Nestled along the Anacostia waterfront, the House that Bud Built has proven once and for all that while you can take baseball out of the Beltway, you can’t take the Beltway out of baseball.

In hindsight, no one should have been surprised that the glory days of the stadium negotiations – when a "baseball cap" was legislative strategy and not game day attire – were only the beginning of the mesmerizing interplay between the national pastime and the nation’s politicians.

On the heels of the D.C. Council’s fabulous flip-flop vote, Chairman Linda W. Cropp (D) secretly convinced her colleagues that the District government should buy the naming rights ("Taxation Without Representation Field") for the new stadium. Peggy Cooper Cafritz and the school board insisted on leading the search for the Superintendent of Grounds while philanthropist Betty Casey announced that she would fund living quarters at the stadium that could serve as the mayor’s official residence. (Local political analysts thought it was a bit much when Mayor Anthony A. Williams (D) finally unveiled architectural drawings of the stadium that prominently featured a black door sporting a gold "Number 10" leading to the residence.)

Everyone had been worried about how Williams and Marion Barry (D-Ward 8) would get along after Barry led the council rebellion against the stadium. But in true "Things Shift" sprit, the mayor past and the mayor present reached an accommodation by merging the baseball stadium budget and Barry’s beloved youth summer jobs program. It’s really quite something to see the teenaged stadium workers wearing their game day uniforms of bow ties and denim shorts cut too short.

Then, the feds got into the game. Senator Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.) slipped a provision into the omnibus transportation bill extending the Senate subway along South Capitol Street to the stadium. The Maryland and Virginia congressional delegations introduced bills restricting parking in the underground garage to cars with out-of-state license plates. (Linda Cropp protested loudly, insisting she needed two parking spaces: one for her Cadillac and one for her Buick.) And Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Penn.) led an inspired but ultimately futile filibuster in an attempt to prohibit the assisted suicide squeeze play.

President George W. Bush signed a secret executive order permitting the National Security Agency to monitor the amount of "chatter" in the infield in between innings. The Agriculture Department unveiled a campaign to promote the Nationals’ farm system while the Food and Drug Administration announced plans to regulate pine tar levels in baseball. Behind the scenes, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff worked doggedly to persuade Metro not to rename the Navy Yard and Stadium-Armory stations in order "to confuse the terrorists" about the new stadium’s location. Vice President Dick Cheney later explained to Brit Hume, "If a member of al Qaeda shows up at the Armory and doesn’t have a ticket to the circus, we’ll get ‘em."

With the uncertainty over the team’s status finally resolved, the newly anointed owners threw themselves into fashioning the ne plus ultra of stadium experiences, cost overruns be damned. Overnight, the impasse over retro red brick versus gleaming limestone and steel became moot as the architects received a new design brief: create a modern day monument that celebrated the perfect match of inside baseball and insider politics. Oh, my, how they delivered.

The stadium’s sightlines are spectacular, although those with nosebleed seats have been known to bring signs reading "I Could See Better Sitting in Loudon County!" But if you don’t like your seats or the gentlemen sitting across the aisle, don’t worry. The team has promised to reapportion the seats every ten years based on the results of the U.S. Census. (Statistical sampling not permitted, of course.)

With a nod to Fenway Park’s famed Green Monster, there is the Out-of-Left-Field Wall of Terror, an oversized video wall featuring an ever-changing cornucopia of color that flickers from yellow to orange and back at random. In center, there’s the K Street Project, where fans can track the number of strikeouts ("K’s") thrown by Nationals pitchers. In between the right field bleachers stands the out-of-town scoreboard, which is fully adjustable in case any major league teams spontaneously "contract." And instead of permanent fireworks launchers along the stadium rim, the Army Corps of Engineers buried World War I munitions in the outfield just as it did decades ago in Northwest D.C.’s Spring Valley.

Inside the stadium concourse, overhead green traffic signs helpfully pointing the way to Interstate 495 are interspersed among directions to the nearest restroom. As you make your way along the stadium perimeter, you’ll pass the vaunted Hall of Delegates where the proud flags of Puerto Rico, Guam, the Virgin Islands and American Samoa join the District’s flapping in the wind. And no visit is complete without a pilgrimage to the AFLAC Gallery of Lame Ducks, honoring former legislators like Harold Brazil (D-At Large), Kevin P. Chavous (D-Ward 7) and Sandy Allen (D-Ward 8) for their courage in voting against their constituents after their constituents voted them out of office.

