WASHINGTON D.C. — The sixth Washington Nationals Opening Day is history and it wasn’t a good one for the home team. The pregame festivities, President Obama wearing a White Sox cap while throwing out the first pitch aside, were fine pageantry. By the second pitch of the game, the Philadelphia Phillies had a baserunner in leadoff man Jimmy Rollins. However, John Lannan was able to recover and a heads up play by Adam Dunn to throw out Rollins at the plate after an Ian Desmond error ended the inning. In the bottom half, Nyjer Morgan ran out an infield single and stole second base. Ryan Zimmerman doubled off the high right centerfield wall to score Morgan and the Nats led. They held onto that lead until fifth inning when John Lannan came undone. Lannan has only had about five starts in his career that have not gone to the fifth inning and this was the second I have seen. Perhaps I will have to adjust my scheduling accordingly.

The Phillies just piled on while the Nats could not get anything going. The Phillies fans, numerous and boisterous, were polite in section 316. In aggregate though, they were pretty bad, booing Zimmerman during his Silver Slugger and Gold Glove awards presentation. Philly fans are well-versed in booing an outstanding third baseman.

The silly practice of wearing colored jerseys for day games is stupid and all the more awful for Opening Day. The Nats would be well advised to resume wearing white for Opening Day, save the red for Saturday night or something.

The lines for half-smokes near 316 were short and the stand efficient, hopefully this is the start of a new trend.

I bicycled to the ballpark from Pentagon City. It arrived within five minutes of people taking Metro from the same location.

Since we arrived early and entered through the home plate gate, security lines were short.

Our seats were in the shade for the whole game.

James Brown is a wonderful master of ceremonies, but I still wish they included Charlie Brotman some how.

I really hope that somebody can get some numbers out of Stan Kasten about how many group tickets were sold to Phillies fans. Washingtonians simply did not have a significant opportunity to purchase Opening Day tickets. Thankfully, a seasonticketholder helped me get mine.

An appearance by Donovan McNabb in a Redskins jersey and curly W cap would have been pretty sweet yesterday. Perhaps that will happen tomorrow — I’d like to see him throw out the first pitch. I’m all about cross marketing between local teams.

I’m taking what happened yesterday way too well. I’m as bad as Thomas Boswell, still just happy to have a team.

I’m 0-1 in the fifth annual Cheesesteak/Half-Smoke Challenge.

[flickr : Opening Day 2010/slideshow]