Washington Nationals Memorabilia

The roots of the Washington Nationals baseball team go back to 1871 and the founding of the Washington Olympics, which took its name from its home field, the Olympic Grounds. Throughout the remainder of the 19th century, the team was known variously as the Washington Nationals, the Blue Legs (a reference to the color of players' socks), and the Statesmen before settling on the Washington Senators in 1891. Although there was no professional baseball in the nation's capital in 1900, players wearing Senators uniforms would play on no less than three different fields in Washington, D.C. during the 20th century. In 1960, the Senators would become the Minnesota Twins, but they were immediately replaced by another group of players who would call themselves Senators through 1971, when the team left town yet again to become the Texas Rangers. In 2005, in a small bit of irony, one of the former owners of the Texas Rangers, President George W. Bush, threw out the first pitch when the current Washington Nationals took the field at RFK Stadium, which they shared with the Washington Redskins football team until 2008, when Nationals Park was ready for the team. Throughout their histories, the Senators and Nationals were generally losing teams, the exception being the 1924 World Series victory by the Senators over the New York Giants, which played its fourth fall pageant in a row that year. For long-suffering baseball fans in Washington, D.C., that makes the trip by the Washington Nationals to the 2019 World Series against the Houston Astros all the sweeter. Members of the Washington Senators who have made it to the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York, include Walter Johnson, who was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1936, the institution's first year. Fellow inductees that year were Babe Ruth of the New York Yankees, Christy Mathewson of the New York Giants, Honus Wagner of the Pittsburgh Pirates, and Ty Cobb of the Detroit Tigers. Other inductees include Sam Rice, Heinie Manush, Goose Goslin, and Harmon Killebrew. Some of the most prized vintage baseball memorabilia from the Senators era include signed balls, bats, and jerseys from these players, as well as pennants and programs from the late 1950s, when the Senators' graphic mascot was a caricature of a grinning, black-coated U.S. senator, chomping on a cigar as he winds up to deliver a pitch. In recent years, stars on the Nationals have included Stephen Strasburg and Bryce Harper, who left the team in 2019 for a pile of money from the Philadelphia Phillies, thus missing a chance to play in a World Series—the loss of Harper in the lineup has been offset by 2018 rookie Juan Soto, who smacked 34 homers, drove in 110 runs, and stole a dozen bases during his second season in The Show. And in 2014, the team signed Cy Young Award winner Max Scherzer, who would go on to win a two more Cy Young Awards with the Nationals in 2016 and 2017.