Baseball

Over the years, Washington, D.C. has been home to numerous professional baseball teams, very few of them with winning records. But, 1884 might take the cake for weirdness. That year, the nation's capital boasted two separate teams called the Washington Nationals. They finished a combined 59-116.

Jackie Robinson, who broke baseball's color barrier, was pressured into testifying before the infamous communist-hunting committee in July 1949. But he also used the opportunity to speak out about racial injustice.

If you are a baseball fan, you know Vin Scully. Heck, even if you aren’t a baseball fan you probably know Vin Scully. He’s been broadcasting Dodgers games since 1950 – first in Brooklyn and then in Los Angeles. His smooth delivery and anecdotes have captivated listeners for decades. That's why he’s been called the “best of all time” and “a national treasure” amongst other lauds. But had it not been for a summer job in Washington, who knows how Scully’s career would have turned out?

“Scan all the annals of Washington base ball as you will – go back to the very inception of the national game – there will be found no day so altogether glorious no paean of victory changed by rooters and fanatics half so sweet as that witnessed yesterday in honor of the opening of the season on 1910.” So read the Washington Post the morning after the Washington Nationals’ 3-0 season-opening victory over the Philadelphia Athletics.

The account may have been a bit rhetorical, but D.C. had reason to be excited, beyond the normal good cheer of baseball’s opening day and the happy result of the game. On April 14, 1910, the city had made history by inaugurating a now-famous tradition: the Presidential first pitch.

In January 1943, with World War II raging, Major League Baseball commissioner Kennesaw Mountain Landis issued a mandate that teams must conduct spring training close to home rather than traveling South. The ruling sent the Washington Senators scrambling to find new digs, but they didn't have to look far.

With the decades of lackluster baseball teams in the nation's capital, the 34 years when D.C. didn't have a team at all, and the early struggles of the current Nationals franchise, it's probably hard for most fans to imagine what a baseball championship in the nation's capital looked like. Well, thanks to the Library of Congress, it just got a whole lot easier.

Spending a Sunday afternoon at the ol’ ballpark is pretty commonplace nowadays. But 100 years ago? Notsomuch. In the early 1900s, debate raged about whether it was appropriate – or, for that matter, legal – for ballclubs to suit up on Sundays. Blue laws in many states put severe restrictions on what could and could not be done/consumed/enjoyed/observed on the traditional day of rest.

Before he broke Major League Baseball's baseball’s color barrier, Jackie Robinson stole the show as a Negro League player for the Kansas City Monarchs. In a 1945 doubleheader against the Homestead Grays in Washington, 18,000 fans at Griffith Stadium watch Robinson tie a National Negro League record by going 7 for 7.

Tomorrow, the Washington Nationals will announce a new Racing President to run against George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and longtime-lovable-loser-turned-late-season-winner, Teddy Roosevelt at each Nationals home game. D.C. is waiting with bated breath. So, who will it be? Here at Boundary Stones headquarters, we've been debating the issue.