mnshiner:Going to tell on my age now but back in the late 60's (real late)...
My first memory of sports from the Washington DC area was the hoopla surrounding Vince Lombardi coming to coach the Redskins. I was 5 then (telling my age) so some very interesting things were happening to DC sports at an impressionable young age, and none of the memories involve the old Senators, despite them coming and going around that time. But with the Lombardi thing, then his death and George Allen taking over the Redskins, and the Bullets coming to the area followed by the Capitals, and the Redskins Super Bowl loss in '72 (to Jake's dad's 'Phins), through the then-Bullets winning an NBA title ('78). My memories of baseball from that time were of wonderful Oriole teams, the best fielding third baseman in history, the last (and one of only two) team to have four 20 game winners in the starting rotation (for trivia nuts - Jim Palmer, Mike Cuellar, Dave McNally, Pat Dobson). Then the Sens left, and there was only Orioles. A World Series championship and a World Series loss, another of each... Cal Ripken, the second best SS of all-time (maybe my all-time favorite pro athlete), Eddie Murray, one of the top five switch hitters of all-time.
If it hadn't been for Peter Angelos... I probably to this day would be an Orioles fan. I used to scoff at people who talked about 'Baseball in DC'. It's not like I'd change a lifetime of allegiance just because they put a new team in my backyard, even though the team stunk from the mid-80s through the early 90s. Then Angelos came in and actually did something good at first. He brought in some good guys, an in-his-prime Robbie Alomar, an in-his-prime (the first time) Palmeiro, some pitching depth to go with home grown talent (Ripken, Mussina, etc). There were mistakes, the first and worst predating this a little was Pete Harnish, Steve Finley, and Curt Schilling to Houston for Glenn Davis. And no Series. Then Albert Belle mishap, and Sammy Sosa... Tejada... then the fire sales and now the 'Pirates' mentality (read :loser and supplier of talent for winners)... The ship there may be righting, but I am no longer on it. I jumped off for a few Angelos related reasons. I started to despise him in his efforts to stifle a possible baseball team for DC. He actively campaigned against it. Despite the DC area's support of his efforts to help Baltimore get a football team. SO I did not like him, and his refusal to let the baseball people on his staff make baseball decisions led me to begin to dislike the team. It's hard to be a fan of a team you dislike, so I stopped being a baseball fan for a year or so.
Then the Expos were moved and became the Nats, and they were kinda good the first half of the first season, and following their stats gave me something to do in the summer when there was no HOCKEY or football. Then they sucked for a few seasons, though I could see potential... I started paying attention to what they were doing as an organization when Bowden left and Rizzo came in, and from then I could see the day coming when this was going to be a very good baseball team, so I got more interested. And now I am hooked.
To be honest, I think they tanked on purpose. The Lerners bought an organization that was bankrupt of value pretty much when they got it. And if anyone knows how to take something worthless and turn it into something of value, it's Ted Lerner, who took a $220 loan from his wife to rent a shopfront to found a Real Estate office that now has him with an estimated worth of $3.3B (that's B for Billion). Teddy could buy the Yankees and their network with what he has left over after paying for his National League baseball hobby. So I think that after the initial enthusiasm where a left-over team of Expos plus rookie Ryan Zimmerman was leading the NL East at the break, they quietly dumped all the servicable but mediocre major leaguers and tanked while rebuilding the farm system, drafting players that had signability issues and signing them to above slot contracts (something MLB had now outlawed, though for the Nats that wolf has already raided the coop), and then scoring big with Jordan Zimmerman, Strasburg, and Harper in the draft. The signings of Gonzalez, the development of Morse into a cleanup hitter, the wise signing of Laroche, who has been a rock this season were all great, great moves by Rizzo. They have a team that is built to contend for years, and they have no intention of allowing the Yanks or anyone else to pillage it. The only, only worry is that Harper has always been a Yankees fan, grew up dreaming of being a Yankee (had his parents sought treatment then, the issue now may have been averted). He now professes that the Nats are his only team (he had his new Mercedes AMG custom designed with the Curly W on the back), but we'll see. It won't be money issues that make him leave.