Midnight The Desmonds begin putting Cruz to bed, then follow with Grayson. The boys typically sleep through the night — and then they do it all again the next day.

10:30 p.m.-ish After a typical game, Chelsey will pile the kids in the car and have them home by 11. Ian usually follows shortly after, but the boys don’t go to bed before Ian gets home. “I always want them to see him,” Chelsey said.

Game’s end If the Nationals win, Ian will occasionally bring his boys into the clubhouse to wander around and maybe eat something in the players’ dining area. The family doesn’t come in after losses.

7:05 p.m. The game begins. Grayson, in particular, is intent on watching his father play. “Why did you swing and miss?” he asks. During the game: Chelsey tries to watch as much as she can from her seats, which players buy. A former softball and soccer star herself, she can get tense watching her husband. “I think anybody who was competitive, you don’t lose that,” she said.

6:55 p.m. Arrival at Nationals Park. Grayson and Cruz often will play in the Nationals’ family room, where they have dinner. The facility across a concourse from the home clubhouse employs two babysitters nightly and has toys, a fenced-in “yard” in which the boys play ball and some televisions.

6-6:30 p.m. If the boys haven’t woken up yet, Chelsey might nudge them forward. Usually, they leave for Nationals Park — a 25-minute drive, depending on traffic — at 6:30 p.m. from their rented house in Arlington.

4 p.m. Grayson and Cruz head down for a nap. Chelsey uses this time for herself and to fix dinner that they can bring to the ballpark. “Anything I can put in Tupperware,” she said.

1-1:30 p.m. Ian heads to Nationals Park, with Grayson pleading to go along too. “This is every day,” Chelsey said. But when Ian leaves, the rest of the family starts its day.

10-11 a.m. The family wakes up. This is the time Ian, 28, gets to spend with his wife and boys. By their own nature, they don’t plan much — playing ball in their basement, maybe a walk to a nearby park. “We’re total introverts,” Chelsey said. At some point, Cruz goes down for the first of his two daily naps

When the Nationals are home, Chelsey Desmond, wife of shortstop Ian, takes the couple’s two sons — Grayson, 3, and Cruz, 17 months — to every game. This requires a shifted schedule, one atypical for most American families. A sample day involving a 7:05 p.m. game:

Monday night, when the skies opened at Nationals Park, the games continued under the concourses, just outside of the home clubhouse. Grayson and Cruz Desmond jitterbugged about, each dressed in a little Nationals jersey with little Nationals pants, each wearing No. 20 with “Desmond” stitched across the back. Grayson tugged a plastic bat. Cruz tossed a tiny rubber baseball.

“We’re staying,” said Chelsey, maybe midway through what became a rain delay of more than three hours, sinking into a couch. “I could try to get them to leave, but Grayson wouldn’t have it.”

She sat across from Jen LaRoche, wife of first baseman Adam and mother of two, on another couch. Jill Hairston, wife of outfielder Scott and mother of two more, leaned back in a chair. They were the only Nationals wives who remained, and the only three who have their kids in Washington before the end of the school year. The televisions on the walls carried the Cardinals-Braves game, and each woman knew exactly what was at stake: If Atlanta lost for the seventh straight time and the Nationals beat the Dodgers when the rain ended, their husbands would be in first place. A Brave smacked a home run. Three adult women yelled, “No. Nooooooooo!”

Grayson Desmond wandered over to the refrigerator. “I want a Popsicle,” he said, tugging at the door. “Have some fruit, Grayson,” said his mom.

During the season, the family room is a baseball wife’s refuge. Players pay for their tickets, yet some families rarely use the seats. The family room is the Nationals’ hub, with two sitters, toys in a back room, an open play area to throw around a ball outside the door – a makeshift yard. Hand prints from an art project are smeared across one wall. This offseason, the walls were repainted a bright red-and-white, the Nationals’ colors.

Not every team affords families such a space.

“I feel like I want to scream at some GMs: Do you have any clue?” Lory Ankiel said. “I know there’s an old-school way of thinking, that the men just do the work. But to me it’s logical. You can relieve so much stress on your player if you relieve the stress on his wife.”

Sitting around during the rain delay, with their husbands in the clubhouse across the hall, there was little apparent stress among the wives. The LaRoches’ two kids, 12-year-old Drake and 10-year-old Montana, are fixtures at the ballpark. “She makes it look so easy,” Chelsey Desmond said. The Hairstons, with sons now 8 and 6, are pros too. Last year, Jill Hairston hit 13 cities with her family, sending postcards to the classrooms back home as something of a follow-the-Hairstons school project.

Chelsey Desmond is still, by her own admission, figuring it all out, with more figuring to come. Her husband is in the first season of a two-year, $17.5 million contract that will provide more money than either had ever dreamed of — but he hasn’t yet signed on long-term with the Nationals. Who knows? Moves could be afoot. Chelsey is also pregnant with the couple’s third child. The due date: Oct. 18, smack in the middle of the postseason. When Grayson was born, Ian flew home with the team from Pittsburgh, then hopped a flight to Tampa early the next morning, racing to Sarasota in time to witness the birth of their firstborn. Now, if the Nationals are in the playoffs, and the new baby comes?

“I won’t even tell him if I go into labor,” Chelsey Desmond said.

It is a baseball life. “I get to support my husband living his dream,” she said. “Not everyone can say that. There will never be any negative to that.”

It was after 10 p.m. in the family room. The tarp was still on. The Cardinals hung on to beat the Braves. And when the 18th home game of the Nationals’ season ended past 1 a.m., Chelsey Desmond took her family home. Cruz stayed up much of the night, yet it didn’t matter. On Tuesday, another game awaited not just Ian Desmond, but the entire Desmond family.

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