Gourmands flock to Bugel’s BBQ Pit on South South Eutaw Street, where finely smoked meats are piled high on trademarked DirtBaguettes. (The entry in the Zagat guide notes: "Prepare to queue up in ‘offensive’ lines for the savory Home Rule Plate: Blue Ribbon Panel on Baseball Economics pale ale with a Pulled Pork Barrel sandwich and Kenesaw Mountain Landis coleslaw.") Other prized selections include the Red Tape tapioca pudding and D.C. Water and Sewer Authority bottled water – available in both regular and leaded flavors. And when you buy a hot dog from a vendor, a portion of your change is automatically redistributed to Alaska and Montana. (The Stevens-Murkowski-Young skybridge from the parking garages to Juneau was particularly expensive.) Another slice of the purchase price funds the on-site USDA inspectors, who helpfully make sure that none of the hot dogs have been independently tested for mad cow disease.

As part of the team’s community outreach, ballrooms and meeting space were added to the stadium complex. The American Society of Association Executives kicked off the event season with a mammoth convention and job fair – Treasury Secretary John W. Snow seemed particularly interested about possible openings as he wandered the booths – followed shortly by the famed white tie and tails Gridiron Club dinner. The Singing Senators reunited for a special Beltway-and-baseball themed Simon & Garfunkel medley ("Where have you gone, Joe DiGenova? / A nation turns its lonely eyes to you") which former Attorney General John Ashcroft later quipped was an "extraordinary rendition." Supreme Court Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. was persuaded to give a dramatic reading of the classic baseball poem "Planned Parenthood v. Casey at the Bat." But the night belonged to White House batterymates Bush and Cheney, who wowed the crowd with their Abbott and Costello inspired routine "Who’s on (Sen.) Frist?"

When the stadium opened to the public, game days were no less entertaining. In a nod to the Expos’ three decades in Quebec, the team lured Celine Dion away from Las Vegas to perform the Canadian national anthem and the love theme from "Titanic" 200 nights a year. Convincing the Newseum to relocate to the stadium site was a real coup ("We were years away from reopening on Pennsylvania Avenue, so why not?" admitted Newseum founder Al Neuharth) and the state-of-the-art broadcast center keeps fans occupied whenever air quality warnings force play to be suspended. Celebrities like Al Franken even do live radio broadcasts from the stadium every day, although no one has had the heart to tell him that Air America has been off the air for years.

Nationals games quickly developed touches unique to D.C. and its traditions. Fans arrive at the ballpark early to watch batting practice and to speculate about which fake signatures would be submitted in the manager’s lineup cards. (Designated hitter Tony Blair and left fielder Kofi Annan slipped past the umpires on a recent afternoon.) Washington is certainly the only city in the major leagues where the seventh-inning stretch begins with the declaration "All rise. Oyez, oyez, oyez!" booming over the loudspeakers and ends with actual stretching led by the President’s Council on Physical Fitness and Sports. And visiting players always look confused on Non-Profit Night when the last stanza of the national anthem is played and the crowd belts out, "N-G-O say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave."

Perhaps it was inevitable that the off-the-field mania that gripped the city would eventually spill over into the games themselves. The umpires tried to eject Antonin Scalia from a game for orally arguing balls and strikes from the stands, and a bench-clearing brawl ensued. (The Federalist Society promptly filed briefs calling for a strict constructionist interpretation of the strike zone.) Whenever a pitcher looks shaky or defensive adjustments need to be made, House and Senate conferees join the infielders and coaches on the mound to discuss the appropriate course of action. And D.C. Police Chief Charles H. Ramsey has taken to personally manning stadium radar guns to crack down on opposing players who steal bases too quickly.

