Another victim of the Orioles marketing machine.
Sad, but bound to happen.
A rock-bottom moment for my Nats: I was walking with two programmers from HQ in Rockville...hot summer day...I mentioned Our Team...they had never heard of the Washington Nationals or Senators. Our local team is the Orioles, they agreed.
Think of the new situation this way:
- A Baltimore beer family bought the St Louis browns, and moved them to Baltimore.
- Told Clark Griffith that if he tried to stop them, they would pull their National Bohemian ads from the Nats TV games
- Nats local beer sponsor, Heurich Brewing, maker of Old Georgetown, had folded. Old Mr Heurich died about 1947 and his kids preferred to make money by selling the brewery in Foggy Bottom to what became the Watergate complex, and sold the family estate in West Hyattsville for what became Prince George's Plaza.
- For 20 years, the Nats / Senators ownership scraped along as one of the least wealthy ownerships in baseball. The Griffith / Robertson family had no income outside the club. The New Senators never had a rich owner. The Orioles always had money and spent it.
- It's fun to have owners with more money than anybody in baseball.
- The Orioles should move to Brooklyn...right beside the Barclay Center (as long as they pay for the stadium themselves). New York needs a second major league team.