Photo via Capital Bikeshare

The Washington Nationals’ nightly “Racing Presidents” sideshow featured something of a multi-modal twist last night. Instead of trotting around on foot, the mascot versions of presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, and William Howard Taft raced around the warning track on Capital Bikeshare rides.

The George Washington mascot broke the red tape in what appeared to be a well-timed demonstration of Capital Bikeshare in front of the Nationals’ current visitors, the New York Mets. New York City recently launched its own bicycle sharing system, Citi Bike.

And while New York’s bike sharing program shares a corporate sponsor with the Mets’ home stadium, it’ll be a long time until Mr. Met rides around Citi Field on a big, blue, Bixi-manufactured clunker. Currently, all the Citi Bike stations are in Manhattan and Brooklyn, and it’s a 12-mile ride from the closest station (Macon Street and Nostrand Avenue, in Bedford-Stuyvestant) to Citi Field. Not that there’s a station for Mets fans to dock at out in Flushing.

Nationals Park, on the other hand, is near multiple Capital Bikeshare stations, and the stadium as a whole is one of the most bike-friendly parks in Major League Baseball. Last night was not the first time that Bikeshare featured in the Racing Presidents show. The characters also used the big, red bikes in September 2010, shortly after Capital Bikeshare launched.