The Wash­ing­ton Nation­als are a per­fect fit for the nation’s cap­i­tal, com­bin­ing invin­ci­ble self-esteem with chron­ic underachievement.

The Red­skins are neu­rot­ic, the Wiz­ards hun­gry, the Cap­i­tals con­vinced that cat­a­stro­phe awaits. The Nation­als fan­cy them­selves as repeat­ing cham­pi­ons, though they’ve nev­er played in a League Cham­pi­onship Series, much less a World Series.

That thor­ough­ly unjus­ti­fied air of supe­ri­or­i­ty emanates from the top, as I was again remind­ed last week­end when my wife and I were turned away from Nat­stown, the nick­name man­age­ment has giv­en its cook­ie-cut­ter ballpark. 

It had all seemed sim­ple enough.  Our friend, a sea­son tick­et hold­er, had emailed us his tick­ets to last Saturday’s game.  The machines at the turn­stile reject­ed them.  We were direct­ed to a small office where dozens of sim­i­lar­ly unfor­tu­nate souls wait­ed their chance to speak with a team employ­ee who would sure­ly straight­en things out.

We’d arrived at the park 40 min­utes before game­time.  We weren’t able to speak with a Nats employ­ee until after the game had begun.  He issued us this chal­lenge: call your friend; if he answers, I will speak with him; if you get his voice­mail, you must leave.  I called my friend. I got his voice­mail.  My wife and I left Nat­stown for the last time.

Thus does the Nats’ “Ulti­mate Ball­park Access” sys­tem ulti­mate­ly deny ball­park access to tick­et­ed patrons.

The fran­chise is hard­ly in a posi­tion to turn spec­ta­tors away. The team has nev­er been a tough tick­et.  I bought the Nation­als full sea­son tick­et plan in 2005, the year the Mon­tre­al fran­chise relo­cat­ed to the nation’s cap­i­tal.  I was part of a group that held sea­son tick­ets from 2007–2012.

Nat­stown was a ghost town dur­ing most of that peri­od.  Even when their shiny new ball­park opened in 2008, they aver­aged few­er than 30,000 fans per game, putting them in 19^th place in major league atten­dance.  Dur­ing the fol­low­ing three sea­sons, fan turnout was worse, leav­ing the fran­chise square­ly in the bot­tom third of the league. Even with their recent suc­cess, they’ve nev­er placed bet­ter than eleventh in atten­dance (2013).  This despite being the sev­enth most pop­u­lous mar­ket in the U.S. and the sec­ond wealth­i­est.

Such under­achieve­ment has not inspired humil­i­ty from the team’s man­age­ment.  Their atti­tude – or, as they would have it, Nat­i­tude – is that their fran­chise is a hot com­mod­i­ty. Aver­age tick­et prices are the game’s fifth high­est, and only the Yan­kees, Dodgers and Red Sox charge more for pre­mi­um tick­ets, which is why so many of Natstown’s best seats are often vacant.

Those prices are thor­ough­ly dis­joint­ed from mar­ket val­ue.  Nats tick­ets fetch the low­est sec­ondary price in the majors, a telling mea­sure of how lit­tle their prod­uct is valued.

But if you were to ask Nats man­age­ment and staff – like the one who expelled my wife and I from the park last week­end – they would tell you what a great job they’re doing, how well they treat their fans, and how oh-so-pop­u­lar their team is.

Bryce Harp­er per­son­i­fies that irra­tional sense of self-worth on the field.  Harp­er is a very good base­ball play­er.  But not near­ly as good as he imag­ines him­self to be.  He is fast, but runs him­self into outs; has a strong arm, but reg­u­lar­ly miss­es cut­off men; plays hard but too often reck­less­ly, caus­ing him to miss more games with each pass­ing sea­son, though he is just 22.  He has nev­er hit more than 22 homers, nev­er dri­ven in more than 59 runs and nev­er stolen more than 18 bases.  He com­piled each of those career highs in 2012 as a 19-year-old rook­ie.  He placed 30th in Wins Above Replace­ment (a sta­tis­tic that mea­sures over­all offen­sive and defen­sive per­for­mance) in that year. He has not made the top 50 since.

Which may help explain why Harper’s fel­low major lea­guers named him the most over­rat­ed play­er in base­ball for the sec­ond straight year. It wasn’t even close.  Harp­er best­ed anoth­er much-hyped young play­er – the Dodgers’ Yasiel Puig – 41 to 15 percent.

Harp­er is the face of a fran­chise with a bloat­ed self-image, one that over­prices its tick­ets and dis­ap­points on the field.  This year, they should win their god­for­sak­en divi­sion.  The Mar­lins and Mets improb­a­bly hope to con­tend, though both teams lost more games than they won last year.  The Braves are retool­ing, the Phillies dis­in­te­grat­ing.  The Nats should make the post-sea­son just by show­ing up.

So far, they’ve bare­ly done that.  Four of their sev­en wins have come against the punch­less Phillies, to whom they have some­how man­aged to lose three times. They are 3–8 against the rest of the league.

Per­haps after two Octo­bers in which they turned Nat­stown into Cher­nobyl-on-the-Ana­cos­tia, the Nats this year will at last live up to expec­ta­tions.  Per­haps, too, peace will break out in the Mid­dle East, the Ira­ni­ans will for­swear their nuclear ambi­tions and region­al aggres­sions, Putin will with­draw from Crimea, Kim Jong-un will take his med­ica­tions, Islam­ic State, al Qae­da and the Houthis will be destroyed, the Chi­nese will stop threat­en­ing their neigh­bors, and Boko Haram and Al-Shabaab will be brought to heel.

But even if none of that hap­pens and even if the Nats again fall short, Pres­i­dent Oba­ma and Bryce Harp­er will remain thor­ough­ly con­vinced of their own greatness.

Prov­ing again that in Wash­ing­ton, cold real­i­ty is no match for delu­sion­al self-esteem.