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WASHINGTON - It didn’t take long for this troupe of ex-Expos to figure out they weren’t in Montreal anymore.
There was the sellout crowd of 45,596, jumping in place to celebrate each of the Washington Nationals’ runs in a 5-3 victory over the Arizona Diamondbacks on Thursday night, making ol’ RFK Stadium sway like it hadn’t for baseball in 34 years. There were the fireworks, before and after the game, and first place in the NL East.
And then there was the visit from the Commander in Chief.
President Bush walked into the Nationals’ clubhouse before throwing out the ceremonial first pitch. He shook hands with each player, and stopped at veteran reliever Joey Eischen.
“Eischen, right?” said Bush, a former owner of the Texas Rangers.
“He remembered trading me,” Eischen said, his eyes wide. “That was pretty cool. I was some Single-A punk he got rid of to get a major league pitcher. It was gratifying.”
The whole evening just got better and better for the Nationals and their new fans, decked out in a sea of red caps with the same cursive “W” the Senators wore before leaving for Texas in 1971.
“It was amazing to see. Honestly, it was more than I expected. They lived and died with every pitch,” left fielder Brad Wilkerson said. “You know it’s going to be a great place to play.”
Baseball is all about getting home, and this was an all-day celebration of a team longing for stability and a city yearning for a tenant. The District lost two teams to other cities.
Baseball fans in Washington hadn’t been able to root, root, root for the home team in more than 12,000 days. And they made up for it Thursday.
They applauded the local high school band that opened the pregame ceremony about 1½ hours before the first pitch. They applauded the high notes in the national anthem. And the flyover by military jets. And the introductions of everyone associated with the Nationals, right down to the assistant clubhouse manager.
“It’s a good sports town. Y’all’s baseball fans never left. The baseball team did,” Eischen said.
Even the visitors took note of the raucous support.
“Us, as players, we’re excited not to be playing in Montreal,” Arizona outfielder Luis Gonzalez said. “We had what — 40,000 or 50,000 people tonight? If we had been there, they’d have had 2,000.”
Indeed, the Expos averaged fewer than 9,400 fans in 2004, the last of a trying few seasons in Canada. First, the team was destined to be folded. Then, it was forced to play some “home” games in Puerto Rico. Even when Major League Baseball — which owns the franchise — decided to shift the Expos to the District, it took drawn-out negotiations with the city council to solidify the estimated $581 million deal that includes a to-be-built stadium.
“I think of everything we went through,” commissioner Bud Selig said. “The turmoil, the travail — it was all worth it.”
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