Dusty Baker and the Nationals would like the fans to cheer more loudly

The Washington Nationals draw well, but apparently there has been some back and forth in DC baseball circles about whether the crowds at Nationals Park are loud enough. I guess that’s a pretty high class problem for a baseball team to have, but the Nats have it. Dusty Baker was asked about it today. Here’s what he said, via the Washington Post:

“Some of the guys on the team wish our fans were a little more boisterous and crazy, a little bit, like we see at different stadiums on the road,” Baker said. “But we also realize that a lot of our fans are new Nationals fans; that some of them — or a whole bunch of them — were Cubs and Mets [fans] and you know, wherever they come from. That’s the dynamics of D.C., which we realize. But we’re trying to win everybody to us. And you know, we need their energy, big-time.”

Baker was pretty diplomatic there. He went on to say why his players sometimes need crowds to be loud -- it’s about helping their energy level, not so much about expectations of fans for their own sake -- but there’s really no winning when it comes to this stuff. Baker’s been around long enough to know that. Some bozo on talk radio will use his comments to say he’s shaming fans and yell at him, someone else will use it as a validation for his own yelling at fans. If you think shaming fans is profitable, go read the Mets thread from this morning and see how far I got with it.

That aside, eh, it’s July. It gets swampy in DC and it’s hard to get super excited about anything when it’s like that outside. If it’s close in the standings the next time the Mets come to town or when the playoffs draw near it’ll get better. It almost always does, in any park.