I'm a Yankees fan born and bred, but I live in DC and I really enjoy going to baseball games, so I've become invested in the success of the Nationals -- as a team and as a franchise. I really want DC to become more of a baseball town. It's certainly full of baseball fans (or at least of the sort of liberal technocrat nebbishes who make unusually good baseball fans) but because most of them, like me, move here already attached to a hometown team, most of them seem to go to Nats games to watch players from their fantasy baseball teams. Two things are needed for baseball to really take root here, I think: 1) more people need to follow the Nats and their players, and 2) going to Nats games should be a more engrossing and unique and fan-like experience.
So when a friend asked me earlier in the week, "Which do you think will be more important to the Nats' future: the night Stephen Strasburg pitches his first major-league game, or the night Teddy wins the President's Race?" I found myself putting a surprising amount of thought into the answer. Which of the two things I mentioned above is more important to building a franchise?
To explain, for people who don't follow the Nats or baseball:
Stephen Strasburg is a young and insanely talented pitcher who's blazing his way through the minor leagues and is expected to start his first game as a Nat next month. A lot of sports journalists feel that he's carrying the future of the franchise on his shoulders. I try to be more cautious and clearheaded, because I know that one of those shoulders is attached to a young and fragile arm that could get blown out if he's not careful, but I find myself getting sucked into the hype. The team's had a surprisingly good start this year, and some sportswriters even think that adding Strasburg will make them playoff material; I don't think their current record is sustainable (Tyler Clippard ain't gonna win 33 games) but I'm excited by their excitement.
The President's Race is the only between-innings ballpark gimmick I will admit to enjoying, because it's consistently well-choreographed theatre. (Check out this quick recap of last season's races if you're skeptical. They had one of the presidents throw a mock Tea Party in the middle of the race, for crying out loud.) Teddy Roosevelt has not won a single President's Race since the gimmick started during the
Maybe Strasburg's debut will be the tipping point, and people who go to Nats games will actually start paying attention to the Nats. But I think it's just as likely that a lot of people will add him to their fantasy teams and watch games in exactly the same way as they did before. They'll be engrossed in the game, but more as students than fans. Teddy winning the Presidents' Race is different because it's an ending, not a beginning (and I really hope someone in the Nats organization is planning ahead for how to keep fans interested in the race after Teddy wins). But it's something that the team truly does own. Rooting for Teddy gives people the same anticipation and eventual release that rooting for a team does. It makes them fans. I hope, and maybe this is silly of me, that by the time they're eventually rewarded Teddy's fans will have become invested not just in him, but in the Nats.