[GeoPoto]

Thanks for the link to the interesting article about Washington baseball foibles in the dead ball era. A little additional history:

On November 27, 1859 in Washington DC, the National Baseball Club was formally organized by a group of Government clerks. That amateur team known as the Nationals played rival Washington-area teams regularly throughout the 1860's (despite the civil war) led by their star pitcher, Pue Gorman.

Gorman eventually came to be replaced in 1866 as Nationals pitcher by Henry Chadwick.

In 1867, the Washington Nationals went on a Western tour, accompanied by the world's first baseball correspondent -- Henry Chadwick, representing the New York Sunday Mercury. George Wright played second base. The Nationals won games against teams in Columbus (90-10), Cincinnati (53-10 and 88-12), Louisville (83-21), Indianapolis (106-21) and St Louis (113-26 and 53-26) before being stopped 29-23 by Forest City and their young pitcher, Al Spalding.

Spalding's baseball Guide credits the 1867 Washington Nationals with sowing the seeds of interest in and love for professionally played baseball in the hearts and minds of the American people: "In 1867, the first extended tour of a professional baseball organization was made, the Nationals of Washington appearing in different cities of the Union with such uniform success as to open the eyes of the people who had supposed the beauties of the game had received the fullest illustration at the hands of the local amateur clubs.

"The superior skill shown by the visitors sowed the seeds of healthy emulation, and the second year thereafter saw in Cincinnati the famous Red Stocking team which went through the season with a success never before achieved by a baseball club. Their career served to intensify the passion for the game and to stimulate the formation of clubs that should achieve similar renown."

Pue Gorman went on to become a U.S. Senator from Maryland. When Washington got a franchise in the National League, nostalgia for the earlier team, captained by future senator Gorman, gave rise to Senators as well as Nationals as popular team nicknames. In 1903, when the new American League franchise conducted a name-the-team contest, the same nostalgia made Nationals the winner, even though the team was in the American League.