We throw another chunk of firewood into our baseball hot stove this week, as we warm up with the surprisingly long and rich history of the National Pastime in the Nation’s Capital with sports PR veteran Fred Frommer (You Gotta Have Heart: A History of Washington Baseball from 1859 to the 2012 National League East Champions).
While historically smaller in population than its more industrial neighbors to its north and west, Washington, DC was regularly represented in the highest levels of baseball dating back to the earliest professional circuits – including the 1871-75 National Association’s Olympics, Blue Legs, and two named the “Nationals”; two new and separate Nationals clubs in the competing Union and American Associations of 1884; and two teams each in the American Association (another Nationals in 1884; Statesmen in 1891), and early National League (yet another Nationals from 1886-89; and “Senators” from 1892-99).
But it was the creation of the American League in 1901 that solidified the city’s place in baseball’s top echelon, as the (second) Washington Senators launched as one of the junior circuit’s “Classic Eight” charter franchises – establishing an uninterrupted presence for Major League Baseball in the District that endured for more than seven decades. (Technically, the original AL Senators stayed until 1960, when the franchise moved to Minneapolis-St. Paul, MN to become the Minnesota Twins – only to be immediately replaced by a new expansion Senators the next season, that lasted 11 more seasons until they moved to Arlington, TX to become the Texas Rangers in 1971.)
Frommer joins host Tim Hanlon to look back on DC’s deep and oddly curious relationship with baseball, including:
The Senators’ often-lamentable on-field performance that entrenched Washington as “First in war, first in peace, and last in the American League;"
The advent of the ceremonial Presidential season-opening “first pitch” tradition;
New York’s rival “Damn Yankees;”
The Negro National League’s Homestead Grays’ second home; AND
Why it took 33 years for Major League Baseball to finally return to the Nation’s Capital.
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You Gotta Have Heart: A History of Washington Baseball from 1859 to the 2012 National League East Champions - buy here