Amid all the hoopla, Baltimore Orioles owner Peter Angelos continued to press his quest for compensation from his fellow owners. More terrifying than Ty Cobb sliding into base spikes-first or a chin-high Roger Clemens fastball or standing within spitting distance of Roberto Alomar, the litigious Angelos turned Major League Baseball into his personal piñata. Commissioner Bud Selig’s version of Solomon’s Compromise – in this case a 90 percent stake in the creatio ex nihilo Mid-Atlantic Sports Network and a $365 million guaranteed franchise resale value – proved to be only the initial ante.

At a summit meeting at Wye River Plantation mediated by former president Bill Clinton, Angelos wrung concession after concession from his panicked compatriots, notably a presidential pardon for signing outfielder Albert Belle to a ridiculous five-year $65 million contract in 1999, the exclusive rights to operate slot machines in D.C., and National Park Service permission to cut down 130 trees on Daniel Synder’s Potomac estate.

Both sides say publicly that they hope to have a final "final agreement" in place by season’s end. But don’t count on it.

As with everything else in the strange saga of the Washington Nationals and their stadium, it’s just another ballpark estimate.

You’ve seen everything that’s playing at the movie theaters. There’s nothing good on TV. The clubs are too crowded, the bars too boring.

So you go bowling Friday night.

Over on lane four of the Western Lanes Bowling Center, Terence Harding and T.C. Thomas are preparing for the latest installment of a competition that’s been going on since 1986. The stakes are bragging rights and an occasional "beer frame." They come to the bowling alley about twice a month.

"All of the bowling alleys are full on Friday nights," Harding says. "This is probably the only one you can get into."

It’s 10 p.m., and about 40 people are still bowling on nine of the 24 lanes.

As the night advances, those with the youngest kids have departed. The only sounds in the alley are the satisfying thunk of ricocheting pins, the whirring of the automatic pin resetters and the occasional outburst at a bowling ball gone awry. There’s no wailing about the difficulty of fitting five fingers into three holes tonight.

Instead the alley is packed with twentysomethings, college students, teenagers, even a few families with older children. Most have stopped by after dinner, attracted by the alley’s location on Hillsborough Street, the cheap games and even cheaper beer, and the ready availability of lanes. There are no leagues at this time of night.

"We’ll usually go to a movie or a bar," Graham Donaldson, 27, says. "This is something different."

Bowling is a different way to spend a Friday night. But there’s a lot more going on here than just bowling.

Along one wall, a television shows children’s videotapes. Scattered throughout the alley are three pool tables, two pinball machines and seven video games. For the Nintendo generation who might find real bowling too, well, real, there’s even a video bowling game. It’s the one with the words "Bowling is Fun" in red and yellow letters. At the far end is the Cloud and Fire Express, also known as the C.A.F.E., a place for kids to hang out with no alcohol and no smoking allowed.

In the center of it all is Bill Goodwin, the self-described "Counter Man," who keeps an eye on the bustle. He collects fees, hands out score sheets (Western is one of the rare places where computerized scoring hasn’t taken over) and painstakingly explains the rules of bowling to a few foreign students. The change machine is broken and he’s kept busy supplying quarters for the game machines.

Goodwin works the late shift on Friday nights, from about 5 until midnight. He knows most of the regulars who come in the fall, but tonight he doesn’t see any familiar faces.

No, tonight the alley is full of people like 18-year-old Rama Moori and his friends.

"This is my first time bowling," Moori said. "And I’m leading!"

Bowl, baby, bowl.

Actually, there are few other sports where it’s possible to do so well your first time out.

There are 10 pins. One ball. Ten frames. Three hundred possible points.

Bowling is an ordinary person’s game. You don’t have to be an athlete to be good at it, although a little hand-eye coordination goes a long way.

It’s a sport unlikely to bring fame and even less likely to bring fortune. Quick, try to name a famous bowler. Hard, isn’t it?

The best-known bowlers are probably Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble who, when they weren’t hiding from Wilma and Betty at the Water Buffalo Lodge, spent their free time bowling.

For those of us who can’t manage a 90 mph fastball, dunk a basketball or throw a football in a perfect spiral, there’s something deeply satisfying about hurling a heavy object some 60 feet and watching the pins just scatter.

And there’s so much style involved.

