Associated Press

Fireworks are set off during the singing of the national anthem during Washington's home opener at the new Nationals Park on Sunday night.

WASHINGTON -- Of all the birthday presents I received as a youngster, the one that sticks in my mind was the ticket -- or tickets -- I received each year for the Washington Senators' opener.

The tradition died away when I went to college, so it had been 38 years between openers when I wrangled a press credential for the Washington Nationals' first game at their new stadium, Nationals Park.

Although it was an annual rite of passage, I didn't remember actually attending an opening game on my birthday, which made Monday night something of a first.

I have a daughter who was born on the day of the California-Stanford "band" game and a son who was born on the day of the 1989 NCAA men's basketball final between Michigan and Seton Hall. Another son shares a birthday with Barry Bonds.

There's never been anything special about March 30, except now it's going to stand out in Washington baseball history.

A case could be made that a more important date was April 15, 2005, when baseball made its return to Washington after more than a 22-year absence. But, until the Nationals moved out of aging RFK Stadium, it always seemed like they were guests.

Now that they've got their own park, they no longer feel like the former Montreal Expos.

Not that I hadn't attended a few games at RFK and noticed the gleam in my younger son's wide eyes, but the new park is something else.

For $611 million, it should be.

Much has been made of the financial arrangements and the way that Washington's city council sold out, but it's a beautiful stadium, with all of the amenities that grungy RFK lacked.

"The thing that was so impressive, even in the '50s and '60s, is that the stadiums had these indigenous characteristics," commissioner Bud Selig said in an impromptu news conference Monday in the press box. "We were talking tonight about [Cincinnati's] Crosley Field and the incline in center field.

"I used to joke, starting with the ballparks built in the '60s, that you could wake up in the morning and you could be in Philadelphia, Cincinnati, St. Louis. It didn't matter. They all looked alike. That's not true anymore. This park is unique."

On that point, I'd beg to differ with him.

In recent years, I've been to baseball stadiums in Philadelphia and Atlanta and, really, Nationals Park is very similar. But, that's not a bad thing. Baseball architects are beginning to get the picture.

I liken it to Salem Memorial Stadium, which is entering -- can you believe it? -- its 14th season. The best thing about Memorial Stadium is that it probably has room for 10,000 seats, but it only seats 6,000.

Walkways are wide, aisles are wide, the space between the seats is wide. Capacity at Nationals Park is 41,888, yet it seems much bigger.

Instead of accommodating the crowd of 60,000 that you might have once a year, make the experience more pleasurable for the 40,000 who might come back a half-dozen times each season.

The width of the average concourse is 40 feet, compared to 19 feet at RFK. Square footage for restaurants is 64,200, as opposed to 8,900 at the old park. The scoreboard is more than three times larger than what the Nationals had before and the high-definition replays are like nothing you've ever seen.

"The scoreboard is absolutely stunning," political pundit James Carville observed on Tony Kornheiser's XM radio show Tuesday.

It's not perfect. The U.S. Capitol is visible beyond the left-field wall, but there is a large building that obscures that view for maybe 75 percent of the spectators. And, concession prices are astronomical.

I like beer as much as the next guy, but who wants to pay $7.50 for a Miller Lite?

The ticket prices are comparable to what the Nationals were charging at RFK but parking is limited. In fact, spectators are urged either to take the subway or to park at RFK and take a 10-minute shuttle ride.

While I'm no authority on the Washington Metro, the wmata.com Web site recommends the Metro-operated Vienna/Fairfax-GMU parking garage for east-bound travelers willing to take the subway into the city. The new Navy Yard Metrorail station is located one block from Nationals Park.

In my day, regular-season baseball wasn't played in March, much less a March night. But there was something electric about the Nationals opener even before Washington's Ryan Zimmerman hit a game-winning homer with two out in the ninth.

It isn't the same when you're watching from the press box, even an open-air press box. The next time I go to an opener, it will be with family. That's a tradition worth resuming.