National Pastime Still Politics in Washington

Like an old photo tattering at the edges, the national pastime lingers in the nation’s capital only as a memory.

April will mark the 14th season without baseball in Washington, a city where baseball origins date back before the turn of the century.

According to sports historians, the first professional team to represent Washington was the Olympic baseball club, in 1871. Soon afterward, a team called the Nationals as admitted into the National League.

In 1901 the “original” Senators entered the American League, where they would compete until 1960, the year the franchise was moved to Minneapolis-St.Paul. That same year, Washington was awarded a new American League franchise that would remain until 1971, when the team would move to Texas.

“First in war, first in peace and last in the American League,” the Washington franchise, a perennial loser, captured its lone world championship in 1924.

Still, the team had its stars, both on and off the field. Owner Clark Griffith and Manager Bucky Harris are members of baseball’s Hall of Fame, along with former Senator players Walter Johnson, Joe Cronin, Sam Rice, Heinie Manush, Goose Goslin and Stan Coveleskie.

Long before Jackie Robinson broke baseball’s color line in 1947, Washingtonians were cheering future Hall of Famers James “Cool Papa” Bell, Josh Gibson and Buck Leonard in the Negro Leagues.

Before World War II, Willie Franklin had a job with the D.C. Transit Co. He washed down the city’s cable cars for money. He watched baseball for fun.

“We had the greatest players in the game right over there,” Franklin, 74, said, turning his head toward the site where Griffith Stadium once stood.

“I used to go over to Sixth Street and watch the Homestead Grays, Washington Pilots, Elite Giants, all the great ones,” Franklin recalled. “Baseball was great in them days. The fans knew all the players and would shout out their names. And the players would smile and wave their hats then get down to business, beating each others brains out. I loved it.”

A life-long Washingtonian, Jacob Feldman was born in 1946, the same year that first baseman Mickey Vernon hit .353 to lead the Senators to a fourth-place finish.

Feldman, who owns a suburban furniture store that bears his name, had a love-hate relationship with his hometown team that ended only after Bob Short moved the franchise to Texas in 1971.

“They would break your heart a thousand times a year. The (New York) Mets may have lost more games in one year, and other teams may have been more pathetic, but over the long haul nobody could touch them,” says Feldman.

Today, Feldman’s allegiance to baseball goes no further than 40 miles up Interstate 95 to Memorial Stadium, home of the Baltimore Orioles.

“I had season tickets a few years ago but it’s not the same as having a team in Washington,,” Feldman said. “I root for the Birds but if there was a team here I’d drop them in a minute.”

Peter Ueberroth, baseball’s new commissioner, has set no timetable for expansion, saying “expansion is inevitable but not imminent.” And if expansion does come, there is no guarantee that Washington--a two-time loser of franchises--will get a third chance.

The Orioles, baseball’s winningest team over the past quarter century, market heavily in Washington, drawing as much as one-quarter of their paid attendence from the Washington area.

For the record, Orioles owner Edward Bennett Williams, a successful Washington attorney, says he can live with another team just 40 miles from his home plate.

“I’ve always supported baseball in Washington,” he said. “I don’t have any objection to it.”

Privately, however, baseball insiders say Williams, who needs just three votes in addition to his own to kill NL entry into his territory, will fight to keep from sharing the seventh-largest metropolitan area in the nation, the No. 8 TV market and a city that annually attracts 15 1/2 million tourists spending $1 billion a year.

Washington’s effort to win a new team has been rekindled, however, with the creation of the D.C. Commission on Baseball and interest in acquiring a franchise by the sometimes irascible but always rich Jack Kent Cooke.

Cooke, who owns the Washington Redskins football franchise (a team that lists Williams as a minority stockholder) is actively seeking a National League expansion franchise.