Elliott Maddox remembers that crisp fall day 34 years ago when baseball said good-bye to Washington. He was standing in center field with two outs in the ninth inning when fans, well, at least the few fans the Senators had left, began pouring over the wall onto the field.

“It seemed like half of the people in attendance came swarming out. Almost as though it was orchestrated,” he says. “Everyone realized, at least in Washington, that this was going to be the last game. These were probably the last few people in D.C. at the time who cared about it. And they just wanted to be out there.”

What Maddox wasn’t so sure about was what they planned to do once they got out there. So he and the rest of his teammates sprinted off the field, and the last game in Washington Senators history ended an out early.

But Maddox says he knew baseball would come back someday.”I have always felt that baseball would return if the dynamics of the Washington, D.C., area changed,” he says. “And I believe they have now. The city has changed considerably.”ROUGH SEASON

Maddox’s former teammate, Tommy McCraw, wasn’t so sure. His only season in Washington was that final one, but that was enough to convince him the city wanted no part of the sport. The team lost 96 games and drew just 8,000 fans a game to cavernous RFK Stadium that summer; only twice in baseball’s final 26 seasons in Washington did the team have a winning record. Why would anyone want that back?

“This wasn’t even on the horizon,” McCraw says. “I hadn’t seen it done. So why think it would come back?”But it has. With the Washington Nationals’ exhibition opener last week, baseball’s return to the nation’s capital has gone from theory to reality.

ALREADY POPULARAnd this time, the city’s ready. More than 20,000 season tickets have already been sold, more than twice as many as the two-time World Series champion Marlins have sold, and Nationals’ merchandise already is outselling the T-shirts and caps of all but one other major-league team.The challenge now is to make that fervor last.”Just like in politics and so many other things, this will be their honeymoon period,” says Maddox, who manages after-school programs for 27 schools in Broward County. “It will last through the year.”And that, both Maddox and McCraw agree, gives the Nationals’ players a unique opportunity to cement a relationship with the city and its fans.

“You’ve got a chance to build a good base,” says McCraw, who is returning to Washington as the Nationals’ hitting coach. “If you treat them like fans, they’re going to support you. It’s a new start. It’s a great new beginning for a lot of these guys.”For McCraw, however, it’s more like the closing of a circle. Although he played just one forgettable season for the Senators, batting a career-low .213, he collected the final hit in franchise history. He also was caught stealing to end the eighth inning, meaning he made the final offensive out, and he recorded the final defensive putout of that last game by retiring the Yankees’ Bobby Murcer at first.

When the Nationals make their Washington debut next month, McCraw will be the only man in uniform who also was in uniform for the last regular-season game there.

“I ended it there and I’m fortunate enough to come back and see it start again,” McCraw, 64, says. “It’s going to be emotional for me because when I walk into that stadium, I’m going to remember all my teammates, I’m going to remember that last ballgame. Certainly going to remember former manager Ted Williams and what an influence he was on my career.”Sure it’s going to be emotional.”

REMEMBERING PASTBut he also is going to remember why baseball failed the last time it was there. And, he’s going to make sure the Nationals players, only two of whom where even alive then, know why too.

“Look at the game the way I look at it,” he says. “It’s entertainment. How many times would you go see a bad movie? Well it’s the same with baseball. If you’ve got a good ballclub, an entertaining ballclub, a family will come to be entertained.”And if you’re a perennial loser, you get your butt kicked every day, how many times you going to come see that?”McCraw can close his eyes and see the fans coming over the walls again, only this time they’re celebrating a championship, something Washington hasn’t seen since 1924. Hey, he never thought baseball would be back at all, so why not imagine it could come back and succeed? “That,” he says “is going to be beautiful.”