They handed me a T-shirt when I walked into Nationals Park on Tuesday. It joins my rather large and ever-expanding collection of shirts, caps and bobblehead dolls that the Nats have thrown at me over the years in an attempt to bribe me into watching bad baseball. And into the park I went for the first time this year.

The T-shirt had “NatsTown” written across the front of it. “NatsTown” is a fiction, like the fiction (so far) that this ownership could build a sustaining, competitive baseball franchise. There is no NatsTown; the ball park continues to be surrounded by holes in the ground like this one right across South Capitol Street from the park:

…and industrial wastelands like this concrete plant that occupies the Anacostia waterfront on the park’s south side:

….and shells of various half-built and abandoned buildings, and, of course, the dreaded beer tent. There are no bars or restaurants anywhere nearby, so the beer tent on the vacant land north of the park has to do as a pre-game rendzevous point. But those of us who have been to ballgames in Chicago, Boston, St. Louis or Baltimore know what a real baseball park neighborhood feels like, and the beer tent does not a NatsTown make.

The Nats, however, do appear to be making progress toward being a real baseball team. They got crushed again last night, losing 10-4, but they’re at .500 and haven’t eliminated themselves by mid-April for the first time in years. The difference on the field is palpable — the pitching is what it is (which is still horrible), and the offense has actually gotten off the dime a little slowly, but the defense is clearly much better and the team seems to be acting/playing like a real professional baseball squad, unlike last year’s collection of mail-it-in efforters.

The team has a brutal early season schedule — on Tuesday they played the Colorado Rockies, yet another World Series contender — but that early difficulty is counterbalanced by a softer schedule for the last two-thirds of the season. And with that schedule comes the likely call-ups of several important pitchers, including one Stephen Strasburg (line for the season as of today: 12-1/3IP, 7H, 1ER, 3BB, 17K. ERA: 0.73).

There have already been at least three games (probably more) where the Nats have given up 10 runs, though. That sort of thing is soul-crushing. For the Nats to break away from the fate of NatsTown, the pitching has to start coming through. And if that happens, perhaps the development of the area will follow, after all.