Jason Reid, Dan Steinberg and Dave Sheinin joined Jonathan Forsythe on this week’s webcast to discuss the end of the Capitals season, Dale Hunter’s resignation, the Nats injury and closer issues and Bryce Harper’s first home run.

Post Sports Live streams live on washingtonpost.com every Tuesday at noon; archives can be found at washingtonpost.com/postsportslive .

(Greg Fiume - GETTY IMAGES) I spent much of Tuesday searching through The Post’s archives for a story Reader Don, as in Graham, recently mentioned to me.

I couldn’t find it.

But while looking, and in between cursing, I stumbled upon a column by Bob Addie that ran in the Sports section 45 years ago this week. The Nats were 12-11 at the time, which doesn’t seem like much, but it was enough to prompt the headline “Nats Generating Enthusiasm,” and prose like this.

It has come as an astonishing surprise to many that baseball still is played in the United States. The recent surge of enthusiasm for soccer, and the never-ending items of interest about the Redskins, seem to have obscured a local baseball team valiantly performing....

Statistics are like eating crackers without something to wash them down. But consider that Washington hasn’t won a pennant since 1933 (even the Republicans have won a pennant since then)....

Can you imagine a boy in a major-league city growing up without ever having a pennant winner? All the other clubs, excluding the new franchises and the expansion clubs, have won pennants in the majors since 1933...

The enthusiasm is blooming around town. It always blooms and lasts about as long as the cherry blossoms. People have been saying for years that if Washington had a good team the fans would come out....

Whatever the Nats do this year depends on the pitching staff. Thus far, the staff has been sensational....

The Washington public is eager to embrace the Nats but for many years this love has been unrequited. There is evidence of the yearning the local fans have for a good team.

And so on and so forth. Substitute the word “hockey” for “soccer,” and get rid of the Republicans quip, and you’d be able to print this column verbatim, 45 years later. Of course, I excised a whole lot of Gil Hodges paragraphs, but still.

As for the story I was searching about, I’ll try again on Wednesday. If I can’t find it, I will post an 1895 staff editorial in favor of the whipping post. That one could probably not be printed verbatim today.

(Greg Fiume - GETTY IMAGES) I’ve heard lots of things suggested about the Nats’ decision to limit Stephen Strasburg’s innings this season: that it’s wise, inarguable, excessively cautionary, arbitrary, and every adjective in between.

Here’s what I haven’t heard: that it signals a lack of desire from the front office to win. Until this week, anyhow, when ESPN columnist (and former Post staff writer) Howard Bryant just blistered the club over its Strasburg stance.

After calling the decision “stunningly nonsensical” and bemoaning “the deification of the general manager” in baseball and an overreliance on statistics, Bryant argues that the Nats could use a six-man rotation or furlough Strasburg for two weeks to make sure he’s available in September. And then he writes this:

If the Nationals actually go through a magical summer and the city of Washington has a chance to experience playoff baseball for the first time since the Dust Bowl, Strasburg the ace should pitch when needed. If he doesn’t, fans should line up and pay for something else (there’s this kid, Robert Griffin III, who will be in the area) and the city should demand a $611 million refund — in cash — from the Nationals for building a stadium for a team that isn’t trying to win, and especially for a front office that prefers looking smart to actually being smart.

Like I said, I hadn’t previously seen anyone call for the Nats to refund $611 million in cash because of Strasburg’s innings limit. And I don’t think Strasburg will have a much of an impact on RGIII excitement, innings limit or not.

(Read the story here.)

(And here’s Mike Rizzo on limiting Strasburg’s work.)

So, let’s talk about Kenyan mini-buses taxis, also known as matatus. Via the BBC:

Kenya's minibus taxis, known as matatus — the country’s main form of public transport — are renowned for their dangerous driving, blaring out music at deafening volumes and their elaborate, graffiti-style artwork, often based on leading footballers, singers or film stars.

Owners and designers compete to have the loudest sound system and the most eye-catching design, saying this attracts customers, but the government is trying to clamp down on them and has banned loud music and ordered matatus to have simple colour schemes.

As part of its report, the BBC quoted artist Hassan “Rasta” Mohamed, who has been working on matatus for 22 years and is opposed to the crackdown.

“The graffiti that we are doing at the moment...is an art form,” he said in an audio slideshow. “This is something we’ve created on our own. It’s our own ideas, we’ve decided to start it and we really enjoy it. We’ve made it part of our life.”

Which is why there’s a pimped-out Kenyan mini-bus taxi with a Curly W logo on its back.

(Via Reader Seb.)

Previously

Mike Easton’s Curly W tattoo

Kevin Durant’s Curly W tattoo

Random Curly Ws on TV

High School Football Curly Ws

A few more things about Bryce Harper’s first career home run.

1) His time around the bases was clocked at 17.07 seconds, making it the second-fastest trot in the big leagues this season.

2) Bob Carpenter’s call included this line: “and several more hundred to follow, we hope.” Keeping expectations down.

3) Hitting coach Rick Eckstein and Chad Tracy combined to snatch Harper’s batting helmet, as seen below.

4) Something about the experience caused a lot of people to smile. Especially Ross Detwiler, after Harper took a curtain call. See above, and also below.

5) And Ryan Zimmerman was being very face of the franchise-y.