Lordscarlet, do you have season tickets to the Nationals again? I am debating on buying a ticket off of stubhub for next Monday's game; is there a Metro stop by the Stadium?

I do, and there is. I'll be at Saturday's exhibition game and Monday's season opener. If you go, make sure you leave pretty early if you want to see the first pitch. Obama is throwing it out and security will be insane.

The New York Avenue Navy yard stop on the green line is right by the stadium. When you walk out you're basically funneled into the stadium. I would also recommend bringing a bottle of water if you are going to want to drink anything other than beer or soda. You're allowed to bring in up to a liter of unopened water. A 20 oz water is like $6 inside the stadium. You're also allowed to bring in food (unless they changed the rules, but I haven't heard anything of the sort).

If you have any other questions, let me know. :)

FWIW, Seattle was 18th in attendance per game last year; both in row numbers as well as percentage of capacity.

Thanks for the info...is that the Navy Yard stop?

Uh, yeah.. I told you the wrong thing. :) Navy yard stop, not New York Avenue.

I take the bus. :)

I need to go see another Nats game this year. See how the neighborhood has changed. They're gradually tearing down the projects across the street and replacing them with more upscale stuff (at least until they have a flood and remember why it was a low income neighborhood to begin with).

SI

I lived or visited most major sports cities and after living in Seattle for 2 years I can say without a doubt they have the most apathetic sports fans in the country.

Cold hard numbers would argue strongly that you are wrong. Here's a few cities that, at least in terms of attendance, seem to be more apathetic:

Miami
San Diego
Atlanta

That's just after 5 minutes of cursory searching. If I wanted to spend more time really examining attendance, I bet I could find more that could be argued as more apathetic than Seattle.

Not to get all MLS on this thread but the Sounders are projected to have the 41st best attendance in the world this year.

We definitely ain't Philly/NYC when it comes to sports fans, but I don't see us as much different than most cities.

/hometown defending.

Attendance doesn't tell the whole story. Seattle has a beautiful baseball stadium, in a great location.

From my limited experiences there, the crowd doesn't seem to have the rabid intensity of other places, but that's tough to quantify.

(And really, it's not like just enjoying your life and enjoying baseball and not going on a bender because your team lost is such a bad thing. Maybe more people in Seattle just have other stuff going on in their lives.)

Do you have a link to this? Not because I doubt you, I just think that list could be interesting.

This.

I think it's fairly well settled that, with a few exceptions, the rabidness of a city's sports fan base is inversely proportional to its weather and women. That is, the harsher the weather and uglier the women, the more rabid the sports fan base will be. If the guys have other things to keep them busy (being outdoors with hot women), they will be less likely to pay attention to sports than guys snowed in with Godzilla's sister.

I haven't seen much change over the past two years, honestly.

Do you mean a literal flood? I am not aware of that being a high flood area, but I really don't know one way or the other.

So, wait, Milwaukee has the most passionate sports fans? ;)

SI

It looks like it's right on the water and just asking for a flood, which would explain why such a great location is, well, so poor

SI

More passionate than Miami, for sure. Hell, the Brewers have drawn over 3M fans since the team showed an inkling of challenging for the playoffs after a couple of decades of suckitude.

I found this a bit amusing...

Even The Washington Nationals' Ticket Website Knows They're Crap - Washington Nationals - Deadspin

I don't think the passion of the Packer fans needs to be questioned (considering all of Wisconsin) and the Brewers have drawn very well for the size of the market. The Bucks have stunk up until this year and play in a dump.

And yes, our women are fat and our winters suck. We love to drink beer which goes hand in hand with watching sports.

I'd say we have some damn passionate fans here in Wiscaaaaaaahhhhnsin.

Sorry, I had to choose between them and Minnesota, being as those are the two places with the worst weather in major sports. That or Buffalo. :D

SI

I would throw Pittsburgh in there, too. It's not a coincidence that there are plenty of die-hard sports fans in the NE.

I think there's a second "bad weather tier" that includes Pittsburgh, Philly, New York, Boston, etc.

But I think you'd be hard pressed to beat Milwaukee, Minneapolis, or Buffalo :)

SI

I enjoyed this, thanks.

So that explains San Diego, Atlanta (with the exception of CFB) and Miami, but why Seattle? :pIf the current monsoon season hasn't done it, I doubt it's in a flood plain. And if a freak hurricane came up through the Potomac/Chesepeake, pretty much everything is in trouble.

I saw it quoted around a week ago and will try and dig it up tonight if I remember. It wasn't a list per se.

