Those who don’t learn from history’s mistakes are doomed to repeat them. Will that be the case for the owners group attempting to bring the Expos franchise to Washington DC and Major League Baseball? History tells us it could, if a number of important factors are not taken into account.
A group called the DC Sports & Entertainment commission has floated a proposal to purchase and relocate The Montreal Expos to Washington. They are in the running with Las Vegas and Monterrey, Mexico for the privilege. At present Major League baseball owns the Expos in a sort of consortium venture. At present, that means that all 29 owners have an interest, and, more importantly, are bearing the cost, because the Quebec franchise is possibly the worst historically in baseball history. With only one playoff appearance to it’s credit (1981) and fans that could be called worse than fair-weather, the club is resembling quicksand more than a vortex. MLB wants to get out in the worst sort of way, yet at the same time they annually procrastinate and defer a decision until next year. They then regret it and listen to the proposals anew and repeat the process all over again. Washington is the frontrunner, and Bud Selig has said as much, but they just can’t bring themselves to seal the deal. Maybe Major League Baseball is more aware of the lessons of the past than we realize, and possibly foresee a jump from the frying pan to the fire in a move to DC. Here’s why.
Washington has been without Major League baseball for 31 years. Sentimentality tells us that the national pastime should be represented in the nation’s capital. In the early eighties George Will wrote a piece lamenting the absence of baseball in Washington during the Reagan administration. Reagan was an avid baseball fan, but apparently he didn’t feel like making the trip Baltimore too often. Since William Howard Taft it had been the tradition for the sitting President to appear at the season opener and throw out the first pitch. So baseball, the capital and the Presidency are all tied together on this one. Will’s thoughts are shared by a great many others. But it might be a case of “absence makes the heart grow fonder”.
Washington has had two prior Major League franchises. A look at their histories gives enormous insight to the present situation.
The first was the Washington Nationals, more affectionately known as the Senators. The club was ruled by the iron fist of Clark Griffith from it’s inception in the American League until his death in 1955. His nephew Calvin Griffith took over control then until 1960.
The Griffith’s legacy in DC is not anything to get excited about. Even with one of the greatest pitchers in baseball history, Walter Johnson, the Senators were known more for their ineptitude. The old saying back in the day was “Washington – first in war, first in peace, and last in the American League”. Shirley Povich, the distinguished Sports Editor for the Washington Post, was a big booster but was also a realist. The team’s nickname was often shortened to Nats, and the cliché headline in the Post for many, many years was “Nats lose again”. This losing aura did not seem to bother Mr. Griffith. He repeated sold off his best players for the cash, and along with Connie Mack of the Philadelphia A’s discerned that he could make more money with a 4th place team than a pennant winner. Truth was the Senators nor the Athletics rarely rose above sixth in the old eight team American League. Obviously with such a dismal tradition attendance would suffer, and in Washington it did. Griffith Stadium was built prior to World War I, and like all the stadiums of the time it was far from symmetric and very quirky. In fact, the owner an apartment building on the Southwest corner of the block refused to sell, so Griffith built the outfield fence around the property, so the wall had a section that jutted into the playing field like a big triangle. Capacity was around 30,000, but the park rarely if ever saw a sellout. Attendance was awful, and on one memorable day in 1954 a game with the Athletics drew a whopping crowd of 460. It would be easy to blame the poor attendance on the consistently losing efforts, but the actual causes are much deeper. The population of Washington DC has seen explosive growth in the black community. During World War II, there were as many African-Americans in DC as whites. By the mid-fifties that ratio increased to almost seventy percent. At the same time the white population was centered around the government and very transient in nature. So The Senator’s biggest fan base was African-Americans.
