Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium

Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium, informally known as RFK Stadium, is a professional sports stadium that opened in the fall of 1961. Originally called D.C. Stadium, it served as home to the Washington Senators of Major League Baseball from the spring of 1962 through 1971, when the team moved to Arlington, Texas. It also served the Washington Redskins, a team in the National Football League, from 1961 until 1996, when they moved to FedExField in suburban Maryland. The stadium now serves as the home of the Washington Nationals of Major League Baseball and D.C. United of Major League Soccer. Concerts featuring renowned rock bands and performers still take place at the stadium. It has also hosted soccer matches in the (men’s) 1994 World Cup and 2003 Women’s World Cup.

The stadium was renamed for slain U.S. Senator and presidential candidate Robert Francis Kennedy in 1969.

A complex conversion is necessary, at a cost of $40,000 per switch, to move the stadium seating from the baseball to the soccer/football configuration and back again. This includes rolling the 3rd-base lower-level seats into the outfield along a buried rail, dropping the hydraulic pitcher’s mound 3 feet into the ground, and laying sod over the infield dirt. RFK was the first major stadium designed specfically as a multisport facility for both football and baseball – subsequent facilities have been adjusted for this problem in order to be able to change its seating configuration much quicker and at a lower cost. In 2005, the conversion was made over 20 times.

RFK Stadium was, for 35 years, known as home to the Redskins, whose return to prominence as a football power began the same year the Senators left D.C. The Redskins’ first game in RFK Stadium was a 24-21 loss to the New York Giants on October 1, 1961. The team’s first win in the stadium was over its archrival, the Dallas Cowboys on December 17, 1961. The Redskins’ last win at RFK Stadium was a 37-10 victory over the Cowboys on December 22, 1996 capping a disappointing 9-7 season.

As a baseball park, RFK Stadium is unique in having only an upper deck across the outfield, atop a high wall. The stadium hosted the first 1962 All-Star Game, which was attended by Robert Kennedy’s brother, President John F. Kennedy (in whose Administration Robert Kennedy served as Attorney General) and the 1969 All-Star Game, which was played in the daytime after a rainout the night before.

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Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium wikipedia entry
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