Its' Tough To Be The Hometown Team In No One's Hometown!

So, sharing a team would be no big deal, and plans should be made soon enough—if a state-assisted Baltimore consortium can gain control of the Orioles. The scheme would then be to split the schedule, playing half the games at Baltimore's Memorial Stadium, half at Washington's RFK, eventually moving the whole schedule to a Maryland state-built "Meadowlands-type stadium/racetrack complex" in Laurel, about halfway between the two downtowns, in the center of a population draw of five million. This would make it the fourth-largest TV and market area in the country, the largest with only one professional team. As numbing as Washington can be as a sports town, it would have a hard time lousing up this arrangement.

Naming the baseball team should not be particularly difficult, either. Leave us not forget the Nats. Maybe the Chesapeake Nationals? Or, better, the National Chesapeakes—the vaunted Chessies. Or, perhaps best of all, the National Pastimes. Has a certain ring to it, doesn't it? CHIEF EXECUTIVE TO THROW OUT FIRST BALL AT 'TIMES LIDLIFTER. 'TIMES SCAN WAIVER LIST.

After all, it is only correct that the national pastime have a place in Our Nation's Capital. Right now, it sometimes seems that only the Redskins provide sporting ballast to a place that Henry James called "indefinably ridiculous and yet eminently agreeable."

The best sports towns are not representative of the entire country, as Washington is. Those other cities tend to be strained, edgy, proprietary. They need to win on the field. That's why they are good sports towns. Their teams are a cutting edge against the outside world, not an identity for strangers to cuddle up with. So:

1) If the rest of the country were like Washington, we wouldn't need Washington. And,

2) If the rest of the country were like Washington, we wouldn't need leagues, either.