Beginning bowlers tend to bowl in straight lines, with a sling-shot motion. But the more experienced bowlers, like Harding and Thomas, can make the ball hook and weave as they desire. It’s skill, not luck. And it shows.

Harding is brash, a showman. He’ll bowl, turn around with his arms outstretched, and smile impishly. Behind him, the ball crashes into the pins. Strike.

Thomas bowls strikes, too. But he is a graceful bowler, with a long looping motion. He bowls like he talks, with a quiet elegance. He’s Barney to Harding’s Fred.

But the best part of bowling isn’t even the bowling.

It’s the shoes.

There are precious few places where it’s acceptable, even encouraged, to wear shoes that don’t match. Short of moonlighting as a clown, bowling is probably the only chance you get to slip on such delightfully garish footwear. The red left shoe doesn’t come close to matching the tan right one and never will.

Sadly, the design of the shoes has less to do with freedom from fashion than it does with keeping the shoes from walking. So to speak.

"You’d be surprised, for college kids it’s a big hoot to walk out of here with rental shoes," Goodwin says.

The real sign of a serious bowler isn’t someone who brings his own ball. You can tell someone is in for the long run when he brings his own shoes.

Thomas has his own bowling shoes, but they haven’t done a lot to help his game, Harding teases.

Thomas does not protest. Instead he asks Harding, "How bad are you going to beat me tonight?"

Harding doesn’t answer. He just bowls.

Both are excellent bowlers and the strikes pile up. Harding finishes with 200, Thomas with 175. Harding has carried the night, as usual.

He wins at bowling and basketball and just about everything else. With one exception.

"Usually I win at horseshoes," Thomas says. "But he’s blessed with good luck."

It’s the shoes. It’s gotta be the shoes.

From the moment the baseball leaves the pitcher’s hand, its red stitches spinning frantically, until gravity slams it down with a thump into the glove of the catcher kneeling before him, Shaw watches it.

In a split second, he’ll decide whether the ball came in too high, too low, too far to the inside or too far to the outside to be a strike.

At the same time, Shaw eyes the runner on third, watching to see if he’ll take one step too many toward home plate. If the runner goes, Shaw will make that call, too. Safe or out.

For Shaw, calling bases and balls is all in a night’s work. He’s an umpire for the Raleigh Parks and Recreation Department’s summer youth leagues.

But unlike most of his colleagues, Shaw’s barely older than the kids playing. He’s a 21-year-old college student. And umpiring is his summer job.

This night he’s working a tournament game between all-star teams from Raleigh and Cary. He’s dressed in his uniform of a light blue shirt, gray slacks and black shoes, just like the umpires in the major leagues. Because he’s behind the plate, he wears a chest protector under his shirt, a face mask and a black baseball cap worn backward.

At first, the game looked like it would be competitive. But Raleigh has been on a tear since the second inning and is threatening to run away with the game. If at any point the Raleigh team can score 10 more runs than Cary, the game ends.

Raleigh’s ahead 12-3. One run to go. The bases are loaded.

Shaw scrubs at the plate with his foot, trying to clear away the dirt that has accumulated. Sweat streams steadily down his face and dust swirls around his feet. He points to the mound, his signal for the pitcher to throw. Then he crouches behind the catcher, kneeling on his left knee and waiting for the pitch.

It’s a familiar feeling, this waiting. He’s spent three summers as an umpire waiting for pitches. And a lifetime before that.

Shaw’s father played catcher for the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. So Shaw played catcher too, first in the Parks and Rec youth leagues and later for the Broughton High School squad.

He would have played at Appalachian State University, where he will be a senior this fall, but he cut a 2-inch

gash in his catching hand on his grandmother’s tobacco farm the summer before his freshman year. The wound healed, but when he tried to play ball, it ripped back open.

Because he couldn’t bear to be away from the game, he turned to umpiring.

He took a class in sports officiating and worked some intramural games at Appalachian State. When he came home, he sought summer employment as an umpire. He was young, but Parks and Rec agreed to give him a shot. Three summers later, Shaw still spends many of his evenings on Raleigh playing fields.

"It started as a summer job, and now I just do it because I love it," he said.

