Morning Read: Should The Nats Cough Up Money To Keep Metro Open After Hours On Game Nights?

Often a cause for celebration for hardcore baseball fans, Monday night’s marathon Nationals game against the Atlanta Braves went into extra innings -- four, to be precise.

(The Nats ultimately won and also beat the Braves Tuesday night, with a little rain being the only reported outside drama.)

But Monday’s game ended after the Metro closed at midnight, leaving many fans stranded and less than happy (other disgruntled fans opted to leave the game early to make the Metro.)

Why can’t the Metro stay open later for National’s games? With the team’s first place standing in the National League east, the home-stadium will likely be at capacity throughout the postseason.

According to the Washington Examiner, the team could have paid to have the Metro stay open later. An outside group can pay Metro $30,000 per hour to cover the costs of keeping the Metro open after hours. Metro would then refund the difference made by ride fees during the extra hours.

But the team would have to schedule for these transportation arrangements in advance. In other words, if the team wanted to arrange to have the Metro stay open until 1 a.m. and the game did not go into extra innings, the team would be out $30,000.

The city covered the costs for a few years starting in 2008—the opening year of Nationals Park.

Mayor Gray would not say if he would do the same this year, according to The Examiner, and noted that the city already invested $700 million to build the stadium.

The financial reasons for shuttering the Metro lead to both complaints and jokes.

After Tuesday night’s game (which ended before the Metro closed) @ballwonk tweeted: "After last night's snafu, tonight @WMATA paid @Nationals bullpen to end game before Metro shut down."

Patrick Madden, a reporter at WAMU 88.5 FM, tweeted, "If the Nats stadium is such a money maker why can't the team pay the 30k for extra innings Metro service."

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