Baseball In Washington

With the Nationals on top in the NL East, there has been a lot of focus on the history of baseball futility in Washington:

By the dawn of what would be known, for other reasons, as the American Century, the Senators were so bad that they had become a popular vaudeville gag: “The folks in the theater, the man in the street and the children in school knew that Washington was first in peace, first in war, and last in the American League,” Povich wrote. A Renaissance began when Walter Johnson came to town—several pennants were captured, in addition to the ’24 Series. The political exploitation of D.C. baseball by incumbent Presidents also flourished. William Howard Taft, Woodrow Wilson, Warren Harding, Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, and Dwight Eisenhower all successively mugged for photographers and tossed out first pitches to the Senators on Opening Day, even if, after 1933, the home team usually stank. In 1960, an era of betrayal, open racism, and disillusionment arrived. Clark Griffith, the son of a successful Nats owner and manager, Calvin Griffith, became concerned that his Washington audience was “getting to be all colored,” as he put it, so he moved the Senators to Minnesota to create the Twins. “You only have fifteen thousand blacks here,” he explained later to Minnesota businessmen. Griffith said he appreciated his new fan base of “good hardworking white people.” (bold mine) President Eisenhower strong-armed baseball into creating an expansion team, also named the Senators, to compensate for Griffith’s departure. Those Senators floundered, and were bought by a debt-burdened failed Minnesota politician named Bob Short. Short schemed to move his team to a more lucrative market and sell them at profit. He eyed Dallas, Texas. On Short’s last night in town, in 1971, drunken fans carrying signs calling for the owner’s demise tore up stadium seats and the field. “This isn’t exactly a pleasure,” the team’s slugger, Frank Howard, remarked after the last game. “Nobody’s going to buy a horseshit product, and that’s what we’ve been.”

That is a great quote from Frank Howard, and a couple terrible ones from Clark Griffith. I didn't realize he moved the team to the Twin Cities because there weren't as many black people there.  That is shameful.

Not only are the Nationals doing well, but the Orioles are 18-9 out of the gate, and only 0.5 game behind Tampa Bay in the AL East.  So far it's been the best year the 21st century for baseball at the south end of the Acela corridor.  We'll see if it can last.