{"id":69,"date":"2010-08-10T10:07:44","date_gmt":"2010-08-10T14:07:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=69"},"modified":"2012-09-26T10:10:19","modified_gmt":"2012-09-26T14:10:19","slug":"interesting-article-about-nats-history-vis-a-vis-expos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=69","title":{"rendered":"Nats history vis-a-vis Expos"},"content":{"rendered":"

I don’t always necessarily agree with Chris Needham, who runs the Capitol Punishment blog<\/a> and can be, well, “acerbic” at times with issues about the Nationals franchise.<\/p>\n

But on this issue<\/a> I kinda agree.\u00a0 The Nats are honoring Andre Dawson<\/strong> tonight as a cherished former member of the franchise.\u00a0 Which I think is fine.<\/p>\n

But our history as a city hosting baseball goes beyond the Expos.\u00a0 We claim Frank Howard<\/strong> and remember his great homers in RFK (despite the fact that they moved to Texas).\u00a0 We remember Walter Johnson<\/strong> as probably the greatest player in our history (despite that version of the team now playing in Minnesota).<\/p>\n

What do you guys think?\u00a0 I thought about it from a football perspective and used a couple of recent relocations:
\n– Do Baltimore fans claim old Baltimore Colts as part their history, or the Cleveland Browns?\u00a0 Maybe not the greatest example since Cleveland immediately got their team back via an expansion gift to the city.
\n– Do St. Louis fans remember the old St. Louis Cardinals and claim them?<\/p>\n

I dunno.\u00a0 I’ve read complaints from former Expos fans that the Washington ownership has almost systematically tried to forget that this team came from Montreal.\u00a0 And I guess for good reason; the franchise was so\u00a0 undersupported and badly run that they were closer to contracting it than giving it to DC.<\/p>\n

But for me, DC baseball means the team playing here at the time.\u00a0 We all know why the first two iterations of the Washington Senators moved away (primarily that the city just couldn’t support a team).\u00a0 But this team is here to stay.<\/p>\n

boss<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I don’t always necessarily agree with Chris Needham, who runs the Capitol Punishment blog and can be, well, “acerbic” at times with issues about the Nationals franchise. But on this issue I kinda agree.\u00a0 The Nats are honoring Andre Dawson tonight as a cherished former member of the franchise.\u00a0 Which I think is fine. But […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[995,994,996,900],"class_list":["post-69","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-natsgeneral","tag-andre-dawson","tag-chris-needham","tag-frank-howard","tag-walter-johnson"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=69"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4718,"href":"https:\/\/nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69\/revisions\/4718"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=69"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=69"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=69"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}