The Nats Might Have Won, but the Phillies Dominated the Stands

In my very first post over at Ballpark Banter, I talked about how “some of my earliest memories are of running around in baseball uniforms and using my backyard to pretend as though I was the star player in a crucial game.” Like most daydreaming elementary school baseball fans, those pretend games included me stepping up to the plate with the bases loaded and two in the bottom of the ninth. Inevitably, it would come down to a full count and I would blast a game winning grand slam. While that never happened to me in a real game, that’s exactly what happened last night when Ryan Zimmerman capped off an amazing comeback with a walk off grand slam a little before 12:30am.

Moments like that are exciting no matter who they’re against, but it was extremely rewarding to see it happen against the division leading Phillies -- especially considering how many of their fans made their way to Nationals Park last night. Considering how close Philly is to DC and the team’s reputation for traveling fairly well, I figured that there would a lot of folks making the 2.5 hour drive down interstate 95. Heck, I even went to last night’s game with a friend of mine who’s a Phillies fan. What I didn’t expect, however, was that I would almost feel like they had taken over the stadium and that we would have a 2.5 hour rain delay to get cozy with one another while taking cover on the concourse.

According to ESPN, Nationals Park has had an average attendance of a little under 24,000 fans per game this season. While it’s hard to give a good estimate since the team colors are so similar, I would guess that about 2/3 of the 37,000 people who came out to the park last night were Phillies phanatics. Their presence was so large that we didn’t even need to wait for the game to start before it was felt. As soon as I made my way onto half street after exiting the Metro, for instance, I was immediately surrounded by people wearing Phillies jerseys -- and this was two and a half hours before game time.

Once I got through the gates, my friend and I went down to the Red Loft section in center field to watch batting practice. This is something I do almost every time I get to a game early enough for batting practice because it’s usually less crowded than other sections and is a good place to get balls that batters hit out or other players toss up into the stands. The section tends to have some regulars that have been using it for years (access to section was actually limited in past years and not everyone‘s caught on that it’s now open to everyone during BP), so I began recognizing familiar faces once I’d used the section to watch BP a few times. During yesterday’s game, however, there was already a fair number of fans there -- most of whom were wearing Phillies gear. (As a side note, Zach Hample -- a guy who travels around to all of the ballparks trying to snag balls and has even written books about how to get a souvenir ball -- was in the section and had already had several very successful days at Nats Park during the series against the Reds).

Since there weren’t too many balls being hit into the section and the Phillies contingent there was continuing to grow, we decided to leave the area a little earlier than I usually do to grab a bite to eat and wait for the gates to the rest of the stadium to open up. As I was enjoying my hot dog and a diet coke, I found it amazing how many fans were already lining up to get into the rest of the stadium. On an average day, there’s a few fans waiting to get into right field because they want to sprint after balls they saw go into the stands earlier or they want to try getting some autographs as the Nationals make their way off the field after their batting practice. Even a good 15 to 20 minutes before the gates opened up yesterday, however, there was about 100 people lined up (about 75 of them were wearing Phillies gear).

Considering how many of the Philly fans who were at the game were making a weekend trip (or at least had the afternoon off to allow for driving time before the game), it shouldn’t be too surprising that I felt like the only Nats there during the first hour or so that I was there. I figured we’d start gaining some ground once people made their way over to the Park after getting off of work. That didn’t seem to happen though because any big gains we might have made compared to the number of Philly fans seemed to be wiped out by the rain as it was mostly local fans who decided to leave during the 2.5 hour rain delay.

It was actually during the game that the way Philly fans took over the park really began to be frustration. There were several loud chants of “let’s go Phillies” or “Ruuuuuuuu” after catcher Carlos Ruiz came up to bat. It was Jason Werth who received the loudest response from the Phillies fans as he was taunted by their fans in right field (one of whom had a sign saying “Pence is Werth more” proudly displayed) and was booed extremely loudly whenever he came up to bat.

Now some of the blame for Philly fans being able to dominate the stadium should be given to Nats fans. As much as I hate to admit it, after all, if more fans showed up to the games then there wouldn’t be as many tickets available for the visiting team’s fans to purchase. That doesn’t make it less frustrating as I began to feel like I was the one supporting the visiting team and was forced to listen to fans mocking my team when Ian Desmond made a careless error at short or Livan Hernandez was getting hit pretty hard during the third inning.

So it’s with that in mind that I was thrilled when the Nationals silenced the Philly fans by coming back in the ninth. As the Nats continued to rally after they tied it up at 4, it was beginning to sound like a Nationals crowd and went absolutely crazy when Zimmerman hit his walk off grand slam. After being at the ball park for 8 hours at that point, it was a great feeling to be able high five the Nationals fans who, like me, had stuck with the home team during a long evening. Even the friend who came to the game with me all decked out in her Phillies gear stuck her hands up and said “helluva game” with a big goofy grin on her face as we slapped five.