fans in Montreal (all 10,000 of them) are yelling, "Sacre bleu!"? Nah. This is the capital's team now.

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