Nationals Park

As Nationals Park enters its sixth season, many stadium travel issues have resolved themselves, or have been resolved by baseball fans figuring out their best routes. But each spring brings something new — or at least some early-season confusion. Fans will get their first crack at sorting it all out when the Nationals play an exhibition game with the Yankees at 2:05 p.m. Friday. The Nats open the regular season April 1 at 1:05 p.m. against the Marlins. In the meantime, here's the annual study guide, with...

The official part of Wednesday, June 5, for the Washington Nationals began at 7:06 p.m., when right-hander Dan Haren fired a fastball to Omar Quintanilla of the New York Mets, and the game began. At 10:18 p.m., Ryan Zimmerman lined out to center field, and the game ended. But four hours before the first pitch, before the national anthem, before the stands filled, a door in the center field wall at Nationals Park opened, groundskeepers rolled out "the cage" and the work day actually began.

For most people, the Bruce Springsteen concert Friday will be their first show at Nationals Park. Here are some helpful tips. ^ If possible, take Metro. A few expensive parking options will be available. But because the concert is on a Friday night, you needn't worry about Metro service ending before the show is over, even if Bruce stretches things out to four hours. Navy Yard on the Green Line is the stop for Nationals Park; remember when you leave the ballpark that there are two entrances to the station.

The consumption of rubbery hot dogs and cellophane-wrapped sandwiches of indeterminate age is a time-honored rite of passage for generations of families making the trek to national parks around the country. But the National Park Service is determined that the American experience now include the option of free-range chicken breast with sweet potato cake and fennel salad, or cumin-scented rockfish tacos, maybe topped off with a locally grown berry yogurt parfait, all washed down with shade-grown coffee picked by workers...

Davey Johnson can see everything, maybe even the future, but he does not want to talk about that. He will manage the Washington Nationals for one more season, the team has announced. Mention this, try to ask him what that means to him, and he will interrupt before the question is finished. "I don't like that," Johnson said one warm afternoon this spring, spitting tobacco juice inside the dugout at the Atlanta Braves' spring training stadium. "That sounds like...

Who: Atlanta vs. Washington. When: Tomorrow, 8 p.m. TV: ESPN.

As an out-of-town visitor to Washington and to Nationals Park on April 23, I was astonished to see nearly all of the seats behind home plate empty. The rest of the ballpark was comparatively full. It is un-American to have seats in such a great ballpark sit empty. What is the reason for this travesty? JAMIE SMARR New York

Regarding the Sept. 26 Sports story "Nats offer up a fond farewell" : In the ninth inning at Nationals Park on Sunday, the crowd stood up and yelled: "Drew! Drew!" It may have sounded like boos to the uninformed, but it was a magnificent moment of acknowledgement that years of frustration and defeat were coming to an end. The fans rose to watch the last out of the Nationals' glorious shutout of the Braves, and their winning of the last home game of 2011. Moreover, we knew that this team was on its way up. A young pitcher had...

On May 3, my family and I attended our first baseball game at Nationals Park. Because some members of my family are disabled, we were worried about our transportation options. But we followed the advice on the Washington Nationals' Web site and drove to RFK Stadium, where we could park and take a bus to the game. At RFK, an attendant assured us that we would not have to walk or stand for long periods to get to and from the new stadium (I can walk only about two blocks before my back begins to ache and my left leg starts to go numb)

I wish to commend The Post's sports editor for casting aside conventional wisdom and selecting a photo of a spectator in a wedding dress on the field to accompany the recap of the July 16 Washington Nationals win [ "Lannan gives Nats a boost with his bat," Sports, July 17]. On a day that the Sunday Sports section was six pages, I am glad that The Post is using its valuable space to highlight an action both completely irrelevant to the game's outcome and grounds for ejection from the ballpark.

Roughly two months and 60 aimless games after they entered the season as World Series favorites, the brightest hope for the Washington Nationals on Friday was the fact that they had been rained out for a second consecutive game. In his office the previous night, Manager Davey Johnson beamed. The weather had provided a break for his beleaguered team, fresh off a 10-1 loss to the New York Mets the night before that crystallized so much of what has gone wrong. Fans streamed out of Nationals Park in the...

ROANOKE, Va. — Saturday's a good day for budget-minded families to head to a national forest in Virginia. The U.S. Forest Service is waiving fees to the George Washington and Jefferson National Forests that day in celebration of National Get Outdoors Day. The waiver applies to daylong use of sites, but not overnight campgrounds, cabins or group picnic shelters. The Forest Service offers fee-free days four times a year. The next freebie is Sept. 28, National Public...

After waiting almost five hours to make their first selection of the 2013 MLB draft, the Nationals chose hard-throwing right-hander Jake Johansen out of Dallas Baptist University in the second round with the No. 68 overall pick. Johansen, a 6-foot-6, 235-pound junior, can throw his fastball 100 mph, but experts say he needs improvement with secondary pitches. At Dallas Baptist this season, he went 7-6 with a 5.40 ERA, striking out 75 and walking 26 over 88 1 / 3 ...

The Washington Nationals had searched all season for a hinge, the victory that would beget more victories, a demarcation between a nightmare start and the moment they wake up. Maybe, they thought, it had arrived Tuesday night. The Nationals had dogpiled in the middle of the diamond for the first time. Manager Davey Johnson shaved his gray scruff, the scraggly goatee he had worn for weeks as a hex breaker. "It's time to go," right fielder Jayson Werth said. Baseball loves its cliches, and...

Getting over a loss is one thing, handling a loss-in-progress is another. Maret senior Jonathan Korobkin had three days of the latter this week after the D.C. High School Baseball Classic championship was suspended Sunday night by rain at Nationals Park to be resumed Wednesday at Banneker Field. So all week, Korobkin stewed that his team was trailing Wilson , 1-0, with no outs in the bottom of the fifth inning and a man on first. "Monday morning when I woke up, I was almost...

(Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post) Capital Bikeshare made D.C. the poster child for bike sharing in the United States, a system that showed tentative and tremulous urban areas (like, say, just to pick one at random here: New York ) how such programs could work. New York launched its Citi Bike system last week, drawing some early praise and prompting this truly amazing reaction from Wall Street Journal editorial board member Dorothy Rabinowitz (we'd say more, but the all-powerful Bike Lobby might...

In one corner of the Washington Nationals ' clubhouse, the locker that formerly belonged to Danny Espinosa had been vacated . Across the room, Henry Rodriguez stuffed belongings into a blue duffel bag. Jayson Werth emerged from the kitchen, walked across the room and hugged a coach. Anthony Rendon and Ian Krol, minor leaguers the day before, trundled in, suitcases rolling behind and bags slung over their shoulders. Sweeping change in the afternoon led to numbing...

ATLANTA — The storm clouds rolled over Turner Field around the fifth inning Sunday afternoon, sidling next to the figurative darkness already looming above the Washington Nationals . The Nationals, with a roster held together with twine and safety pins, headed toward another forbidding milestone. Widely recognized as a World Series favorite two months ago, they handed the ball Sunday to a rookie making his second career start. In the corner outfield spots stood a first...