The History of the NABL 

Ch. 4
 

The next chapter in the history of the NABL takes place in our nation’s capital.

From 1901 to 1960, the Washington Senators played baseball in the American League.

Unfortunately, success on the field and at the gate was hard to come by. The city of Washington soon became known for being, “first in war, first in peace and last in the American League.” 

 

By 1960, Senators owner, Calvin Griffith, began lobbying fellow owners to approve his request to move the team to Minneapolis. At first the owners refused to consider it. The nation’s lawmakers were protective of their city’s ball club and often spoke threateningly of reconsidering baseball’s unique anti-trust exemption should the Senators be taken from them. But Major league Baseball’s decision to expand gave the American League and Griffith a new option. The American League beat the National League to the punch by expanding one year earlier which allowed Griffith’s Senators to become the Minnesota Twins and mollified the Capital’s lawmakers and fans by rewarding them with a new expansion club. 

 

The new expansion team in Washington adopted both the departing team’s name, Senators, and their futility between the lines. In 10 years of existence, the ‘new’ Senators failed to win any American League pennants. At the end of the 1971 campaign, owner Bob Short decided to move the Senators to Texas, where they became the Texas Rangers.  

 

The early 70’s was a difficult period of time for the Washington, D.C. area. Race relations were strained, fueled by forced busing in the Capitol’s school districts. Poverty, crime, and gang activity were turning whole sections of the city into war zones. D.C. mayor, Herbert Zachs, was up for re-election and reeling from accusations of fraud committed by his campaign chairman. Although Zachs was committed to keeping the Senators in the area, even willing to use the threat of removing baseball’s anti-trust exemption again, he was not able to rally his supporters at the polls, and subsequently, his re-election loss left open a window for Short to skip town with the Senators to the greener pastures of Arlington, Texas. 

 

Several years later, Zachs was persuaded to write his memoirs, and in his book, which became a national bestseller, he listed as his number one failure in office, his in-ability to keep the Senators in Washington, “thereby robbing several generations of little boys the smell of freshly mown grass, the taste of peanuts and crackerjacks, the rise and inevitable fall of hope, and watching legions of heroes perform their magic under the brilliant blue sky.”