I Have Acquired a Hat of Significance

I saw the Smithsonian Baseball as America exhibit yesterday, and it was slamming, as the kids say. They had John McGraw's wife's chair, Casey Stengel's 1964 All-Star ballot, and Three-Finger Brown's hand in a jar. There was a special emphasis on baseball in DC, which I took as endorsement of the Cause I so fanatically serve. Walter Johnson's glove was on display, as well as Buck Leonard's Grays jersey and scorecards from a really long time ago. I wish I could be more specific, but I kind of shut that part of my brain off after I saw Jim Palmer's underwear ad. Congratulations, Jim. Your package has been immortalized in the Smithsonian.

Buffalo shots aside, it was nifty as all get-out, and you should see it before it pulls up stakes in October. Perhaps the best part was the end, when you buy stuff. No, I'm not trying to be all cynical about our plastic consumer society, man, I mean it. If there's one thing I dig, it's dead baseball teams (my St. Louis Browns cap will attest to this). Well, the gift shop had dead teams galore. If this blogging gig paid better, I'd be wearing a $255 Senators jersey right now. Or at least the $80 Grays one (something I just thought of - the Rangers still own the Senators name and all that. Does Tom Hicks get the scrilla when they sell Senators stuff?). There was a bunch of other old Negro League and major league hats and whatnot, but I only had eyes for the Senators stuff. If I may direct your attention here, they had the one at the bottom with the cursive W, but the one I got looks like the third one, except the back is blue. This means I can represent 24-7, not only on the Internet, but also in the real world. So if you see a devastatingly handsome fellow with beige hair and a Senators cap, holler at me. Show some support for the Cause. Suggest a new name to call Peter Angelos or another way to say that the Expos can't hit.


In other news, the Washington Post finally deigned to mention this city's life-or-death struggle to get the Expos. I shouldn't complain; it was a fine piece. Not good enough to link to, though - there's something about the Post's registration procedure that really gets to me. If you have a physical copy of the paper, it's on the second page of the Sports section (the front page is taken up with tennis, golf, gymnastics, and soccer. See why we need a baseball team?) The best part is when George Solomon, the author, whom I should probably have mentioned earlier, quotes Fred Malek, head of the DC ownership group, as saying that this is the most optimistic he's been in five years. That, combined with Angelos saying he's resigned to the advent of the Expos, makes me feel pretty good (my new hat helps, too). I'm almost certainly getting ahead of myself, but at the moment I'm more concerned about Northern Virginia getting the new stadium than I am about the area getting a team at all.