At first, Griffith’s relationship with this demographic group was quite good. There were no firm rules on segregated seating, though it was understood that the outfield bleachers were for the “Negroes”. And they didn’t seem to mind. They faithfully supported the Senators, even though not a single player was black. Griffith also rented out the stadium to the Homestead Grays, who, along with the Kansas City Monarchs were one of the most successful and professionally run franchises in the Negro Leagues. When the Monarchs came to town, and the fans knew Satchel Paige would be on the mound, they packed the ballpark to the rafters. With future Hall of Famers Josh Gibson and Buck Leonard on board, the Greys were a dominant team. And here is where the problems set in for Clark Griffith. In the late thirties Grey’s fans clamored for an exhibition game with the Senators. They were confident that their team could whip the Nats. And so was Clark Griffith. At the time only a closet racist, Griffith came up with a number of excuses to prevent such a matchup. Over time, this left a bad taste in the mouthsof black fan’s. Fewer of them came to Senator’s games. The situation was exacerbated at the end of the war when the pressing question in baseball was who would be the first Major League team to sign a black player. At first, Grey’s fans were confident that Griffith would rise to the call. It would be so easy. Two of the game’s best players were regularly displaying their skills in his own ballpark. Certainly it would be easy to sign one of these deserving men. But Griffith hemhawed and, as we know, Branch Rickey beat him to the punch, signing Jackie Robinson with the Dodgers. But soon it was apparent that Griffith did not even attempt to throw a punch. This led to resentment, which soon turned into outright animosity. It was another eight years before a black player took the field in a Senators uniform, and he was a Cuban, which the local African-American community found insulting. By this time, hardly any African-Americans were coming to Senators games. Mr. Griffith succeeded in disenfranchising the greatest majority of his fan base. The lack of support led to the decision in 1960 to move the club to Minnesota, where they became the Twins. It was a situation the Griffith family brought upon itself.
Baseball fans in Washington weren’t completely left in the lurch. After the Senators defection to Minnesota, Major League Baseball awarded one of its two new expansion franchises to a Washington group. In 1961 they began play as, once again, the Senators. They spent the first season in Griffith Stadium, then in 1962 moved to the new Memorial, later to be called RFK Stadium. Initial enthusiasm was high but quickly waned when the Senators II picked up the bad habits of the Senators I, namely cellar dwelling. Attendance was weak and the club never reached out to the African-American fan base. Even with stars like Frank Howard the club just never seemed to catch on. Even the hiring of all-time great Ted Williams as manager in 1968 failed to bring a sustained interest. Ted never got the knack of managing and the team floundered, leading to the decision to move the team to Texas after the 1971 season to become the Rangers. The last few home games saw swelled attendance and pleas not to leave, but it was a matter of too little, too late.
Now the plan is to bring the Expos to Washington as the Senators III. What has history taught us? That after the honeymoon is over, DC will not support a loser. And the Expos are prolific losers. They teased Washington with an exhibition game in RFK a few years ago, which was well attended. But unless the prospective owners are willing to shell out the cash and build a consistent winner, their attendance will not improve over the dismal showings found in Montreal. If this group thinks they can just plug in an existing franchise and sit back and rake in the profits, they are sadly mistaken. If they do not reach out and embrace the black community in DC, they will fail. They have to remember, there is already a Major League Baseball team only 16 miles up I-95. Peter Angelo is not happy about the prospect of competition in Washington, but if this group fails to learn the lessons of the past, he has nothing to worry about.
And that would be a shame. Some of my family used to be Senators fans, and I’ve always felt a cosmic tug toward them. Even if by this proxy, I would welcome and enjoy a team in the nation’s capital. I wish them all the success in the world. But knowing the nature of Major League owners in general, I’m not holding my breath. The last two World Series winners have been dark horses with minimal payrolls, and now owners, with the exception of George Steinbrenner and a few others, feel this is the wave of the future. My feeling is that the last two years are an anomaly, and that soon order will be restored to nature when a “sure thing” franchise such as the Yankees win it all. In light of all this, I can’t help but feel that, if the move becomes official, we will see history repeat itself in Washington, DC. For the third time.
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Posted July 13, 2004.
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