The new Washington DC baseball team

[David Bowie]

From:    Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
: At 12:40 PM -0400 10/12/04, Page Stephens wrote:

:: Now that the Montréal Expos reside in DC does anyone out there
:: remember the old parody of  the saying about George Washington which
:: read, "First in war. First in peace, and first in the hearts of his
:: countrymen" which went "First in hearts. First in Peace and last in
:: the American League"

: the version I remember (for both versions of the Senators, the ones
: now in Minnesota and the ones now in Texas) went "first in war, first
: in peace, and last in the American League"

This is the one i've heard, as well. (The Senators last left around my first
birthday, but you grow up around DC, the whole missing baseball thing is
just a part of the group consciousness.)

I guess now it'll have to read "First in war, first in peace, and last in
the National League."

I never tied it to the line about George Washington, oddly enough, though
i'd heard it before--i'd always simply thought that, since DC was the
capital of our particular superpower, that the "First in war, first in
peace" was a description of DC.

When the Washington Redskins[1] had won their first Superbowl in the early
80s and were dominating their way through the following regular season on
their way to what a lot of people thought would be a second straight
Superbowl win, i remember reading a solumn that said something like "I guess
now when people talk about Washington they'll have to say 'Last in war, last
in peace, and first in the NFL.'"

For those interested in naming issues, BTW, the controversy over what to
name the DC [Expos] is getting interesting--the city doesn't want
"Senators", the obvious choice, since DC has no actual Senators. There's
been a strong push for "Grays", after DC's Negro League team, but not a very
intense one for "Nationals", which i find interesting, since that was the
official name of the 1924 Washington Senators. (Though i note that, among
old DC baseball team names, there's also the Olympics, the Statesmen, the
Blue Legs, and my favorite, the Quicksteps.)

<snip>

[1] Interesting survey recently that this name isn't seen as offensive by a
vast majority of Native Americans, though i have no idea what the sampling
methodology for the survey was, and i'd like to find out. Hopefully it won't
get Tony Kornheiser to stop saying that the Redskins shouldn't change their
name, they should just change their mascot to a potato.

David Bowie                                         http://pmpkn.net/lx
    Jeanne's Two Laws of Chocolate: If there is no chocolate in the
    house, there is too little; some must be purchased. If there is
    chocolate in the house, there is too much; it must be consumed.