Since 2023, MLB required that every team would play every other team at least in one series per year, with interleague matchups alternating ballparks every other season. 2026 was a designated year for Houston to brave the Beltway for another rematch with their 2019 World Series opponent at Nationals Park. This author got a chance to return to said ballpark for the 1st time in 2 years. A few thoughts/observations related to that July 8th game at Washington.
Given their proximity, it is hard not to compare Nationals Park with Baltimore’s Camden Yards. Nationals Park is clearly the newer ballpark, opening in 2008. However, newer is not always better. It is not that Nationals Park is a bad place to watch a game. However, Nationals Park lacks a personality. It feels a bit corporate and somewhat sterile. Sure, Camden is not always perfect, but it has a degree of personality. Washington DC is no stranger to baseball, and even along the walls of honor in Nationals Park, you do see the numbers and names of some of the best from the old days when the Senators roamed the league. Still, Nationals Park is not a place you go to ever check out the ballpark, as opposed to Camden Yards, Fenway Park, Wrigley Field, etc.
One advantage of Nationals Park over Camden Yards it is that the large jumbotron behind center field is the focal point for all game information. They put everything on that screen (lineups, at-bat data, pitch type). At Camden, the jumbotron screen is prominent, but to find like the specific information about a pitch thrown, you have to look over at the first-base levels to find that information. Nationals Park at least keeps everything centralized.
Nationals Parks being located inside DC, particularly on the North/West banks of the Anacostia River has its pluses and minuses. It is nice that the park is in the city and if you are in the main part of DC, you can get to it relatively easily. It has its own dedicated Metro stop (Navy Yard-Ballpark, on the Green Line), which leaves you with but a block walk to get the actual ballpark. However, it is recommended that you use public transport and/or park some ways off to get in, as parking around Nationals Park sucks. Also for consideration is that Audi Field is close to Nationals Park. In the spring/summer, you may find a baseball/soccer match going on concurrently, which can lead to some large Metro crowds.
Given all the ties to America’s 250th birthday and that this was the Nationals’ first home series since the 4th of July, you could not help but get inundated with a lot of homages to a 1776-ish type theme. The players, especially the home team, had their names printed as if spelled out by a quill pen. They did eventually give the Astros players that sort of treatment with their names. Additionally, when the National Anthem was played, the stadium lights would switch to a series of red, white, and blue lights. Not quite in a pure American-flag formation, but the coloring of the lights was not a feature I remembered seeing at previous games.
Then the game got started.
It was a humid night. Felt like a lot of hits didn’t jump off the bats like they would have had it been about 20% drier. Of course, as the night wore on, the Nationals seemed to have little to no problem getting the requisite lift on the ball to get things going.
At the start of the game, it seemed like there were more Astros fans in their seats vs. Nationals fans. For a series-ending game, a Wednesday night start had a bit of weird vibe to it, likely because so many fans were still coming into the stadium in the first couple of innings. Altuve, normally a magnet for the road boo-birds, seemed to get more cheers when he walked up to his first at-bat. By the time he came back for ABs #2 and #3, more Nats fans were in their seats and greeted him accordingly. Unfortunately for Altuve, he did not channel the hate into a particularly good night at the plate, going 0-4. He did have a nice defensive play in the 1st to give Houston one of it few highlights.
When the Astros failed their early/not-all-that-smart ABS challenge in the 1st inning, the failure was greeted with the ever popular “Loser Theme” from the Price-Is-Right. Credit to Nationals Park for having that sound bite at the ready. My last game there was when then-1B Jose Abreu botched a relatively easy foul pop-up, and said sound effect accompanied that one. A quality, well-earned troll on that one.
It was apparently early on that this game was going to be a struggle for Arighetti. The Nats were not chasing anything at all, thus running up the pitch counts. Given that he would end the night with 6 walks, that feeling bore out in spades. At one point, Arrighetti would hit the 60-pitch mark with over 50% of his throws going for balls. He did end the night with more strikes thrown, but that number is dampened by the fact that a lot of those late strikes went for painful hits. It was a tough night for Astros pitchers across the board. While the Nats did their damage between innings 4-6, only Pearson did not work at least a 20-pitching inning, and he just missed that with an 18-pitch appearance.
The Nats seem to lean into their being a “newish” franchise. If nothing else, I saw a lot of newer features between innings that I had not seen in my previous 2024 visit. One that hurt was after the 3rd inning, the jumbotron showed Nats players trying to correctly identify a 3.5-inch floppy disk. Given that many never used a floppy disk for their computers, it is not surprising that the vast majority did not correctly ID a disk. This author felt really old for some reason. Another less welcome occurrence was the whole “N-A-T-S! Nats! Nats! Nats!” chant. Granted, that didn’t start appearing until Washington jumped up 6-1 on Houston, but still, it came across as a rip-off of the New York/New Jersey Jets chant. Also, do you really want to emulate the Jets, with your actions? Yes, when you are stomping a team like the Nats were stomping the Astros, you can say anything you want. I get that they have a new core and want to showcase newness. Still, that was one tradition that needs to end quickly. At least our ears were spared “Baby Shark”. That clarion call from Hades seems to be rightfully buried. However, they always reserve the right to bust it out for any commemoration of 2019.
Yet, the Nats did have one tradition that they kept, and one that can claim superiority to Camden’s equivalent: The Presidential Race. At the end of the 4th inning, the four presidential mascots: Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, (Teddy) Roosevelt, all lined up at the center field wall to start their traditional race to the home dugout. Decked out with Nautro wigs (that was the theme for the night), they all lumbered towards the finish line. The winner: Jefferson.
By the 7th inning, it was quite apparent that this game was going to go Washington’s way. Griffin was dealing as well as he had all season and the Houston hitters could just not get anything going. Even as Houston put baserunners on in the 8th and 9th, the game was just going through the motions. Javier did have a rather dramatic 8th inning, as he loaded the bases. Got his outs via two long fly-out and a defensive play. Still, at this point, there wasn’t much excitement. Thus, the conversations in the stands got rather diverse. Perhaps the most amusing were the kids a few rows back of the author loudly asking each other multiplication problems and other math questions. Some seemed rather easy (2 x 4), but then you got a “what is the square root of 60?” The other kid did not offer an answer that anyone could hear. (the correct answer is 7.74596669241, which I know is a figure that we ALL know like the back of our hands, but just thought it worth throwing in there).
About the only Astro that could really say he had a good night was LF Zach Dezenzo, who went 2 of 3 with a run and a wonderful diving catch that bailed out Arrighetti in the 2nd inning. Sure, Paredes had multiple hits, and Brice Matthews drove in a run but overall, this was one of the most bleh games of the season for Houston. They got beat and it was about as dull a beatdown as you could imagine. Granted, if the worst thing is that your trek to the ballpark is watching your team play an uninspired game, things can’t be all that bad.
Likely Houston won’t return to the DMV (DC, Maryland, Virginia) area until 2027. Hopefully, they will return to better performances and records on their next visits. Final record in the DMV for 2026: 2-4. Games where author attended: 1-2. Yeah, would be nice to see that change in ’27, provided baseball doesn’t screw up the labor…yeah, we’ll have to wait and see.
