Bob Ford | Farewell, RFK: It's the end for the unlovable D.C. ballpark.

0 Comments | Philadelphia Inquirer, The, September, 2007 | by Bob Ford Inquirer Columnist

WASHINGTON - They build these places and hope to fill them with memories and wonderful days and people, mostly people, if you want to know the truth, and sometimes that even happens.

Sometimes, as has been the tortured baseball history of D.C. Stadium, which hosted its first major-league game in 1962 and will see its final one today, things don't work out quite that way.

The unlovely stadium on East Capitol Street, renamed Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium in 1969, will at least make its baseball exit with a meaningful game, although not for the home team, which is entirely fitting.

The Phillies, as was the case last year and the year before, have come in the season's final days to this place - always a stadium, never a ballpark - with their tenuous postseason...