On becoming a Nationals fan

"You'll be working right next door, you know you should think about becoming a Nationals fan. They could use you."

"Thanks, but I've always been an Orioles fan. I've got a team."

That was a conversation I had with my former boss at my going away party from the maritime museum where I worked. He was a DC lawyer who had been waiting for a team and then going to games since the former Montreal Expos came to Washington. I didn't see the appeal for me. I've always been a Baltimore guy, never a DC fan.

As has been documented here, I've built memories with my father going to Memorial Stadium. I can still name just about every Oriole that played in Baltimore from 1977 to 1997, and I studied up on the O's teams of the 1960s and early 1970s. Having said that, I've still been to more games at Memorial Stadium than I have at Camden Yards, which opened when I was 20. The O's left a sour taste in my mouth when they drove then manager Davey Johnson out of town. And Baltimore had re-emerged for me as a football city, with the Ravens as the team I followed most.

And then three baseball seasons ago, I started working in Washington, D.C. My work commute has me drive right in front of the Washington Nationals stadium every day. Our offices are right next door. One day a few seasons ago, a group of us took the afternoon off and went to a daytime Nationals game. And then another. And then another. I told myself it made sense to have a National League team to pull for, since they weren't in opposition to the Orioles. It's important for my own pride and honor to point out that the Nationals, at that time, were in worse shape than the O's. Mine was not the case of ditching a bad team for a good one.

My wife and I (mortal football enemies) went to a game together with friends. I started pointing out Nats players like Ryan Zimmerman and filling in some back stories. We got to where we would put the Nats on in the evenings in the summer. And I found what had been my childhood love of baseball, long dormant, waking up with a fervor. The Nats weren't winning right away, but they were exciting. I loved watching pitchers bat and the strategy that comes with when to pinch-hit.

I am a believer that with a sport like baseball, going to games gets you excited in a way that watching on TV cannot. There is something to being at a baseball game, sitting at Nationals Stadium that transported me back to Memorial Stadium. But the Nats were a team I found, or maybe that found me. A direction I was going. My father introduced me to baseball and to the Orioles. I inherited his love of the game. My father is also an accountant. Sometimes you have to go down the path, in life and in sports, that is right for you.

At the same time, two friends I have in DC, both raised Yankees fans, were going through something similar on their own. They both found, they had a hard time watching Yankees games, they would rather watch the Nats. One of them gave it some thought and put it this way:

"As Mike will attest, both of us will always have a warm place in our hearts for the hometown teams we were raised on, the O's & Yanks. This past weekend, I was sitting in Fells' Point, Baltimore wearing my Nats shirt in a sea of black & orange, trying to figure out exactly why I can't bring myself to watch a Yankees game in its entirety and I came up with this explanation: For many of us who had dads (or uncles in my case) who brought us to our 1st baseball game, the bond we formed w/our 1st team was something in the way of indoctrination. We looked up to our dads & wanted to be like them so rooting for a different team was practically unthinkable. As adults in a new city, loving the Nationals is no indoctrination - it is OUR CHOICE. There's something special about choosing to be swept up in civic pride on your own w/out anyone else's influence. The Yankees will always evoke fond memories & be in my heart forever but the Washington Nationals will always be MY TEAM."

I think that gets to it pretty directly. We recently took my dad to Nationals Stadium, for a Nats vs. O's game. I felt proud to show him the stadium and team I go to see, in the same way he must have felt proud to see me get swept up in the Orioles some 35 years ago.

But that's also where something remarkable to me comes in. Our daughters, ages ten and seven, each went to their first baseball games this year. I wasn't sure what to expect. Each of our girls can name every player on the Nationals roster. Our seven-year-old routinely asks about Chad Tracy or Roger Bernadina--the Goon Squad who come in off the bench--or if Sean Burnett, a relief pitcher, is going to pitch tonight. I never saw it coming. They both love Bryce Harper and Stephen Stasburg, yes, but the part of the game and player they get most excited about is when (now) closer Tyler Clippard comes into the game. I can get them to come in from outside by telling them Clippard is pitching. Our 10-year-old told me this week, "Some people think that baseball is boring to watch, but that's because they don't watch the Nationals."

I didn't see that coming. Their Natitude is off the charts. As we were driving to Florida to visit my wife's family a couple weeks ago, it was late and the Nats were playing the Red Sox. My wife was commentating the game from live updates on my phone, the girls cheering when the Nats scored.

Yesterday, Robin, Ava and I went with my father to Camden Yards to see the Nats play the O's. We had seen round one of the Battle of the Beltway series in Washington. There was a great turnout of O's fans in orange to go with the Nationals' sea of red. It was a great friendly rivalry, based on geography, in inter-league play. In Baltimore, it was similar. Full stadiums. Fans cheering for both teams. "Let's go Nats!" and "Let's go O's!" cheers trying to drown each other out.

