Why Baseball Is Finally Thriving in D.C.

For the first time since 1933, a World Series game will be played in Washington on Friday night. And while the Nationals earned that date by defeating the St. Louis Cardinals in the National League Championship Series last week, team owner Mark Lerner traces the rebirth of baseball in the nation's capital to another date: March 27, 1976.

That's when the city's first Metro rail line opened. It was only five years since D.C. had been dumped by its second Major League Baseball franchise in about a decade. It would take nearly three more decades for MLB to return.

But to Lerner, the Metro marked the start of an evolution that explains much of why professional baseball has finally succeeded in a city where, for decades, it was both a financial and competitive sinkhole.