The Twins owe it to baseball to celebrate Walter Johnson and the Washington Senators – Twins

The twins began in 1901 as senators from Washington. Sure, they started playing baseball in Bloomington 60 years later, but they didn’t go out of style coconut red pine. They have a proud history as one of the eight charter member franchises of the American League. As such, they are responsible for maintaining this place in baseball history.

Many Minnesota fans might be hesitant to take on that responsibility. Some may not be aware of the franchise’s history prior to 1961. There was some confusion amid the Twins’ celebration of the 1924 World Series and (hilariously, out of context) the retirement of the Twins’ 42 greats. Jackie Robinson. weeks ago.

In 1961, Calvin Griffith moved the Washington Senators (sometimes called the Nationals) to Minnesota and renamed them the Twins. Baseball was moving West, and Griffith saw an opportunity to place a team in the Upper Midwest. Teams moved all the time back then. Of the eight founding members of the American League, only four remain in the city where they started. The Athletics had moved from Philadelphia to Kansas City in 1955. They kept the name all the way, but the Brewers left Milwaukee for St. Louis and renamed themselves the Browns – then when they went to Baltimore they became the Orioles. . (The original Baltimore Orioles folded.) It’s what teams have done and continue to do. Sometimes they kept their names, such as the track team or the Boston-Milwaukee-Atlanta who indeed they wanted to hang on to their branding. Other teams stayed put and changed names, such as the Cleveland Bluebirds, morphed into the Bronchos, morphed into the Naps, who also eventually settled on a name for a long time of time before becoming Guardians a few years ago.

That move or name change doesn’t mean the franchise is over. The players were still there. The most obvious example for Minnesota fans is Harmon Killebrew. Killer played for the franchise 21 of his 22 years in the MLB. Six of those seasons came for the Washington Senators, which included an All-Star appearance in 1959. Other Twins legends such as Earl Battey, Bob Allison, Camilo Pasqual, Jim Kaat and Zoilo Versalles made the move. At the time, they were as much senators as they were twins.

Sure, they didn’t play in Minnesota before 1961, but they didn’t leave their organization to get here. They were the same boys, in a different shirt. This might be controversial to say, but the team does not belong to the city; just live there. Just ask baseball fans in Philadelphia, Kansas City and now Oakland. We’re 140 years past the idea that professional-caliber teams were primarily made up of players from the city they represented. Once this representation ceases to be geographically determined, we must recognize that part of our loyalty is to the organization rather than to the place. How much it should be is a personal choice for each fan.

Baseball continued in the nation’s capital. Right after the Senators left for Minnesota, MLB expanded and placed a new Washington Senators in DC. The District of Columbia has kept baseball, but this is a new team, even if it has a different name. Killebrew, Allison, Pasqual, Kaat and Versalles were replaced by Dick Donovan, Joe McClain and Bennie Daniels. The rose by any other name didn’t smell as sweet.

What claims did the new senators have against the old senators? They failed to claim Killebrew and company. They had their own story to write. And they wrote that story in Washington until 1971, when the franchise moved to Arlington and became the Rangers.

Three decades later, the Capitol got another shot at baseball in the form of relocating and rebranding the Washington Expos as the Nationals. But then again, they brought their own story to DC

Why does this history lesson matter? Well, for one, it showcases the complexity of the revolving door of baseball teams in Washington. But it also highlights a conundrum — confusion over who keeps the history of the Washington Senators. As a Minnesota baseball fan, that might not matter to you. But it should.

No player’s story makes the point better than Walter Johnson. The Big Train, depending on your definition, may be the greatest pitcher in baseball history. All-time, he ranks 1st in shutouts, 2nd in wins (417), 3rd in innings pitched (5,914), 7th in ERA (2.17) and 9th in innings pitched (3,508) . Baseball Reference ranks him No. 2 in career pitching WAR and FanGraphs ranks him No. 4.

Johnson played his entire 21-year career with the Senators from 1907 to 1927. He deserves to be celebrated, even by current baseball fans. But who will if not the Twins — the franchise for which he threw nearly 6,000 innings?

The Texas Rangers claim no claim. Those senators didn’t exist during Johnson’s lifetime and were only in town for 11 years. It would be sacrilege to have a night with Walter Johnson in Arlington.

The Nationals have a better case, but it’s still weak. The franchise now resides in D.C., and the old-time Senators were sometimes called the Nationals, but this franchise, which started in Montreal decades after Johnson’s death, has no connection to him other than living in the same place in 80 years from his career. ended I will be dead before the former Montreal Expos have the honor of calling Walter Johnson one of their own, at least in any exclusive sense.

That duty and privilege rests with the Twins, the franchise that employed Johnson for 21 years. There is a real connective tissue between him and these Twins. For better or for worse, the history of the Twins organization cannot be told without Calvin Griffith, whose father Clark pitched alongside Johnson and later became the team’s president before passing it on to his stepson. Calvin, the same man whose occasional racism cost the Rod Carew twins in the 1970s, was a bat boy for Johnson the year he did what Carew never could: bat .400 in a championship season. It’s not all happy history, but the Griffiths are a vital part of Twins history, and the Griffiths have become a baseball family in Washington.

Sure, you could say that Johnson belongs to Washington baseball and its fans, and you have a point. Because a franchise and its place of residence are not one and the same, a player, team, and local fan base can belong to each other, with overlapping, offset, and interspersed loyalties. You can apply the same logic to baseball fans in Minnesota to explain why those fans might have no connection to Johnson. But this is not about Minnesota and Minnecentrism. It’s about the history of baseball.

You don’t have to pretend that Walter Johnson is a Minnesota baseball legend. But the Minnesota Twins — the former Washington Senators who now live here — must claim it, because no other franchise can.

Walter Johnson is a giant in baseball history, but there are still 39 more years of non-Big Train baseball for the Washington franchise. There are 60 years of stories that must be preserved.

If the Twins don’t take responsibility for keeping that history alive, who will? Certainly not ex-Expos.