skyking162

Via semi-legal means, I’ve been able to get my hands on exclusive photographs of the Washington Nationals’ new stadium. Well, that’s not exactly true. My buddy Tom recently took a tour of the stadium and is letting me share his photos on my blog. From what he says, finishing construction by Opening Day will be an impressive feat.

Many new stadiums are going for a retro feel, with brick and painted metal. The Nationals’ new stadium has a whole lot of glass. I like it.

Left field provides a nice view of a parking garage, only accessible to season ticket holders. From what I hear, you don’t want to drive in DC anyway and that the stadium is right off the Navy Yard metro stop — there’s my save-the-environment deed for today. The seats down the foul lines are five feet from fair territory and face slightly towards the infield.

According to Tom, “The jumbotron is freaking ginormous, potentially to the point of being distracting. Like watching TV sitting 3 feet away. We’ll see how that works out.”

I’ve never seen the clubhouse at any stadium, even during my tour of Fenway, so these next few photos were really cool. The Nats’ “locker room” is oval shaped so that nobody gets stuck in the corner. I wonder if they’ve come up with a way so that nobody has to get stuck next to Dmitri Young?

Each locker is ornamented with Louisville Sluggers and there are decently sized cubbies for fan mail.

Yes, that’s a bar, but it’s in a luxury suite, not the locker room. This particular suite opens up to seats behind home plate and also has a view down into a glass-enclosed indoor batting cage.

Here’s the team’s shower room. Like with the oval-shaped locker room, I assume the idea is to foster team unity.

Here is some sort of combination jacuzzi and treadmill, five feet deep. Personally, I’m not looking to work out while sipping my pina coladas, but I suppose this contraption does help with rehab.

Finally, Tom shows us my favorite room, the video analysis suite. Wait, what’s that, it’s the chapel? Seriously? A blah rectangular room with a crapload of bandwidth? Ok, evidently that’s the chapel.

I hope you enjoyed your tour. Many thanks to Tom for sneaking into the stadium and taking the photos. Baseball’s just around the corner.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 29th, 2008 at 2:51 pm and is filed under Baseball. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.