Read today where George W. Bush will be throwing out the first pitch of the season in the home opener for the Washington Nationals. That game is April 14th. Politics aside, I always felt the one thing I liked about baseball in the past was that the president would usually throw out the first pitch at a Senators game (both the Twins variant and the Rangers variant). Having the president throw out the first pitch is something just “American” to me, and I always loved seeing that old footage. Hoever, since baseball hasn’t been played in DC since 1971 (when I was 6), I’m a little too young to remember it. Now I’ll get a chance, and I like that. I hope Bush (and whoever comes after him) makes it an annual tradition, like I think it should be.
In other Nationals news, you will hear a lot during the leadup to the start of the season about how the original Senators went to be the Twins and the replacment Senators came here to be the Rangers. That’s not entirely true. The Twins/Senators franchise wasn’t the original Washington Senators team. There was one in the late 1800’s which ended up being contracted out of existance. The Washington Senators from 1892-1899 weren’t any better than the Senators that came after them, but they did exist, and it always irritates me that the press gets it wrong all the time by calling the Twins/Senators the “original Senators”. They weren’t.