The west coast is naturally laid back.

Different styles I guess - Seattle baseball fans are not going to be overly loud and boisterous. I would suspect given the blog community here that our fan base is maybe a little more analytical and perhaps less demonstrative than others.

But that's certainly not the case with football - I don't think anyone can deny that Seahawks fans are quite loud and passionate. Husky football crowds have tamed a bit over the last decade as the fanbase has grown older and attendance has suffered through the Ty error, but historically Husky Stadium during the Don James years up through Neuheisel was the most intimidating place to play on the West Coast.

Okay I have decided I am going to the game. I see there are tickets on Stubhub but the one guy who we are going with (who lives in DC) swears that the game isn't sold out and that the Nationals are waiting till closer to the game to release tickets to in order to get more season ticket sales. Could this be true?

At lunch today, I was watching the Twins-Yankees spring training game on TV and saw Denard Span line one into the stands and hit someone.

After a few minutes, they helped the lady up and I noticed she had a Twins jersey as they showed her. Couple minutes later, she's walking away, and it turns out she had a Span jersey on. At this time, I'm thinking, what are the odds of Span hitting a fan that's wearing his jersey?

Well, it turned out to be his biggest fan.

Not anymore.

Probably just poor writing, but this is a weird sentence:

Quite so. :)

Not looking forward to the Blue Jays too much.

I noticed that as well, and didn't understand it at all.

The only way the Nationals can go is up, right?


Right?


Please?



mommy.

Exactly. I know in the past few years, the Jays weren't expected to win the division or anything... but at least there was a slight chance they could steal a Wild Card spot. They had Halladay and another decent SP, so all they needed was some other pieces to fall in place. Now, I don't think I'm looking forward to any aspect of the team. :(

Get back to me when you have two 100+ loss seasons in a row. After the first one you think "It can't get worse, right?" Think again. :)

Nats320 -- A Washington Nationals Blog: $5 Seats For Opening Day

Thanks a lot, I appreciate it!

Aww, come on now. There's still Hill, Lind, Snider, Ruiz, Marcum, Romero, Rzepczynski, Morrow and likely Cecil right off the bat to watch/cheer for/be entertained by.

And probably before the end of the year, add McGowan, Purcey, Drabek, Wallace and Arencibia.

And who knows, maybe Wells will even start to climb back into form. That may be wishful thinking

Not saying they're going to compete for a wild card this year, but there are a lot of nice building blocks in place. Health still seems to be an issue but that's your (potential) future at nearly every spot other than 3B and short (not sure what's up with the kid they just signed and when he may make an appearance, but if he pans out as well that'll be a big bonus).

Oh, Travis, your optimism knows no bounds....

:p

Oh, trust me, I'm not saying they're going to contend this year, but I'd rather watch the (hopeful) stars of tomorrow than the aging wrecks (yes, I'm looking at you Overbay) that aren't doing anything in the now. I understand getting Wallace some seasoning and (I'm assuming) retaining control of him a bit longer, but I'd much rather watch him at first than Overbay. Ditto for the situation at SS though at least it sounds like they're working on that. Ruiz is a bit of an aberration to that, but he's got quite a storyline of his own going that is pretty cool in it's own right.

I will admit though that while I'm anticipating some growing pains out of the pitching staff, they should still provide some pretty electric games this season. Won't always be pretty but there are a lot of talented arms there.

So, how 'bout dem Royals :)

SI

I'm having cautious optimism right now for the Chisox, I really think that pitching staff is going to be nasty.

My thoughts, too. What worries me is the offense. Will Beckham break out this year, can Quentin rebound, is Jones able to find some of his old magic?, etc. Way too many question marks right now for me to get *too* comfortable. I do think it'll be a dogfight between us, Minnesota, and very possibly Detroit. Cleveland and Kansas City won't be in it.

My condolences. :)

Oh yeah, well, I'm going to be up in DC next weekend and going to a Orioles game instead of a Nats so take that! :p

(never mind that the Nats aren't in town)

SI

Brent Mayne sounds ready for the regular season.


Blog « Brent Mayne

David Wright now has 5 homers this spring. Spring numbers generally don't mean shit, but that is actually half his total from last season. I'm guessing they fixed his swing and got him to lengthen his stride again because there's no way he'd hit 5 homers in 50ish ABs swinging like he did last year.

Of course, he's a Met so he'll be on the DL by May.

I watched almost every Met game last year and you can chalk up Wrights season to pressing to much.