Stateside

The future that never happened

I liked this paragraph from a Washington Post piece by David Von Drehle about the return of Major League baseball to Washington, DC, after 34 years.

A bit of background: The new Washington team (the Nationals) will play for a few seasons at RFK stadium, which was the home of the old Washington team (the Senators) and which opened in 1961.

rfkstadium1.jpg

Meanwhile a newer, presumably more “traditional” stadium is supposed to be built.

Like much that survives from the early 1960s, the stadium has a plonked-down-by-space-aliens feel, a meet-George-Jetson vibe. With its saucer shape and undulating roof, RFK is a relic of a future that is now long past, indeed, a future that never actually happened. The future did not turn out to be electro-dyno-lux. It turned out to be corporate suites for the swells and shorter legroom for the rest of us, all sweetened by a dollop of nostalgic good taste. Washington’s next stadium is sure to have more of a Martha Stewart/Ken Burns sensibility.