living near Richmond, VA as a kid most guys are Atlanta Braves fans since their AAA team is located there. I never made that fan jump from AAA Braves fan to MLB Braves fan. But everyone loves the Skins in my area, so I guess I was holding out for a MLB team to move close to my area. As soon as the Expos moved to DC I immediately jumped on board. It’s great to have a MLB team within 100 miles of home finally.

I grew up a Mets fan, and a football Giants fan. I was far more into baseball, though, and rabid for my Mets. However, when I came here in 1991, I had more and more trouble keeping up with, and eventually relating to the team. As the Washington area strove to get a team, and as Peter Angelos threw every roadblock he could in the way, I became more and more interested in DC getting a team.

By the time 2005 came around, I had married and had three children. The desire to have a team to share with them, and a ball club I could watch live, made me very willing to sign on with the Nats. Just try to see a Mets game at Shea when you live in North Central New Jersey, where I was as a kid.

I did not abandon the Giants, but it makes sense. I grew up a Giants fan, and hated the Redskins all my life. There was no baseball team in Washington to root against, and Montreal was hardly ever good enough to even take seriously, if I wanted for some reason to transfer distaste for the team to DC. I didn’t, though- I always liked the Expos as an exotic and clever franchise.

But it doesn’t do one good to care too much about Ivy League sports.

I don’t know how or when I decided to be a baseball fan, but somehow the experience seems to be incomplete without an affiliation with a particular team. I was a seNATors fan as a kid, rooting for my heros Jim Lemmon, Roy Sievers, Frank Howard, Eddie Brinkman, Claude Osteen, et al, from the seats reserved for little leaguers. I became an Orioles fan when the Senators were torn away from us TWICE! I really couldn’t stay an Orioles fan after Angelos flushed the “Oriole Way” down the toilet, but I kind of stayed a Cal Ripken fan until he retired. To me (emotionally) the Washington Nationals are the reincarnation of the Senators of my youth, and have nothing to do with some expansion team in from the Great White North.

I grew up in northern NJ, rooting for Mantle and Maris in ‘61. Prayed for the yankees to beat the Pirates. Pleaded for our teacher to let us listen to the series on the radio. My neighbor and his father hated the Yankees and were dejected when the Giants and Dodgers left town. They took me to the Polo Grounds in ’62 to see the Mets play, and I was hooked on the Mets from that day. I would still root for the Yanks, though.
I moved to northern VA in ’82. Half-heartedly rooted for the O’s and Cal. Prayed for a team in DC or Virginia so we could root, root , root for the home team. I took the kids to see the Cannons play many times, and it was fun. Still have Ankiel’s sig on a baseball.
When MLB decided to move the Expos to DC, we bought season tickets on the first base side, in the shade at RFK. Had a great time there, first place until the all-star break. So now I am a Nats fan. Those Mets fans are so obnoxious, aren’t they?
Since times are financially tough, bought ten games from a group, behind home plate below the press box. I like the new stadium. Hopefully Tex will choose the Nats and we won’t be plagued by injuries like last year.

I grew up a Yankee fan and moved to No VA in 94. I could not bring myself to follow the O’s, as a rival. I still followed the Yankees when I moved here but found it hard without the day to day media coverage. I know a lot of fans think the Yankees win all the time, but I recall the early 70s and early 90s teams, that left a lot to be desired. I am patiently awaiting the Nats to re-build the scraps left over from MLB rape of Montreal.

My biggest concern is that DC is such a HUGE football town that casual fans will lose interest in the NATs if they don’t show some promise and the novelty of the new team and stadium wear off. I also worry that the team will overreact to this pressure and look for short term solutions to attract media/fan interest and have a first decade like the Rays (i.e., Castilla, Conseco, Vaughn, etc).

Also, the local media coverage of the Nats is pitiful. The papers hardly ever have any articles, the local news broadcasters cannot even pronounce players’ names, talk radio hosts only talk about the Skins’ even during the spring and summer, and MASN is a joke. We have a long way to go…..but, hope springs eternal.

As a life-long DC sports fan, there had always been a hole in my sports soul where a local baseball team should have been. My family never touched Baltimore teams (the Bullets being the exception once they moved to DC) and I remained steadfastly anti-Oriole (although steadfastly pro-Oriole greats like Ripken, Palmer, Murray, Robinson, etc). As a Baltimorean now for several years, I still take pride in cheering for the other team when we go to Camden Yards. Now, as a 27 year old, it’s been worth the 24 year wait to have a real hometown team. Plus we get to create the traditions and history that have made other clubs so great!

I grew up in Vermont, so the Expos were actually the closest franchise to me as a kid, although the area I lived in was primarily Red Sox and Yankees fans. The first baseball game I ever went to was an Expos game, back when they had Andres Galaraga. While I was never a huge Expos fan, I liked them just fine, and would root for them a little bit – but more importantly I was just a huge baseball fan.

I moved to Washington, DC in the fall of 2004 – right as the Expos were getting ready to move down to DC as well. As a huge baseball fan who had always lived in rural areas, I had never experienced what it was like to have a hometown team, where you could hop on the metro and go to a game whenever you wanted. The excitement of finally having a team I could call my own appealed to me, and I informed all my friends that regardless of how awful they were going to be, I was 100% committed to being a Nats fan. I’ve grown to like and obsess about them more and more each year, and still go to about 15 games a year.