Nats praying for more fans

Baseball commissioner Bud Selig called Nationals Park a “cathedral,” but scheduling the Florida Marlins to kick off the first homestand on a Monday night is no way to treat a holy place.

It could have been worse. Yesterday could have been Opening Day. The crowds likely would have shown up even for this, given the event of opening a new ballpark. But it certainly wouldn’t have had the cache of a Sunday night national television broadcast with the Nationals playing host to the Atlanta Braves.

The Nationals and Manny Acta, though, welcomed a chance to come back to their new ballpark, this time under calmer surroundings.

“It is nice,” Acta said. “The key word is settle in. We weren’t settled when we came over here. There were too many things to worry about and too many things going on other than baseball.

“This is an opportunity for us to come back and settle into our clubhouse and get to our places where we are going to live and get some extra work on the field,” Acta said. “It was just too much going on the first day.”

No problem like that last night. It almost felt like an exhibition game with a sparse crowd in the seats for the first pitch. Late arriving fans missed Washington Capitals defenseman Mike Green (who threw out ceremonial first pitches with teammate Cristobal Huet) trying to perform the official “Play Ball” call from the home dugout. He couldn’t find a working microphone to do so.

Maybe the mouse that ran through the Nationals clubhouse before the game chewed up the audio cords.

Hanley Ramirez led off with a double over the head of right fielder Austin Kearns, and center fielder Lastings Milledge dropped a fly ball hit by Dan Uggla, allowing Ramirez to score.

It was a good thing no one was watching.

Those who did finally settle into their seats by the bottom of the inning saw Cristian Guzman triple and Milledge make up for his error with a double down the left-field line. Things were off to a wild start, not exactly as crisp as Opening Night.

The crowd might have been larger had the Nationals sustained their quick start: winning their first three games, including the dramatic Opening Night 3-2 win over the Braves with Ryan Zimmerman’s ninth-inning game-winning home run. A 6-1 start or even 5-2 might have been enough to battle the elements of a bad day, playing a bad team in bad weather.

But there is only so much sports buzz to go around in this town. After dropping four straight, including a sweep by the Cardinals in St. Louis, the Nationals came back home to find the town buzzing about the Caps making the playoffs and sharing what buzz was left with the Wizards approaching the NBA playoffs.

The Nationals and Capitals are connected by the Lerner ownership — Mark Lerner is a minority investor in Ted Leonsis’ group and was in the locker room wearing his Capitals jersey after Saturday night’s playoff-clinching 3-1 win — and Acta embraced the hockey team’s success.

“I am excited for the Caps,” he said. “I met Coach [Bruce] Boudreau when I came up here during the offseason. I was very happy for them to get in. Go Caps, baby.”

The Caps-sized crowd last night, like the players, also got a chance to “settle in” to the new ballpark and get a better lay of the land. A number of fans came early to take advantage of the new policy that allows ticket holders to watch Nationals batting practice from the center-field plaza and seats.

Tom Martindale, 46, of Annandale was wearing a Zimmerman shirt and brought his glove and his 12-year-old daughter, Kaitlin, hoping to snare a batting practice ball in the left-center field seats.

“We were at the exhibition game and got there with about 30 minutes left of batting practice,” he said. “We were in the right-field bleachers, but we were too high. This is our second game, and we learned our lesson on where to stand.

“As soon as I walk through that gate, all the pressure goes, and it is time to be a kid again,” said Martindale, who did not have to deal with standing-room only competition for batting-practice balls.

It was in many ways a typical second home game at the ballpark, except it came more than a week after the first home game, when Selig spoke in such reverential terms about the new place. Services may not have been well attended at the second game at the cathedral known as Nationals Park, but then parishioners are spread thin these days in Washington.