WASHINGTON — "I'm a baseball man," 14-year Nat's park usher, Benny Alcantara, said.
"When I moved here, the Senators left and it took my life away," he said.
Alcantara recalled the sadness he felt when D.C.s' home team left the city in the 60s.
But then after nearly five decades without a team, the Nationals came to D.C.
"Then [I came] back to life," he said.
While the Nat's have been Alcantara's team since the announcement of their arrival in D.C., his love of baseball started many many years ago in the Dominican Republic.
With 11 sisters and four brothers, Alcantara grew up in Santo Domingo playing baseball everyday.
"My brother and me," he said. "We grew up right there on the field. You get up in the morning, you go to the baseball field. We used to play three or four games a day."
"You talk to me, we can spend all night long, all day long talking about baseball. Players that we met, players that we used to see," he said proudly.
Minutes later during our interview, Nat's manager David Martinez rode up beside us on his scooter. (Yes, we were surprised, too!)
Turns out, Martinez and Alcantara have known each other for a few years. They greeted each other in Spanish with warm smiles, a handshake and laughs. Then Benny gave the Nats manager some batting advice to share with the players.
(We'll keep those tips under wraps just in case some Astros big wigs are reading this before tonight's game.)
Alcantara, made sure to spread his love of baseball to his children: Benny Jr. and Monique.
"He’s the one who really got me into baseball," his daughter Monique said. "On Sundays when we were with him, he'd have us watching [the games]."
He never pressured his kids to choose a team to support before the Nats arrived, but when the announcement was made that D.C.was getting a home team, Alcantara sat his daughter down and asked her to agree to one thing: "I need you to be a fan of theirs," Monique said. "I need you to give me this one thing."
Monique agreed.
"But I’m a die-hard type of fan so I don’t think he realized like by me saying I’ll give you this one thing that I was going to become like crazy devoted," she laughed.
Her dresser drawers are filled with Nats T-shirts, and topped with team paraphernalia. She even has over 40 bobble head dolls on display in her living room.
Monique has been a season ticket holder since 2015 and now when she goes to games it’s a family affair.
"Some of the people in his section [asked]: 'How could you not get tickets in his section?' And I was like well, the seats we sit in are cushioned," she said.
Now the next generation of Alcantara kids are being raised to love the sport, too.
Let’s see if a World Series win becomes a memory that they can tell their kids about one day.