This Can’t Be Right.

I grew up in the radio shadow of the Washington Senators, version 3.0. I can still remember as a child falling asleep in hot, humid, air-condition-less summers to the hum of the old-style, metal-bladed, rotating fan and the blare and excitement of the radio carrying the Senators play-by-play on WTOP. I easily fell asleep every night; and maybe that’s the point. It was the early years of the new expansion team Senators. Version 2.0 (which sometimes during its history had officially gone by the name of the Nationals) had just moved to Minneapolis. Version 1.0 was a few years before my time: in the 1800s. But back to the Washington Senators team I remember: guys like “Hondo” Frank Howard (our home-run-hitting local hero), Eddie Brinkman (I was convinced he was the best shortstop in baseball, maybe best to ever play that position.), Don Lock (Wasn’t he the only guy to ever hit a home run that left old DC Stadium, before it was memorialized as RFK Stadium? I heard he bounced it out one of the exits.).

Baseball teams in the Nation’s Capital were notoriously weak. A book (The Year the Yankees Lost the Pennant), later a Broadway hit and a movie based on the book, had captured our sorrow with its Faustian tale of a man, Joe Boyd, selling his soul to the devil, Mr. Applegate. In exchange, middle-aged Joe would be young again and could suit up with the Senators and wrest that pennant flag away from the dreaded Yankees. Of course, if you left the world of fiction, there wasn’t any real rivalry between the two teams because the Senators were never competitive with the New York club. The oldest and most often used quote ever cited by man or woman captured the franchise’s and Washington’s frustration: “First in war, first in peace, and last in the American League.” But it couldn’t have been the teams, owners and managers: It must have been something about the town. After all, both Senators teams tasted success once they abandoned the Capital: The first as the Minneapolis Twins with their one-time Senators slugger Harmon Killebrew and the second as the Texas Rangers.

So its been with “shock and awe” (the non-military version) that I’ve been watching the progress of the Nationals this season. Things have changed. They’ve got a good, reused name. They can’t be in the American League cellar anymore, because they’re in the National League. They have a new stadium. And Washington is having its best season since the ’30s. Of course, I don’t know how it will end, but it’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas for Washington baseball fans. Tom Boswell, long-time sports writer for the Washington Post recently wrote a column headlined “The Washington Nationals have Arrived, as Sweep of Boston Red Sox Shows,” suggesting that the Nationals are quality and here to stay: great young players and fast-learning owners.

Well . . . maybe. For a kid raised on the Washington Senators (mostly the 1960s edition), with thoughts and dreams of Faust, Joe Boyd, Mr. Applegate and Lola filling my head, this may exciting to watch, but there’s something nagging at me. Something just keeps saying, this can’t be right. I can only wonder which player made the deal.