In my spare time I’m a bit of sports junky, especially for football and baseball. Since childhood, my favorites have been the Washington football team and the Detroit Tigers. In recent years, I’ve increasingly become a fan of the Washington Nationals as well. This has been a pretty good year for my teams.
The Tigers, with a lot of star level talent at the plate and on the mound, won their division despite a troubling late season tailspin. The Nationals, on the other hand, have become a really exciting team, getting stronger late in the season behind perhaps the best pitching in baseball, which produced three shutouts including a no hitter in their final four games. Offensively, they have made it with a group of just average batters, hitting just .253 as a team, with only one hitter at .300 and one guy with 25 homers. But, they have a knack of eking out wins with timely hitting and they have a competent new manager, Matt Williams, who put it all together to get the most out of a team not the strongest on paper.
Then there is our Washington football team. Eighty-one years ago, the then-Boston Braves changed their name to Redskins. At the time, I don’t believe the name was controversial. Not that their owner, George Preston Marshall, would have done otherwise if it had been. Marshall, who owned both Washington’s pro baseball and pro football teams, was likely the most racist professional team owner in sports. He was the last baseball team owner to include African Americans. Sensitivity to the Redskins name has grown over the years, and has come to a boil in the last several months. In fact, the term “Redskins” is now officially a “slur” according to the dictionary. I still think the team logo is majestic and honors Native Americans. It is hard to say the same for the name. Despite the hullabaloo about the name, before the season started a few weeks ago area media had hyped the team and its new coach, assuring us the team would be exciting and competitive in 2014. Wrong once again. Here we are after four games with one win, three losses. Our promising superstar quarterback, Robert Griffin, has proven too fragile for this game and is once again seriously hurt, done for the season. His backup, Kirk Cousins, is alternatively brilliant and sadly erratic. If the quarterback problem were solved, this team might score a lot of points. However, that solution is not at hand and the defense is like a large sieve for any team that can throw the football. Another blown season with a painfully long way to go.
So, for me, it’s Go Nats! Hail to the Nationals! Hail Victory! Let’s enjoy the baseball playoffs and maybe even a World Series. And, if the Nats could play and whip the Orioles in the Series, how sweet would that be.
Football-wise we’ve got some good local college teams to watch. I’ll check back next year on that pro team which is now a disgrace not only to Native Americans, but to the rest of us as well. New subject — a correction. A couple of weeks ago in this column, I commented on the 2014 election season and erroneously included comments on a race for state delegate in Reston. In fact, the only elections on the ballot in Reston in 2014 are for representative in Congress and for U.S. Senator. I regret the error.