Rachel Levitin: Reminiscing the Nats' early days at RFK Stadium

This isn't going to be popular opinion, but I find myself reminiscing of Nationals baseball in the early days at RFK Stadium as of late.

RFK was by no means the "right" place to put a brand new baseball team within a city that, up to 2005, hadn't had baseball for so long that they got used to that fact and seemed relatively underwhelmed when it returned to the District of Columbia. What RFK had going for it was that it was grungy, run-down and gritty enough to adopt the Nats and give them a home.

Those were the days when expectations were low and any win was met with great joy. Those days are long gone.

The number of games still left to play in 2015 is dwindling and the high expectations imposed upon the current iterations of the Nats are being broken down by the obvious collapse of what was once thought to be a true favorite for first place in the National League East at the start of the season.

What happened? In short - the Mets are playing better than the Nats are. We can comb details all we want, point fingers every which way and review stats until our eyes bleed, but what it comes down to is that the Nats are going to have to pinpoint what hasn't been working this season (example: the bullpen, among other things) and change it for 2016.

That's why I miss the RFK days. There were no true expectations (yet), just a new team finding its new footing and tons of stadium seating that allowed you to catch the game from a whole bunch of different angles (which we did because we could) while wandering from section to section.

The Nats were pretty bad back then, albeit they had a decent 2005 season playing .500 ball, but at least we knew what we were getting ourselves into while watching them. We knew it would take time to create a winning baseball culture in D.C. Now - at the tail end of what started out as a moderately promising season despite injuries to several proposed starters - folks expect this team to perform and to win, and rightfully so after snagging two division titles in three years. When that doesn't happen, the people who find themselves emotionally invested in the game tend to be unhappy the most. And that's what we're seeing here.

Emotions are riled up and the Nats have two choices: Throw in the towel or keep fighting 'til they can't fight anymore. It may not yield a division championship, but maybe that's the wake-up call the club needs in an effort to re-calibrate for the next year.

Rachel Levitin blogs about the Nationals for District Sports Page. Follow her on Twitter: @RHLevitin. She will be sharing her observations about baseball in the nation's capital as part of MASNsports.com's season-long initiative of welcoming guest bloggers to our little corner of cyberspace. All opinions expressed are those of the guest bloggers, who are not employed by MASNsports.com but are just as passionate about their baseball as our roster of writers.