Photo by Kevin H.

Two Fridays ago, a friend and I were sitting in the third base club seats at Nationals Park on the cheap, thanks to the team’s recent dollar seat offer. It was then that a thought that I’ve had numerous times in the past struck me once again: why don’t the Nationals — who obviously have little to offer in terms of the baseball on display — take the remainder of the season and host a few crazy, off-the-wall promotions? Where are our “Jay Buhner Buzz Cut Nights“, our Free Money Night, our own Veeckian brand of happy insanity?

Next weekend is Pups In The Park at the stadium, which is a start, I guess. (We’d make some jokes about the Nationals performance and dog poop, but it appears as if NBCWashington.com’s Chris Needham has already exhausted them all.) Humans can purchase a ticket for their canine friends for $5 in sections 201 through 205 — and there will be folks from the Humane Society advocating adoption. This is great and all, but it’s not like every other team in the bigs doesn’t also have this promotion.

The Nationals desperately need something to connect the franchise to the city, and injecting some life into the stadium with something unique and fun could do the trick. After all, there’s got to be plenty of ideas out there for the Nationals to do besides the ubiquitous “dogs at the ballpark.” How about this: the first 100 fans who can correctly guess Dmitri Young’s current weight get upgraded to the seats behind home plate. Or how about fans who buy tickets to an entire series get them for a price discounted by the team’s winning percentage at the start of the series?

Personally, I’d prefer it if the Nationals would do as German football club Bayern Munich did earlier this week — giving fans free beer as atonement for the team’s poor start to the season. Hey, a man can dream. Surely, the commentariat has some ideas; be sure leave yours below.