I would not have imagined thinking of Camden Yards as an away game. The Orioles were the team that taught me about baseball, that taught me about being a fan. The Nationals are the team that found me when baseball wasn't a household word in our house, that picked us up and has swept up our family. Baseball is a sport for both the heart and the head. For us, the Nationals have both.

1982: Tron, Cal Ripken, Jr. and Juju Music

Keanu Reeves wasn't the first famous person to get sucked into a computer. Jeff Bridges did it way before Keanu. It was 1982 when Tron came out. Thirty years ago.

As big a Tron fan as I was--we would play the Tron video game at the bowling alley for afternoons, plus I had the action figures--that's not what I mainly remember about 1982.

1982 was the year the Baltimore Orioles went on an end of the season tear and took the first three games in their final four game series from the Milwaukee Brewers. They played the very last game of the season for all the marbles: winner goes to the playoffs, loser goes home. The O's lost, though they would win the World Series the next year. 1982 was the year Earl Weaver said he was stepping down as manager. And it was the year that a rookie infielder, Cal Ripken, Jr., would break into the major leagues. I had the baseball card of Orioles prospects that Topps put out that year.

I was 10 years old in 1982. It's a year that has surfaced a couple times today. First for Tron, in a running conversation with my brother-in-law. Second for King Sunny Ade's album "Juju Music," which came out in 1982 and introduced the World Beat movement to the United States. It's the album that I have been listening to today and laughed that it came out the same year as Tron.

King Sunny Ade was changing music, changing the world, the year baseball didn't know it was seeing one of its all-time greats starting out, the same year I was playing little league, collecting baseball cards and wishing I had a light cycle to rip around on.

Thirty years later, Jeff Bridges, Cal Ripken, Jr. and King Sunny Ade are all pretty solid with their legacies. I'm still working on mine. Then again, they are all older than me.

Hey, beer man!

I'm not prone to hallucinate about baseball beer guys. So I'm pretty sure I saw him. He wasn't carrying, or hawking beer. And he was in the wrong city. He might be a two-timer, like me.

Yesterday, walking down Half Street from work, there was Howard the beer guy from Camden Yards. In D.C.

Howard's probably the only beer guy I can identify by sight, anywhere in the world. He's got a timeless mullet, pulled into a ponytail. And for a while, he had a shtick that no one could touch.

Whenever he poured your beer, he would ask you a baseball trivia question. If you got it right, he gave you your beer, for free. He was a walking baseball encyclopedia. It was awesome.

Howard stopped asking my dad questions when he got his second answer right during one game. He shut dad down, smartly. My dad can hang on the baseball trivia.

My crowning beer-buying accomplishment was the time I knew "Walter Johnson" was the right answer to Howard's question about a fantastic pitcher who pitched for sub-par teams near Baltimore, but the Nationals hadn't moved to D.C. yet. He probably thought I was too young to remember that the Senators were a team in D.C. (I am too young, but my baseball knowledge runs historical at times). I got my free beer from Howard.

So yesterday, Howard was walking in D.C., in a red shirt, carrying a bag to the Nationals vs. Phillies game (the Nats won 10-2, by the way). I'm not sure whether he was going just to catch the game, or if he is two-timing Camden Yards with Nationals Stadium. I don't blame him if he is. I do that too.

But I hope he was just going to enjoy the game. Reading the Baltimore Style Magazine piece on the people at Camden Yards (link above, look for Howard Hart), you can tell he still digs baseball and taking in a live game. He's a guy I'd like to buy a beer.

I'd bet he's walked more steps at Camden Yards than anyone could count. He probably turns to "hey beer man!" anywhere, at any time, purely on reflex. But there are those of us that know his name is Howard. And he knows his baseball.

Opening Day

Opening day is a clean slate. It's green trying to push the droll winter the hell out of the way. It's grass-cutting season. It's little league practice until dinner time.

Opening day is a looking forward and in-the-moment day. Twenty-five years ago it would have been a day closer to swimming off the Oxford Ferry Dock time (generally late April, early May).

Though I'm more of a football fan than baseball, opening day of baseball season is one of my favorite sports days. Period. And though I'm more of an Orioles fan than a Nationals fan, I'm jazzed to be heading to the Nats' season opener this afternoon.

I can't recall how many Orioles' opening days I've been to. With a father who is a CPA, it hasn't been many. Which is why, in part, I'll feel like a kid when we take a crew from work and head across the street to Nationals Stadium. The other part of giddy will be the $8 beer in my hand and subsequent $8 smile on my face...

Baseball moments--both playing and spectating--are woven through my almost 39 years. Learning to play catch in the backyard with my dad; hitting a bottom of the last inning game-winning double over Jeff Wilson's head in right field so the Oxford Little League beat Cordova; being at Mike Mussina's first Oriole start at Memorial Stadium; being at the game when Eddie Murray, again an Oriole, hit his 500th home run; ...opening day for the Nationals 2011 season.

