D.C. baseball fans weren’t born yesterday

While an editorial squib in praise of the Washington Nationals is always welcome, “praising with faint damns”my native city is not “Loving those curly W’s,” [July 31].

“Washington may be on the verge of becoming a baseball town at last”? Harrumph! Washington is and has been a baseball town for more than a century.

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The major league shenanigans that relocated two profitable (and moderately successful) clubs reflect poorly on Major League Baseball, not the cadre of baseball-mad “cave-dwellers” (as we Washingtonians are affectionately known) .

I was born on Capitol Hill during the second Roosevelt administration (FDR, mind you, not Teddy), and I began attending games with my grandfather during the war (that would be World War II). While there were, as yet, no black players, Clark Griffith did let us black folks attend the games of both professional teams that played at his stadium. (It was Washington Redskins owner George Preston Marshall who was the racist, not Mr. Griffith.)

Our town is chock-full of the native-born, black and white. A huge number of us have been baseball fans all along. We are not “on the verge” of anything, except perhaps another pennant.

Roosevelt Hawkins, Washington