Compare to the '25 Nats. Both started 12 - 4. A good team to compare with this Nats team.
Orioles?
They are from Baltimore, a different town that wasn't in the majors until 1954 or so, and then only because the beer-baron family that had bought the St Louis Browns threatened to pull advertising from the Nats unless Clark Griffith agreed to let the Browns move. I hate the Orioles as much as I hated the 1950s Yankees.
They Baltimore Orioles are the rivals:
(1) the imperious Colts of Unitas, Moore, Parker, Lipscomb, Marchetti, winning championships while GP Marshall mismanaged the Redskins. [Arguments with other kids when I was in 6th grade as they became Colts fans. Turn-coats.]
(2) The bush-league Baltimore fans waving "crying towels" when a Nats pitcher had to be taken out.
(3) Paul Richards getting the umpires -- always favored Baltimore -- to nearly undress Pet Ramos because Richards claimed that Pedro was loading the baseball.
(4) The 1969 Nats, a good team, being ignored because they played in the same division as the "unbeatable" Baltimore Orioles. Universal flattery for Brooks Robinson, who was almost as good as Ken McMullen, our Kenny Mac who fielded and hit a lot like the great Ryan Zimmerman. Making allowances for the "modern dead ball era" in which McMullen played. It was amusing to see Baltimore get mowed down by Jerry Koosman, Tom Seaver, Tommy Agee, and the rest of the Mets. Even more fun a couple years later when the Orioles, by their own "admission", had the all-time greatest team, with four 20-game winning starters...except that the Pirates beat them in the WS. (Cuellar, Dobson, Palmer, McNally all won 20 games. Ha!)
(5) Burning memory: one classic DC day 1998, "fry an egg on a sidewalk day", as I walked across the HQ parking lot in Rockville with a couple of young programmers from Engineering. They didn't know that Washington had ever had a baseball team.
Right now, I wish the Nats had a CF like Sam Rice, but I'll keep comparing the records. Note that the '25 team crushed a Yankee team with Ruth and Gehrig, and finished 8.5 games ahead of a good Connie Mack A's team.
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