WASHINGTON Jim Bowden misses the slush machine from RFK Stadium. He's the team's GM and he's entitled to his cravings, but methinks he's being a tad picky here.

Yeah, Nationals Park is without frozen goop in the homies' clubhouse. So stipulated. But it also lacks RFK's stale odors, cramped conditions and, umm, rodentia.

On balance, it's a tradeoff Bowden and the Nats probably can live with.

Frankly, the new digs gleam like something out of House Beautiful (minus the parking for company). The clubhouse, for instance, sprawls from here to Falls Church and has carpeting with more bounce than a trampoline. It's also connected to hideaway lounges, a steam room and a kitchen in which Rachael Ray would be content.

It is, in other words, way too nice to allow for quibbling over a slush machine.

"RFK was almost like comparing Super Mario Brothers to a new game like Halo or something," is the way headed-to-the-disabled-list closer Chad Cordero put it yesterday.

Baseball, on the other hand, isn't so newfangled. You pitch the ball, you hit the ball, you catch the ball. You advance runners. You work the count. You turn double plays. Pretty simple stuff, really.

But not so simple for these Nationals.

No question, yesterday's 3-2 decision over the wobbly Braves was a 12-inning rouser.

It was the Nats' third win in a row.

They've now spun out four W's in their final at-bat.

But they're still 11-17.

They're next to last in the league in batting and third from the bottom in pitching. They've been outscored, outhomered, outrun, out-ERA'd, pretty much out-everythinged through the first month of the campaign. That's why they're playing caboose to the rest of the NL East and feeling just slightly bummed at being unable to look as spiffy as their surroundings.

"Yeah, definitely, but at the same time we play in a tough division," said Ryan Zimmerman, the Nationals'' linchpin third baseman by way of Virginia Beach and U.Va. "There's three teams in the division that are established and can afford to bring in free agents to fill in gaps. We're still a pretty young team."

The sad fact is that a new ballpark is no guarantee of on-field prosperity. Ask the Pirates. Ask the Brewers. Ask the Nationals how a team that put three sub-Mendoza hitters in yesterday's lineup can expect to produce a consistent attack.

Answer: It can't.

You could pose similar questions about a pitching staff whose starters have trouble getting through six innings and whose relievers -- Cordero's shoulder issues are a factor here -- have a nasty habit of putting men on base. You'd get similar answers, too, although Shawn Hill and the bullpen did yeoman work yesterday to belie the stats that accompanied this team's staggering liftoff -- one that included a 15-losses-in-17-starts tailspin.

"It's part of a long season," manager Manny Acta said. "Check the standings. There's a lot of teams that have about the same number of wins as we do -- some less. We have five months of baseball left. We'll be OK."

On this day, the Nats were A-OK, thanks in part to Braves' baserunning gaffes and largely to a pitching effort that defused Chipper Jones and Jeff Francoeur. That kept things tight enough for the Nats to stage their two-run rally in the bottom of the 12th and send the customers home satisfied.

"It's a privilege to play in the greatest ballpark ever built in America," said Bowden (who appeared not to be on a sugar high when he staked that claim). "Now it's our job to win baseball games."

They got one yesterday. Winning in volume is more of a long-range pursuit.