Damn it.

Baseball doesn’t make it easy on the Nats. Last year, the team opened their season with an extra long road trip to allow time for final RFK upgrades. This year RFK is in good shape (relatively), but Washington will still kick things off with six games on the road, beginning with three against the spend-happy Mets. In yesterday’s afternoon opener at Shea, the Nats avoided Pedro and played well, but one more elbow in the ribs, this time from the boys in blue, meant a second straight season started at oh and one.

Livan Hernandez pitched well, but not quite well enough, allowing three runs through six innings, including a go ahead solo homer to David Wright in the sixth. The bullpen was excellent, as they were last year, throwing blanks, but the Nats couldn’t find enough runs, despite hitting well, and ultimately fell by a count of 3-2. The club had twelve hits — an offensive explosion compared to last year — including three from Jose Vidro, two from Alfonso Soriano in his Nationals’ debut, and two from third baseman Ryan Zimmerman, who looks ready to justify the expectations he generated in his short stint with the club last year.

Base-running issues may have cost the team the game, however. The game ended when Vidro was thrown out at second attempting to turn a single into a double, but the Nats best chance to tie was foiled by a poor call at the plate in the eighth inning. After singling himself on, Soriano attempted to take home on a Zimmerman double. The throw to the plate was well in time, but after diving past a bat in the base path, Soriano touched home and the ball came out of catcher Paul Lo Duca’s grasp. The ump nevertheless called him out, and Manager Frank Robinson failed to argue the call (the Post’s Thomas Boswell pens an ode to Soriano here, which covers the controversial play).

The Nats take the field again Wednesday night, when John Patterson will face the Mets in his first start of the season.

AP Photo taken by Kathy Willens.