When the Washington Senators left D.C. for Texas to become the Rangers, the city went without a Major League Baseball team for 33 years. Sure, the Orioles were just up the road in Baltimore, but for those of us from the DMV, it never felt the same. It wasn’t our team.
When the Expos finally moved to D.C. and became the Nationals, it felt like the city could breathe again. And even though the first several years the Nationals played in D.C. they were total cellar dwellers, it didn’t matter — we finally had a baseball team to cheer for and commiserate about together.
I picked up this pennant from a fellow Washingtonian who also ended up in Los Angeles. We traded stories about how much it sucked growing up with no hometown team to root for… and how incredible it felt to finally have baseball back in the nation’s capital even though we no longer lived there.
Even though I’ve now lived in Los Angeles longer than I lived in D.C., it never felt right to cheer for anyone else. That connection never left.
This pennant is from one of the campaigns that fought to bring baseball back to Washington — a reminder of how much the city wanted the game to return, and how much it meant when it finally did.
