Washington rises to sports-town status
Nationals supporters also rooted for Capitals
Nationals Park, host of the 2018 All-Star Game, has become a D.C. sports destination, much like Capitals games.
– Besides the typical clothing and equipment in his locker, Nationals first baseman Ryan Zimmerman also keeps an item in one of the top compartments for good luck — a Washington Capitals helmet.
“For (the Capitals) to finally pull through and win a title is obviously great for them,” Zimmerman says. “Their fan base has also become unbelievable. I mean, we go to quite a few of their games in the offseason. It’s a fun place to go watch a game.”
Clad in Capitals helmets and jerseys and waving hockey sticks, Zimmerman and Nationals ace Max Scherzer led the “Let’s Go Caps!” chant during Game 4 of the Stanley Cup Final — an effort that helped them win “Fans of the Game.”
Manager Dave Martinez also donned Capitals apparel during pregame news conferences throughout the Stanley Cup playoffs, while Nationals closer Sean Doolittle temporarily suspended his childhood team (the Philadelphia Flyers) to cheer on the Capitals in June.
During the Stanley Cup playoffs, the city streets around Capital One Arena and most of the seats inside it were flooded with Capitals red. It was a far cry from the 1998 Final, when Detroit Red Wings fans domWASHINGTON inated the lower bowl, their shouts drowning out those of Washington fans.
Nationals Park, host of this year’s All-Star Game, isn’t quite there yet. But since the team’s inception in 2005 after a move from Montreal, that sea of red has made its way there, especially after the team became an annual contender in 2012. Outof-town fans are still around, and they are sure to be during next week’s All-Star festivities, but among them will be that hearty base donning Nationals red who are cheering on the hometown guys.
This season will mark the first time the city has hosted the major league All-Star Game since 1969. Since the Washington Senators left town in 1971 to become the Texas Rangers, Washington has added NBA and NHL teams in the 1970s, Major League Soccer and WNBA teams in the 1990s and then the Nationals to join the city’s longtime NFL team.
“When we first came here, baseball had been gone for so long ... basically an entire generation, so they almost had to relearn how to be baseball fans,” says Zimmerman, the team’s first draft pick in 2005. “In the 13 years or so now, it’s been fun for me to be here from the beginning because the organization and the team has kind of grown along with the fan base.”
Doolitte attended the University of Virginia and grew up rooting for the NFL’s Redskins because his father is from Maryland. Though his true hockey allegiance rests with the Flyers (he went to high school in New Jersey), similarities he felt to the Capitals helped him support them during the Stanley Cup Final.
“There are some parallels between the Nationals and the Caps. The way that they’ve had so much success during the regular season and then maybe they haven’t made the playoff runs that they thought,” says Doolittle, the Nationals closer who will be representing the team as an All-Star.
“They’ve had to answer a lot of the same questions, and once they broke through, they won the whole thing, and I think there’s a mutual respect among that.”
The Capitals brought the Stanley Cup to Nationals Park after winning it in June. Playoff
Alex Ovechkin and his teammates fraternized with Nationals players like they were brothers.
The Capitals’ championship ended a drought among the city’s NBA, NHL, NFL and MLB teams that dated to the Redskins’ Super Bowl victory in 1992. The drought, dubbed the “D.C. sports curse,” ended in a five-game Stanley Cup Final that was followed by a five-day party featuring Capitals players and local fans.
Players took a celebration tour around Washington, doing keg stands on the Stanley Cup and swimming and celebrating in the fountain on the Georgetown waterfront.
The Stanley Cup Final injected energy and inspired camaraderie among Washington’s sports community, proving it could rival that of any sports town. It has carried over to other sports.
Angie and Chris Wanner have attended Nationals games since the team came to town.
“When they were losing 100 games a season, it was really easy to find seats in the ballpark, anywhere, anytime,” Chris says. “Now that they’ve won, you can see the fan base is growing.”
Angie says there has been a lot of crossover among the fan bases, especially during the Capitals’ run. She described seeing fellow Nationals fans watching a Penguins-Capitals game in the Eastern Conference semifinals on their phones while simultaneously watching the Nationals.
“People were excited,” Angie says.
During the Stanley Cup Final, the WNBA’S Washington Mystics, who play at Capital One Arena, moved their game against the Minnesota Lynx to an earlier time and helped organize a watch party for Game 5 of the Stanley Cup Final in the building. Tickets for the watch party sold out quickly.
But Capitals fans showed up for the Mystics game ahead of time and supported their local WNBA team, and the Mystics players noticed.
“How could you not have a blast in an environment like that?” Mystics guard Natasha Cloud said of the atmosphere: “That goes to the Caps fans ... they were phenomenal.”
When Tiger Woods returned to the D.C. area for the PGA Tour’s Quicken Loans National in late June, he even praised the area’s golf fans for braving 90 degree heat with enthusiasm.
“This is a tremendous sports town,” Woods said. “This is on the more difficult side of a walking golf course and it’s hot, but they’re out here supporting and cheering, and boy, they’re into it and it’s fun.”
There is a lot of passion but still room for growth among the team sports. The Capitals averaged 18,774 fans for regular-season home game last season, ninth in the NHL, according to ESPN. That figure is likely to experience a post-title surge.
The NBA’s Wizards, who also play in Capital One Arena, have made the playoffs four out of the past five seasons but finished 14th in the NBA in attendance at just under 18,000 fans a game. Attendance rose nearly 1,000 a game from the previous season, however.
The Nationals have ranked among the top half in MLB for attendance since the 2012 season and entered the week 12th in the major leagues at 31,775.
Despite recent lackluster seasons, the Redskins are among the 10 best NFL teams in attendance since 2006 and were No. 6 in 2017.
But the Capitals are now the gold standard. They not only went all the way but carried a partisan following at home games unmatched among the town’s other teams.
Doolittle believes that both the enthusiasm sparked by the Capitals’ win and the hunger for a championship has bled into Nationals Park.
“The energy from their win has followed the fans over here to our stadium,” Doolittle says. “It can be a little bit tough having those expectations and having the fans almost like demand things like that for you, but you want that.
“That means you’re in a position to do something special.”