Despite losing to the Mets yesterday at home, the long weekend was very good the Washington Nationals. They swept the Cubs over the weekend, drew their largest DC crowd ever yesterday and even got some front page love from the folks over at ESPN.com. Oh, and lest we forget that we have not one, but two All Stars on our roster. Livan Hernandez and Chad Cordero will both be making the trip to Detroit next week. That’s the first time the Nats/Expos franchise has had multiple All Stars since 2002.
Things are so good that Peter Gammons devotes some much overdue column inches to the Nats this week. He calls the national pasttime’s return to the District “the biggest story of the half-season,” before touting Hernandez, Cordero and Jose Guillen as candidates for the Cy Young, Rolaids Relief Man and MVP awards, respectively.
Darren Rovell also chips in with the business angle of the team’s success, noting that the Nats drew just shy of 31,000 fans on a May 19th game against the Milwaukee Brewers, an attendance total that surpassed every game the team played last year in Montreal, save for their last ever game in Olympic Stadium. Even better? Attendance in Baltimore has dropped 6% from last year.
Now if we could only do something about the concession offerings at RFK.
