SPORT
Mid-Atlantic Dreams: Postseason Baseball
/ Tom Flynn
10.03.08
It's October and the Mid-Atlantic’s oppressive summer heat has thankfully departed. From beneath the blanket of sweltering days and nights the region’s two closest baseball teams, the Orioles and Nationals, emerged as they seemingly always do: dazed, beaten and with no hopes of a postseason. The Orioles and finished dead last in the AL East and the Nats also finished last in the NL East with their worst record since moving to DC. The two clubs will head into the off-season with the Orioles set to play their annual front office shell game of switching personnel and marketing campaigns, while the Nats can claim that now that they’ve got their requisite luxury box-laden new ballpark, things will be different for the relatively fledgling franchise (they relocated from Montreal in late 2004). Luxury boxes will help fund a more competitive team (true), plus nothing stirs a team to greater glory than a stadium full of businessmen with their backs to the game while laying waste to a buffet table (not true).
Although losing around here feels like an inevitability, the two cities once had postseason personas. Baltimore’s is far better known and far more recent. For a period of thirty years the Orioles were one of the American League’s best clubs, posting Series wins in 1966, 1970 and 1983 and making losing bids in the Series or AL playoffs as recently as 1997. For their major league counterparts in Washington, the postseason has long been theoretical. The multiple Senators/Nationals incarnations have combined for a total of one World Series win in 1924, followed by AL pennants in 1925 and 1933. From 1972 through 2004 the city lacked a major league club altogether.
These days, the only baseball postseason involving our local nines is on a bookshelf. Unearthing the Orioles’ history is a relatively short dig; for Washington you’ll need to sift through 84 years of stats and seasons--or take the easier approach of quitting the search and deciding that losing is symbolic of an admirable fidelity that warrants no statistical validation.
There is, however, a story that unfolded sixty years ago this fall that will distract both Baltimore and DC fans alike from their current beleaguered plight. The year was 1948 and the occasion the last battle for the Negro National League (NNL) pennant between DC’s storied Homestead Grays and Baltimore’s Elite Giants.
Truth be told, the Grays were only part-time residents of DC’s Griffith Stadium, departing Pittsburgh’s Homestead suburb for about half their games by 1948. The Grays originated in the steel town suburb of Homestead in the early 1910s. As an African-American club, they were a top semi-pro team in the Pittsburgh area and played independently before joining a pair of short-lived circuits and then settling in as regulars in the NNL in the early 1930s.
Along with the Kansas City Monarchs of the Negro American League (NAL), they were the best of the best in Negro League baseball and drew large crowds both at home and on the road against NNL, amateur, semi-pro and minor league teams. For portions of the ‘30s and ‘40s they boasted the star tandem of first baseman Buck Leonard and catcher Josh Gibson. And in the 1930s they begrudgingly became part of Washington’s baseball history when Pittsburgh’s Gus Greenlee helped found a rejuvenated Negro National League (the original had folded) in 1933 and entered his rival Pittsburgh Crawfords as a charter member. Greenlee was a numbers’ runner with some of the only deep pockets in the African-American community during the Depression. The attendance pressure he put on Grays owner and former player Cumberland Posey compelled Posey to look elsewhere for fan support. He found it in DC’s cavernous Griffith Stadium.
Although losing around here feels like an inevitability, the two cities once had postseason personas. Baltimore’s is far better known and far more recent. For a period of thirty years the Orioles were one of the American League’s best clubs, posting Series wins in 1966, 1970 and 1983 and making losing bids in the Series or AL playoffs as recently as 1997. For their major league counterparts in Washington, the postseason has long been theoretical. The multiple Senators/Nationals incarnations have combined for a total of one World Series win in 1924, followed by AL pennants in 1925 and 1933. From 1972 through 2004 the city lacked a major league club altogether.
These days, the only baseball postseason involving our local nines is on a bookshelf. Unearthing the Orioles’ history is a relatively short dig; for Washington you’ll need to sift through 84 years of stats and seasons--or take the easier approach of quitting the search and deciding that losing is symbolic of an admirable fidelity that warrants no statistical validation.
There is, however, a story that unfolded sixty years ago this fall that will distract both Baltimore and DC fans alike from their current beleaguered plight. The year was 1948 and the occasion the last battle for the Negro National League (NNL) pennant between DC’s storied Homestead Grays and Baltimore’s Elite Giants.
Truth be told, the Grays were only part-time residents of DC’s Griffith Stadium, departing Pittsburgh’s Homestead suburb for about half their games by 1948. The Grays originated in the steel town suburb of Homestead in the early 1910s. As an African-American club, they were a top semi-pro team in the Pittsburgh area and played independently before joining a pair of short-lived circuits and then settling in as regulars in the NNL in the early 1930s.
Along with the Kansas City Monarchs of the Negro American League (NAL), they were the best of the best in Negro League baseball and drew large crowds both at home and on the road against NNL, amateur, semi-pro and minor league teams. For portions of the ‘30s and ‘40s they boasted the star tandem of first baseman Buck Leonard and catcher Josh Gibson. And in the 1930s they begrudgingly became part of Washington’s baseball history when Pittsburgh’s Gus Greenlee helped found a rejuvenated Negro National League (the original had folded) in 1933 and entered his rival Pittsburgh Crawfords as a charter member. Greenlee was a numbers’ runner with some of the only deep pockets in the African-American community during the Depression. The attendance pressure he put on Grays owner and former player Cumberland Posey compelled Posey to look elsewhere for fan support. He found it in DC’s cavernous Griffith Stadium.