Opening day is renewal. It's change of seasons. It's backyard cookouts. It's Chuck Thompson and Brooks Robinson doing play-by-play. It's leaving work early with friends and co-workers and taking in America's game.

Doug DeCinces had an indestructible mustache

It was probably my most prized possession from childhood. The 1980 Topps Eddie Murray card (from the 1979 season). It was the first year I really dialed in on collecting baseball cards. Being my favorite player, he wound up being the most elusive.

Billy, the kid that lived two doors down from my grandparents in Towson, was the first person I knew that had the card. No matter how I reasoned with him, he wouldn't take a two-for-one trade for Mark Belanger and Rich Dauer, the Orioles shortstop and second baseman. He really didn't understand how much more I wanted the Murray card than he did.

I remember sitting down in McCrory's Five and Dime on Washington Street in Easton, in the baseball card section, pouring over the clear three-packs of cards, looking to see which packs had the most visible Orioles. Mike Flanagan, Lee May, Doug DeCinces. It felt like by having their baseball cards and going to games or watching on TV, you somehow knew the players. DeCinces had an indestructible mustache in his earlier Orioles days. It was Magnum P.I. cool. I remember when he shaved it off.

Josh Wilker gets all this and then some. His book Cardboard Gods: An All-American Tale Told Through Baseball Cards took me instantly back to McCrorys; back to organizing baseball cards; to going to games at Memorial Stadium; to watching on TV as Rickey Henderson break Lou Brock's single season stolen base record of 118 stolen bases in 1982, and then looking for his card that proved that fact the next year. I wasn't an Oakland A's fan, but for some reason watching that game on TV stands out in my head.

Wilker's book is as much about life-existence-childhood and throwing himself headlong into baseball cards as a normalizing force. I give Cardboard Gods and its reconnecting me to that place and time, part of the credit for getting me so amped for the upcoming baseball season. Wilker, along with Buck Showalter and the Orioles front office, and 105.7FM "The Fan" and driving by Nationals Stadium every day, as we've mentioned before.

That and it seems as if the O's are bringing back facial hair to some degree. And this bearded guy says, "Play ball!" And wipe your chin off, for crissakes...

A game inherited

'How come you never played pro football?' I asked my dad. I was maybe seven. I knew he played in high school.

'I was never really big enough,' he said, standing 6-feet tall and weighing 180.

I nodded my head and went back to organizing my football cards. I could comb through football or baseball cards, memorize statistics and plot the players I still needed to round out the full roster of the Baltimore Colts. It could have been a month after that exchange when I was reading the card for the Colts middle linebacker Ed Simonini. He was listed at 6-feet tall. Remarkable.

I went to dad to let him know there was still hope. 'Dad, you're the same size as Ed Simonini. You could play for the Colts!' Simonini was listed between 210 and 220, but weight was irrelevant for a seven-year-old (Funny how Ed would be a defensive back now at that size).

Dad didn't change careers, but that story is indicative of the place sports held in our house growing up and the family bond it engendered. We routed for Baltimore, the Colts and the Orioles. My mom's father attended every single home game the Colts ever played and my grandmother missed only one,  pregnant at the time, with my mom. We routed against the Redskins and the Yankees and still do to this day.

My dad went to college at the University of Virginia, who had Ralph Sampson playing basketball when I was younger and we watched the Wahoos and routed against Maryland.

I remember my first Orioles baseball games at Memorial Stadium and being there with my dad for Game 1 against the Phillies in the 1983 World Series and being there a few years later for Mike Mussina's first game as an Oriole at home. I remember going to a Colts vs. Redskins pre-season game with my dad and my grandfather (mom's father) in Washington wearing my Bert Jones Colts jersey. I remember getting a fractured skull during Sunday School (another story) and being excited that I got to wear my Colts helmet to nursery school during the week.

I remember watching TV and seeing the Colts leaving town in the middle of the night in Mayflower moving trucks and being teamless, but still loving football and hating the Redskins. I remember talking with my dad about our excitement when the Ravens came to Baltimore and them drafting tackle Jonathan Ogden and linebacker Ray Lewis in their first draft as Baltimore's team. And in 2000, when the Ravens won the Superbowl, and how I was 27 years old when our football team won their first championship during my sports watching days.

We were on hand for the Ravens vs. Colts Baltimore home playoff game and at the Ravens stadium this past Sunday for the return of safety Ed Reed and the 10-year anniversary of the Super Bowl championship team.

Sports has been and continues to be a bond between my father and me and my grandfather when he was alive and a dinner table conversation. It's still one of the subjects we talk most easily about.

And for our girls now, with a Baltimore fan father and a Pittsburgh fan mother--our eight-year-old has Ravens QB Joe Flacco and Steelers QB Ben somebody or other jerseys in her drawer)--our girls are also growing up in a sports household.

Anna's Ravens Flacco jersey was a gift, after all. From my dad.