It's that time of year again; the first Yankees - Red Sox series of the season, which means it is also time for stories like this one.

"The new Yankee Stadium may be cursed!

A devilish Boston fan working on a concrete crew at the $1.3 billion stadium covertly buried a Red Sox T-shirt under what will become the visiting team's locker room to jinx the Yanks, two construction workers told The Post yesterday."

Speaking of ballparks, attendance at Washington's brand new one, for its nearly brand-new team, is already down to 20-25k per game. What an embarrassment.

That's terrible; has the weather been particularly bad or something?

And do a detect just a hint of Maryland-centric Schadenfreude in your report?

If I did my job correctly, you would have detected far more than a hint of Schadenfreude, although the source of it isn't just my being a Marylander, it's also being a DCU fan. It galls me that DC was willing to plunk down $600-700m on this stupid thing, while at the same time is being intransigent about United putting up a privately funded stadium.

It's strange, I was raised a DC sports fan, and like most allegiances developed in childhood, that will probably continue until I die. But because the Nats are new, they merely represent a city I've grown to hate.

Oh, and the weather in DC was gorgeous yesterday: mid 70s.

I hadn't realised that subtext, and am always sensitive to your love of Black Eyed Susans and all they represent.

DC has always struck me as dysfunctional when it comes to local government, in large part because its Federal masters very much prefer it to stay that way. This sounds like yet another example of that dysfunctionality.

Before we break out the schadenfreude (and trust me, I would love to engage in it here), the Nats have played only 4 home games, one of them a sell out and then three of them against the Florida Marlins. While I agree that the Nats won't likely draw particularly well relative to other teams, using games against a Marlins team that dumped its 2 most recognizable names as 3/4 of the representative sample is stacking the deck a bit.

A better time to assess may be after their late April homestand (Mets, Cubs, Braves, Pirates). Of course, they'll like be 10 games back then, so it's probably wise to keep the schadenfreude handy.

Also, while DC ultimately agreed to fund the stadium, it was a painful and vicious political fight to get it done (poor city, graft, etc.). I think once DC United is able to pony up enough in bribes, a privately funded stadium will sail through.

Cmon, it's a *brand new stadium*. The place was half empty. The opponent shouldn't make that much of a difference.

It is a brand new stadium, but it's also DC, so of course the opponent matters. As you know, at this moment in time, there are not that many die-hard Nats fans and the team is bad, so attendance will be driven by opponents. I think the Nats will be happy if they're able to average around 7-10k more fans a game than they did last year, and Marlins games aren't going to make that happen. Further, the Nats are up against the Wizards and Capitals making their playoff push, which currently is sucking away interest from the limited number of real sports fans in DC.

As for what the city gets out of the stadium. The answer is generally not much, but at least development has begun in the area around the stadium. Here are some side-by-side pictures of the stadium area now compared against the same area before the stadium was approved.

Finally, the stadium has a real transportation problem. Currently, there is very little parking, and the metro isn't running extra trains during game times, so getting there isn't easy.

I should add that the opponent always matters in DC, because of the weird demographics of the city (Reed and I discussed this a bit in the ice hockey thread). If you go to a Wizards game against the Celtics, Sixers or Knicks (ok, not the Knicks the last two years), at least half of the arena is opposing team fans. It's like the US National Soccer Team playing Mexico in almost any city in the US.

The Nats hope is that, over time, they can build a decent team and develop real Nats fans, but it will take time.

This is, of course, why I hate DC. It is nowhere. Its culture and traditions are defined by the fact that it has no specific culture or traditions. DC is being enveloped in bland.

What is left of DC's unique culture, and that has largely come to mean "black DC", is quickly being destroyed. as is dramatically shown by the pictures you linked to. (and yes, I realize that a DCU stadium would also be a part of that. But I am a hypocrite).

I agree entirely with your last post, although I think the stadium development has done less damage to black DC than the creeping gentrification in the low-numbered streets in NW and in Columbia Heights and Mt. Pleasant. Of course, I'd like to live in Mt. Pleasant, and I'm not sure that would have been true 10 years ago, so I'm a bit of a hypocrite too.

All that being said, Bohemian Caverns on 11th & U NW is still an excellent remnant of what use to count as culture in DC and one of my favorite places to see any type of jazz show. Of course, it may very well be an Applebees this time next year.

Speaking of DC denizens not being DC fans, I'm a little pissed that I have to wait so long to see the Phillies come to town. With their abysmal pitching (and Rollins' injury), I'm worried they'll be out of it by the time they show up here.

But they always start off the season poorly.

Thanks for the links to those pictures, Gyuri. It's the bleak photographer in me, but I love mostly-empty urban spaces that you see in most of the "befores", especially the freeway (sorry, "highway"? "parkway"?) underpasses.

SocScrim, any thoughts on GWB's daughter and her fiancee being the newest residents of Baltimore?

We use the term 'freeway' Inca. In fact, if you continue along the main road in those pictures, a couple of blocks later you run into the Southeast-Southwest Freeway.

Actually, Jenna moving to Baltimore was news to me, but I've now investigated. She's bought in one of the yuppiest parts of the city, unsurprisingly, so at least she's not polluting some hardcore Baltimore neighborhood.

I am less down on people moving to Baltimore than I am with DC. Baltimore is a dying city, and needs people. Still, to me what makes it great is the fact that it has largely been missed by the urban revival of the last 10-15 years.

QUOTE:
But they always start off the season poorly.

That's true, though I was kind of hoping that they wouldn't this year. Would've been a nice change of pace.