To the most beautiful moment in life, better than a deed, better than a memory, the moment… of anticipation!

– Jacques Brunswick

In about four hours Stephen Strasburg will throw out his first pitch as a Washington Nationals player with over 80,000 eyes in Nationals Park and hundreds of thousands of television viewers looking on. Then we can move on and let the man pitch. I suppose I’m part of the hype problem though, so let this be one last contribution.

The hype has been facisinating because with about 3 exceptions (Opening Nights 2005 & 2008 and maybe the half way point of ’05), D.C. has been nothing but a baseball outpost at best. For an entire generation, it wasn’t even on the map with MLB seemingly uninterested in the nation’s capital and the millions of upwardly mobile people around it that may want to see some guys wearing W caps play ball every summer. So, for a life-long fan who waited for a team for so long, this hype is…really weird.

I get why D.C. is falling over itself in the hype. As a sports town, D.C. is Redskins first and bandwagon for everything else. There is no shame in that because just about every other city with a handful of pro teams has a similar distinction. How big is the “event town” nature here? Even the lowly Senators regularly sold out Opening Day.

We have seen hype before, but typically it is for imported superstars. In the first part of the decade, Michael Jordan, Steve Spurrier and Jaromir Jagr came here and immediately created buzz for the Wizards, Redskins and Capitals, respectively. It turned out to be a “sugar high” as Ted Leonsis says — a short lived buzz, because only one (Jagr) even made the playoffs and failed to advance at that. Meanwhile, the first home grown superstar, Alex Ovechkin arrived to great fanfare in the Caps community, but not anything bigger than say, a free agent defensive back for the Redskins getting signed, in the larger sports community. So, having a “homegrown” player get so much hype from the start, like Strasburg has, is unprecedented. This may be irrational exburence, but it did not come from nothing. His expectations are pretty high becaues he has made them so, excelling in every thing that has been asked in the minors.

The oddest part of this debut is that the hype is not limited to BeltwayLand. It seems a little surreal to me that so much attention has been focused on something other than politics or the Redskins from a national level. When I talk to people from other parts of the country, the topic of Strasburg keeps coming up. Just this morning someone on Facebook from Binghamton asked if I could buy him a program tonight (Sure, Mike!). I wonder if the fact Strasburg is in Washington as oppossed to say, Kansas City, Tampa Bay or Milwaukee has magnified the hype. I am pretty sure it has, even though that Nats come last or clsoe to it in TV and radio ratings of MLB teams. Are fans elsewher more inclined to be interested because this is an important, yet underperforming market?

I guess feel the same way as somebody whose small town in featured in a Hollywood movie — “hey, that’s us!” That is not a typical feeling for me, since I’m used to D.C., even my hometown of Vienna, Va. to some extent, getting national attention, projecting the “I’m a Wasingtonian, I’m too cool to get excited” attitude. The Nats fan in me still has the smalltown syndrome though, because of the way things have transpired since September 29, 2004, the day it was announced baseball was back. For the most part, Nats fans have had to deal with political squabbles, zero or substandard TV coverage, bad teams, cheap, tone deaf ownership and a sleazy general manager. The old views about the District of Columbia’s place (first in war, first in peace, last in the…league) in baseball were easily recalled by locally and nationally. I have not been too discouraged though because at the heart of it, I’m still just a fanboy who’s so excited that D.C. has a team. One of my favorite non-game momeents happened in February 2005 at a Pennsylvania Turnpike Northeast Extension service near Allentown. A family Eagles fans really gave me the evil eye as a went about my business in a curly W cap.

I have clung to this fanboy attitude has clearly lasted too long though over the years, I think I have leveled a fair amount of criticism at this franchise. I have been saying for a while that “as long as they are good when my son is old enough to care” I’ll stick with them. I am wondering when if I am going to feel that way when I’m sitting in section 416 at about 7:05 p.m. waiting for the first pitch. Am I going to feel it when I am headed back to the Metro after the game?

And so, I have to sign off now as that son I just mentioned wakes up from his nap. I had more to say, but in about three hours, the hype will be over and that will be a good thing.