Goofy
optimism or cynical exploitation?
Section
416, Row G, Seat 2 – four rows in back of our usual location (more below)
I’m
obviously not supposed to see the Nats play Detroit this year – the Nats-Tigers exhibition game I was supposed to see earlier in March in Lakeland, Florida was
also canceled due to rain. Even the scheduled starting pitchers were the same –
Anibal Sanchez for the Tigers and Tanner Roark for the Nats.
The
weather forecast for Saturday’s preseason exhibition at Nationals Park had been
pretty bleak for the preceding several days, and it had not improved by
Saturday morning: rain, sometimes heavy, expected pretty much all day. Given
the forecast, and the fact that it was only an exhibition game, I really
expected the team to announce by 10 or 11 Saturday morning that the game was
canceled, in order to save everyone from a wasted trip. No such announcement
came, however, and according to the WTOP 12:15 sports segment, the Nats had
indicated that they were still going to try to get the game in. So, grumbling
to myself, I headed for the Shady Grove Metro station. I normally drive to
weekend games, but the Navy Yard Metro station is much closer to Nats Park than
is my normal parking location (thus minimizing my walk in the expected rain),
and there was no aggravating “weekend track work” (suspended due to cherry
blossom season) to mess up the commute.
Metro was
much less busy than usual; very few people were waiting to transfer to the
Green Line at Gallery Place, and I had no trouble getting a seat on either the
Red Line or Green Line section of the trip. A light rain was falling as I
arrived, the tarp was on the field, and it didn’t look like there were more
than several thousand people on hand at most. I took a lap around the lower
level of the park before heading to our seats around 1:45 for the scheduled 2:05
start. Since each of the 4 20-game ticket plans included the March 29th
game, we were not in our usual locations (416/C/1-4), but instead had seats 2-5
in Row G. I had expected that since we were 4 rows further back that we would
at least be able to stay dry, but the wind was blowing the rain in our
direction, so after a couple of minutes I announced that I was going to find a
dry spot and headed for the enclosed elevator lobby, where the Pierce clan
found me 5 or 10 minutes later. Right around 2:00, someone else who was waiting
there told everyone the Nats had just tweeted that the game had been canceled.
The nearby video monitor posted the announcement a couple minutes later.
The non-cynical
side of me would like to think that the Nats management genuinely thought there
was a reasonable shot at getting the game in, as opposed to delaying the
announcement of the cancellation just to get some of us fools to come down and
buy concessions and souvenirs. Unfortunately, I don’t have any evidence
whatsoever to support this theory. (The weather forecast, by the way, turned
out to be completely correct.)
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