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Washington's Brad Wilkerson smacks a hit against the Diamondbacks. Wilkerson and his teammates were part of the first game in Washington since 1971.

“It was a long struggle,” said commissioner Bud Selig, who spent the first five innings sitting in a skybox with President Bush. “But the people wanted baseball here and we wanted to come. So it all worked out.”

For one night, at least.

Selig spent the previous evening at a party at the home of political columnist and inveterate baseball fan George Will. While there, he ran into Baltimore Orioles owner Peter Angelos, whose ballclub plays less than an hour away, and whose objections made up the last obstacle to returning a team to Washington.

“We talked about baseball,” Selig said, which was probably a good idea given the subject of their last few conversations.

Even more than the other lords of baseball, Angelos was determined to get his pound of flesh from this deal. What he settled on, finally, was a 90 percent stake in the regional sports network that will televise the two teams’ games. The Nationals receive $21 million a year from the deal, and after 10 years, they stand to get a 30 percent stake of the network.

If that seems like a lousy deal, well, there’s a lot about the return of baseball to Washington that stinks.

But when you stand behind home plate in the sunlight and stare into the upper deck, standing out amid all the yellow seats are a handful of white ones. Each represents a spot where former Senators slugger Frank Howard landed one of his 480 foot-plus home runs, testaments to a past that a generation of fans refused to let disappear.

Vinny Castilla, one of just two current Nationals who was alive the last time baseball was played here, looked at those seats and swallowed hard.

“Man,” he said, “It’s a long way away.”

And an even longer time in coming.

Here’s hoping it turns out to be worth the wait.

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