Baseball is leaving RFK Stadium on Sept. 23 for a new shiny stadium next season just a couple miles away. Another of Washington's monuments will be overlooked once more.

RFK was D.C. Stadium in 1961 when opening for the Senators and Redskins teams. It became RFK in 1969 to honor slain presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, brother of slain president John F. Kennedy. There's still a small bust of him in front of the stadium of RFK, but few people ever notice it. I'm afraid to ask young people if they even know what RFK stands for.

Anyway, I attended a couple games in the last week to see the old barn once (or twice) more. My dad took me to games there in the 1960s and '70s. As a sports writer I covered the Redskins glory in the '90s and even wrote a book on the stadium "Hail to RFK" when the football team left after the 1996 season. We thought that was it until the D.C. United soccer team soon came and then baseball returned in 2005 while the new venue is being built to open in April 2008.

The place is outdated, the last of its kind among the those concrete stadiums built in the '60s.It was always really hot because the curved roof kept in the humidity to sweltering levele.s But RFK has history and it's hard to decommission anything in Washington where history and politics are our commerce.

The new place will be much more expensive to attend games. Lots less parking. Rich people will love the suites, the average Joe GS-er will never see them. That's how it is in U.S. sports nowadays -- everything is about money. Funny --  sports was intended as an opium of the masses, but now everyday folks can't attend the major events because corporations buy all the seats. Now they can't get the good seats for the regular games because the lobbyists and rich people will get them. We're talking $125 per ticket. Two season tickets cost more than $40,000 annually.

If you come to Washington and need a break from the statues of everything from Joan of Arc (really) to plenty of generals on horseback, take the metro out to the RFK stop and spend some quiet time in front of RFK Stadium by the river. The soccer team still plays there occasionally. I think the football team will return in a decade or so to the same site with a new stadium.

But nothing beats an old ballpark for an old fan.