Ricks Rolling at Nationals Park

It's Sunday night and my beloved Angels are playing on Sunday Night Baseball looking for the series victory against the Tigers. I love it when the Angels are on National TV. So here I am blogging and watching baseball. Not too shabby.

My buddy Dan celebrated his birthday this week so in his honor a group of his friends got together to watch the Nationals play the Cubs at the new baseball stadium. I hadn't been yet so I was excited to see the stadium I had heard so much about.

The Lakers where playing the Nuggets in game three of their series so we made sure to watch the first half before we left for the game. So here are some bullet point highlights of the evening.

Ben makes friends with some of the neighborhood kids

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  Matt Waldrip works very close to the stadium at Ft. McNair. He drove us to the game and we parked inside the fort. No sign of Brother Ken Alford.


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  Matt informed us that we were in one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in all of Washington DC.


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  As we were walking to the stadium of group of girls were just hanging out. They were intrigued by Ben, so we made sure to stop and take a picture.
  

The view from section 420 of Nationals Park. It was really high...up there.

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  The new stadium is awesome. It was so clean and so much going on. I was thinking if I were a parent I would never bring my kids here. There is way too much besides baseball going on so that you would never get to watch the game. The have a playground, batting cages, even a Build-A-Bear.


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  As we were touring the stadium we saw a guy wearing a Deron Williams Jazz jersey. He was holding a beer. We found that strange.


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  Joe John selected section 420 to get our tickets. We sat on the very back row but you could see the field really well. It was an extremely windy night especially that high up in the stadium.


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  There were so many more Cubs fans than Nats fans there. Sorry Cubs fan...Andre Dawson and Ryne Sandberg are not walking through that door.
  

You can not even compare the new stadium to RFK. That is the Capitol Building where I work in the background.

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  I love baseball but this was not a terribly exciting game. The Cubs got ahead early and the Nats never got much of a rally going on. They have a beautiful stadium but not a single player who deserves to be an all star.


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  So when the game fails to entertain you must entertain yourself. It had been a very nice day weather wise but as the evening went on it got to be a bit brisk. I decided to tough it out. Dan and Matt would do no such things. These two marys went and bought matching sweatshirts. Meow Meow Meow


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  I hate the wave. The wave is dumb. The wave is for the proletariat.


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  We started to get a little rowdy. I can't remember what we were saying but it was really irritating a young lady that was sitting a few rows ahead. My buddy Frank told me that alcohol gives you a headache so I can imagine that my near constant yelling was especially unpleasant. She gave me tons of dirty looks. Naturally I continued to yell.
  

The birthday boy is given this special birthday message while Kate fixes her hair. Glad you don't think I'm a a-hole anymore Kate.

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  Kristi and Kate showed up in the fifth inning. That needed to be noted.


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  Matt called the beer guy up a few times to see if Dan wanted a birthday beer. It was pretty fun. I think the drunk chick I was bothering must have had Dan's share of alcohol because she was really drunk. We of course encouraged her to give Dan a birthday kiss which he wanted absolutely no part of. We settled for a sustained point and very deep "Happy Birthday."
  

As Dan so accurately put it..."Sun never sets on the cool." Huge W.

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  The Nats lost.


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  As we were walking out of the stadium a couple of Australian guys took particular interest in Kristi. It was 10 pm by this time, and raining yet one of the guys was still wearing his shades. Dan blew him up with the line of the night.


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  Kristi who didn't seem to particularly appreciate the attention, was horrified as this Aussie played with her hair and otherwise invaded her personal space. I made sure to get a picture of this but then he got a little grabby and I was like ok buddy buzz off.


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  It started to absolutely pour rain. Matt took one for the team and walked through the dangerous neighborhood in the rain with a pink umbrella. Thanks Matt.


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  The Cubs have a new player from Japan named Fukudome. As we were waiting for Matt to bring the car to media members from Japan considered what to do with there expensive camera equipment. One of the media guys stuck his hand out palm up to check the rain. One of the local residents volunteered his own meteorological advice. "Yeah it's raining. Can't you tell?" The poor reporter had no idea what the guy was talking about.

We had a fun and celebrated Dan Ricks in style.

To recap...

Two Tickets: 40 Dollars

Two Hot dogs: 9 Dollars

An evening at the ball park with good friends and plenty of blog worthy material: Priceless