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Path: utzoo!watmath!credmond
From: credmond@watmath.UUCP (Chris Redmond)
Newsgroups: net.sport.baseball
Subject: Re: expansion and Washington, D.C.
Message-ID: <17164@watmath.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 8-Nov-85 10:25:44 EST
Article-I.D.: watmath.17164
Posted: Fri Nov  8 10:25:44 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 10-Nov-85 07:12:11 EST
References: <2139@umcp-cs.UUCP>
Reply-To: credmond@watmath.UUCP (Chris Redmond)
Organization: U of Waterloo, Ontario
Lines: 27

>
> As you know, D.C. lost their team in 1971 when the Senators left for Texas.
>Since then, Washington has had a label as a town that couldn't keep a team.
>(I feel this is undeserved, and explained why in a lengthy article many months
>ago; if anyone missed it and would like to have me try to change their mind, I
>would love to go to bat for DC by sending it to you. I could even post if there
>was sufficient interest). Since then, there have been various efforts to bring 
>another team here, with the San Diego Padres almost moving here in 1974 until
>Ray Kroc bought them. There have been no franchise moves since then, we are
>only now getting to the point where we can discuss expansion again, and it has
>taken a while for some of the stigma DC bears to wear off. 
>
Does anybody remember a not-very-good baseball novel a few years ago
about a hypothetical team called the Washington Dudes?  I believe the
novel was called BREAKING BALLS, but I could be confusing it with a
*different* not-very-good baseball novel.

Anyway, one of the premises in the book was that baseball had (has)not
succeeded in Washington in the past because it has largely been marketed
to the white upper and middle class population, a large percentage of
which has roots (hence, baseball loyalties) in other cities.  The Dudes,
by contrast, were chiefly marketed to the city's black population, whose
roots are there or in southern areas without baseball, and thus became
a stunning success!

Any validity to that author's analysis of the Washington situation?