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My visit to Washington D.C. and Nationals Park was a part of an eleven-stadium road trip I call my personal 'Baseball Odyssey,' which I write about in my blog post about my baseball chase. Nationals Park was the penultimate stop on my trip, and I was starting to feel the bittersweet realization that I'd be away from the trip and back in my usual routine within a few days. Happy to relish the trip and due to how scheduling shook out, I'd spent a total of three days in D.C. with one of my dearest friends from high school with another swinging by in the middle of a road trip of his own just to catch the game. I liked my stay in the nation's capital quite a bit, and it was capped off by some great food and a fun baseball game. The Marlins came into town with star player Luis Arraez flirting with hitting .400, a stunning mark in today's game that has not been hit for nearly a century. His batting average headed into the game was .378 in the month of June -- still early enough in the season that a monster performance could very easily swing that figure. This was the story of the game, as the Marlins were a team a bit above .500 but not topping the NL East and the Nationals were resigned to another playoff-less season at this point. After an eventful day checking out the National Mall and other sights of D.C., we headed out to the stadium to see Arraez do his thing.

The first thing about Nationals Park that caught my eye is that it is one of the most accessible stadiums in all of baseball, with the lauded D.C. public transit system having a stop what is essentially directly outside of the park's center field gate. Stadiums in baseball with this level of closeness to public transit, such as the Chicago parks and the Oakland Coliseum, are in the minority, and the convenience was not lost on me. Outside of this, however, the park was rather average as far as ballparks go. As I've said before -- I love baseball, and love the "average" baseball stadium. However, nothing particularly wowed me about Nationals Park outside of the convenience. The actual dish with the field inside is well-designed, with plenty of decent seating options available across its tiers. My friends and I had snagged three seats along the first base line which obscured a small part of the right field view but had a clear sight line towards the rest of the action. The scoreboard is clear and well-decorated, with a giant photograph of Max Scherzer lifting the 2019 World Series trophy during the championship parade on its back side -- a nice touch, given the relative rarity of a good Nationals season. The food I did have was quite good, nabbing a chili dog from Ben's Chili Bowl and a slice of pizza from Enzo's at two separate points in the game. The food options reminded me of Guaranteed Rate Field, with smaller cart-style vendors on the inside of the concourse while the concession stands with classic fare lined the outside.

The game itself was amusing, as my friends and I were dialed in on Luis Arraez and his pursuit of the .400 mark. Arraez got five plate appearances in this game due to the Marlins' strong offensive showing, and in all five plate appearances Luis Arraez got a hit. Alongside 3 RBI and a home runs, his 5-5 day sent his batting average up twelve points to .390 on the year, and his .413 Win Probability Added is one of the best figures I've seen to date. He hit the ball all over the park, in all manner of hit -- ground balls, fly balls, line drives, left field, right field, center field -- there was no wrong Arraez could do, and my friends and I became increasingly impressed with each hit. The Nationals managed to keep it competitive, even out-hitting the Marlins 12 to 11 and evening up the score whenever the Marlins would get runs within a few innings. However, a single in the top of the 8th by Garrett Cooper put the Marlins up 6-5, a lead they would not relinquish.

Even though this reads more like a post about the Marlins than one about the Nationals, I did find Nationals Park a decent place to watch baseball. I love its proximity to its closest train station, and the apartment buildings next to the stadium seem like great places to live if I were a Nationals fan (if I could afford it, of course). The Nationals' uniforms were also quite pretty -- the grey city connects accented with light pink cherry blossoms -- and I made sure that the hat I grabbed from the stadium was a matching city connect item. Personally, I love the city connect idea and have found myself gravitating towards the city connect versions of most teams' hats. If I find myself in D.C. again I will make it a priority to attend another Nationals game, as I'm sure I missed hidden gems around the park and enjoyed my first visit quite a bit.