He prefers to work games like this one, a Pony League game, because the level of play is so high. In games with older kids, the 14- to 18-year-olds, he can feel the heat of a pitcher’s fastball and have "at least a little fear for my life" if the catcher doesn’t catch the pitch. Younger kids, he says, "can barely get the ball over the plate."

While the older players have trouble getting the ball over the plate, too - pitchers from both Raleigh and Cary have sent pitches soaring above his head several times - they also throw some of their pitches very fast and very much on target. Shaw has called quite a few batters out on strikes tonight.

But being an umpire is more than just calling balls and strikes.

When a new catcher enters the game, Shaw checks to see that he’s wearing all the necessary safety equipment.

"Do you have your cup?" he asks, a little too loudly.

The catcher nods, and the crowd laughs. Shaw turns and deadpans, "Gotta make sure."

In between innings, Shaw talks with the players and sometimes offers advice. Even the older players have lots to learn, and when he can, Shaw tries to help them improve their games. "Especially the catchers," Shaw says.

He’ll show a catcher how to properly send his signals and help him with his throws. Shaw thinks he might want to try coaching one of these days.

These are the things he loves about umpiring. It’s having to deal with the people off the field that he hates.

Kids get angry at you, coaches get angry at you, and, worst of all, parents get angry at you.

"It’s the parents that give us the most trouble," Shaw said. "They rant and rave when their kids get a bad call."

The parents of the Cary team certainly have given him trouble. As the Cary team’s chances on the field dwindle, its fans have increased their heckling of Shaw.

"He just ain’t going to call a strike," screams one parent.

"We should show him the rulebook, show him where the strike zone is," a coach mutters, watching his team collapse.

Sometimes the spectators move beyond muttering and into violence. Trouble can erupt quickly.

At a game Shaw was working a few weeks back, one team’s shortstop was intentionally walked. As the shortstop made his way around the bases, he said something to the other team’s coach. The coach responded in kind. And before Shaw knew what was happening, the shortstop’s father had grabbed a baseball bat, run onto the field and attacked the coach.

"You gotta relax. You gotta relax," Shaw kept telling the father as he broke up the fight. "You don’t need to do this."

While fights don’t happen often, they can be quite serious. During a game in Chapel Hill last year, a coach attacked an umpire, beating him up so badly that the umpire’s chiropractor compared his injuries to those from a 75 mph head-on car crash.

Parents who are out of control on the field set bad examples for the kids who are playing, Shaw says. He makes it his job to keep that from happening.

"As an umpire, you’ve got to take control," he says simply.

Shaw does not take challenges to his authority lightly.

"People need to realize that if you make the umpire mad, no matter how impartial he is supposed to be, you can’t win," Shaw said.

In his three summers of umpiring, Shaw says he’s made only one mistake that haunts him. He called a runner out on a force play when the fielder should have had to tag him. Shaw did run that play over, because he was clearly in error. But on judgment situations, he always sticks by his call.

"You cannot ever let them question your call," Shaw said. "If you do, they’ll eat you up."

He knows the rulebook inside and out from all his years as a player, so he’s pretty confident making rules-based calls. He does have one little problem, though.

"The only thing that really plagues me is that sometimes I forget the count," Shaw admits.

On the nights when he’s not calling a game, Shaw works as a shucker at the 42nd Street Oyster Bar. One day a man who had umpired games that Shaw had played in recognized him there.

"He told me that I should go to umpiring school," Shaw said.

He appreciates the advice but is unlikely to follow it. Although Shaw went through a stage where he thought he wanted to be a professional umpire, he’s wary of all the traveling they have to do. He may change his mind again, but for now, he’s just having a good time.

"When it stops being fun, I’ll quit. Just like [Michael] Jordan," Shaw said. "If it ever gets to the point where I’m saying, ‘I wish it will rain,’ I’ll stop."

So for now, umpiring is only a part-time job. And his full attention is focused on the three Raleigh baserunners and the Cary pitcher, who has already thrown three balls. Shaw points to the pitcher and then waits.

The pitcher winds up and throws.

The batter doesn’t swing and all eyes turn to Shaw, who makes the call.

It’s a ball. The pitcher has walked in the winning run.

The game is over.

Just another night on the job.