Amid loss, Teddy stands out

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Let's get the good about the Washington Nationals' Opening Day up front and out of the way. It was a beautiful day at RFK Stadium yesterday, sunny and 76 degrees at game time. A great, enthusiastic crowd of more than 40,000 fans showed up to cheer for a team some would pick to finish last in the Carolina League, let alone the National League East.

They deserved better.

What they got was a 9-2 loss to the Florida Marlins, and the Nats were losing before half the crowd could get to its seats. Ace John Patterson gave up one run in the first, two in the second and six by the time he left after 32/3 innings. All the Nationals could muster offensively off Marlins starter Dontrelle Willis was two runs in seven innings.

Was anyone surprised? They stunk. They stunk yesterday, they probably will stink tonight, and there is a good chance they will stink tomorrow.

But I don't want to write about how bad they were or how bad they are going to be. It's the first game of the season, and I'm already tired of writing it, let alone expecting someone to read it. Nationals president Stan Kasten said to me he wants to know what kind of scam I have going with my editors because I keep writing the same column.

Not today. No, no, I don't care how bad they were. You know it by now.

Instead, the story here will be about mascots, who will be the stars of the show at RFK this season. Yesterday, it was Teddy Roosevelt, who rappelled from the roof in right field when the racing presidents came out from the bullpen for the home stretch of the most-popular event at the ballpark, the race in the middle of the fourth inning.

There was Teddy, winless in the racing competition, attached to a rope dangling from the roof, taking off as George Washington, Abe Lincoln and Thomas Jefferson ran for the finish line. Teddy rappelled over them and eventually landed on the field on his back to the roar of the crowd, which, with the score 6-0, was happy for any diversion -- even a giant head flying in the sky.

This was pretty gutsy and surely worth celebrating on a day with nothing else to celebrate. So I asked team officials if I could talk to the guy in the Teddy costume who was willing to risk life and limb to make Opening Day a special event.

You would have thought I was asking to exhume the real Teddy Roosevelt for an interview.