Washington Senators

Once upon a time, when a journalist's dream was more apt to center on the Great American Novel than lucrative dot-com opportunities, a young writer named John Douglass Wallop III tried his hand at fiction. He was so serious about his craft that he gave up journalism to work in his father's Washington insurance agency, selling policies by day and writing at night. His first book, "Night Light," received some nice critical notices, but it came and went without much fanfare. In 1953, he was at work on a second book, when he set it aside and dashed off, in just three months, a novel devoted to his lifelong obsession: the Washington Senators.

June 22, 1996: Trailing 3-0 in the bottom of the ninth inning, the Orioles hit three home runs to defeat the Kansas City Royals, 5-3. Rafael Palmeiro, Bobby Bonilla and Mark Smith connect for the second-place Birds (39-31). June 20, 1974: Moses Malone, a highly recruited, 6-foot-11 center from Petersburg, Va., signs a grant-in-aid to attend Maryland. The Terps ' jubilation is short-lived: In August, before having started school, Malone turns pro with the Utah Stars of the American Basketball Association.

June 22, 1996: Trailing 3-0 in the bottom of the ninth inning, the Orioles hit three home runs to defeat the Kansas City Royals, 5-3. Rafael Palmeiro, Bobby Bonilla and Mark Smith connect for the second-place Birds (39-31). June 20, 1974: Moses Malone, a highly recruited, 6-foot-11 center from Petersburg, Va., signs a grant-in-aid to attend Maryland. The Terps ' jubilation is short-lived: In August, before having started school, Malone turns pro with the Utah Stars of the American Basketball Association.

Few people were walking around downtown Laurel Tuesday evening, but at Main Street Sports Grill, nearly every seat at the bar was taken for happy hour. Since April marks the start of Major League Baseball play, the multiple flat-screen televisions behind the bar were showing ESPN's highlights from games across the nation. However, come 7 p.m., ESPN would be replaced by coverage of two games, one featuring the Baltimore Orioles, and the other the Washington Nationals. Laurel is sandwiched between Baltimore and Washington, about a half-hour drive away from either city, and at Main Street Sports Grill, baseball loyalties were divided between the two teams.

June 20, 1970: Brooks Robinson got his 2,000th career hit -- a three-run homer that helped the Orioles beat the Washington Senators.

Louis Mortimer Sleater, a standout high school athlete who ended his seven-year major league pitching career with the Baltimore Orioles and was later a steel salesman, died of lung disease Monday at his Timonium home. He was 86. A left-handed knuckleballer, he played for the St. Louis Browns, Washington Senators, Kansas City Athletics, Milwaukee Braves and Detroit Tigers before joining the Orioles in 1958. "He was the epitome of the journeyman left-hand pitcher in the 1950s," said Phil Wood, an MASN broadcaster who lives in Glyndon.

Fernando Valenzuela was the third and most recent rookie pitcher to start an All-Star Game when he started in 1981 in Cleveland as a member of the Los Angeles Dodgers. The others were Dave Stenhouse of the Washington Senators (started the second game in 1962 at Chicago's Wrigley Field) and the Detroit Tigers' Mark Fidrych (at Philadelphia in 1976).Former Oriole and current Tigers general manager Jerry Walker would have qualified by today's rules to have started the second game in 1959 (at the Los Angeles Coliseum)

When a deal with the devil is made, trouble is bound to ensue. That's exactly what happened in Mount Hebron High School's production last week of Damn Yankees. An incredible cast drove this show forward, while numbers like "Six Months Out of Every Year" and "Heart" kept toes tapping in the audience. A middle-age Washington Senators fan strikes a deal with the devil, so the story goes, to become a great baseball player and help the Senators beat their rivals, the New York Yankees. He faces a choice in the end: Go back to his wife and miss the last game of the season, or help the Senators win and hand his soul to the devil.

Few people were walking around downtown Laurel Tuesday evening, but at Main Street Sports Grill, nearly every seat at the bar was taken for happy hour. Since April marks the start of Major League Baseball play, the multiple flat-screen televisions behind the bar were showing ESPN's highlights from games across the nation. However, come 7 p.m., ESPN would be replaced by coverage of two games, one featuring the Baltimore Orioles, and the other the Washington Nationals. Laurel is sandwiched between Baltimore and Washington, about a half-hour drive away from either city, and at Main Street Sports Grill, baseball loyalties were divided between the two teams.

PHILADELPHIA offers a cautionary tale to Marylanders who might get overzealous in the preservation of historic landmarks.The point is that some landmarks aren't historic and, if they are, aren't worth preserving.The old state penitentiary at 22nd and Fairmount Avenues in Philadelphia is a case in point. A huge gray-granite walled and turreted fortress, the abandoned structure covers an entire city block and, in our view, blights an entire neighborhood that is trying to raise itself out of slum status.

The Baltimore Orioles are back in town for their home opener on Friday, and this is the moment when newspaper editorialists generally wax poetic about baseball in spring, fathers and sons, the uncertain state of the national pastime and hope springing eternal. There's usually a bit about how baseball is like life, how you have brief moments of action but mostly it's about planning and anticipation and how even the greatest ballplayers and teams do not succeed much of the time. Oh, we could go on. References to baseball movies like "Field of Dreams" or "The Natural" are big, too. And there's usually a few jokes about how baseball relates to the politics of the day or maybe a famous quote or two. Like how Harry Truman once presciently warned the owner of the Washington Senators to look out for Richard Nixon's curve.

Louis Mortimer Sleater, a standout high school athlete who ended his seven-year major league pitching career with the Baltimore Orioles and was later a steel salesman, died of lung disease Monday at his Timonium home. He was 86. A left-handed knuckleballer, he played for the St. Louis Browns, Washington Senators, Kansas City Athletics, Milwaukee Braves and Detroit Tigers before joining the Orioles in 1958. "He was the epitome of the journeyman left-hand pitcher in the 1950s," said Phil Wood, an MASN broadcaster who lives in Glyndon.

April 8, 1963: President John F. Kennedy threw out the first pitch at D.C. Stadium before the Washington Senators hosted the Orioles in their home opener. The Orioles won, 3-1.

A. Ronald "Ron" Menchine, the last voice of the Washington Senators and noted collector of baseball postcards and author of "A Picture History of Baseball," died Friday of a heart attack at his Glen Arm home. He was 76. "Ron was a very unique individual and kind of old school. He understood the radio experience, and his broadcasting style was never bombastic," said Phil Wood, an old friend and analyst for the Mid-Atlantic Sports Network, which broadcasts Orioles and Nationals games.

When a deal with the devil is made, trouble is bound to ensue. That's exactly what happened in Mount Hebron High School's production last week of Damn Yankees. An incredible cast drove this show forward, while numbers like "Six Months Out of Every Year" and "Heart" kept toes tapping in the audience. A middle-age Washington Senators fan strikes a deal with the devil, so the story goes, to become a great baseball player and help the Senators beat their rivals, the New York Yankees. He faces a choice in the end: Go back to his wife and miss the last game of the season, or help the Senators win and hand his soul to the devil.

GLENELG RESIDENT Allen Derwent has some great baseball memories. Oh, indeed. Did you hear about the time Harmon Killebrew and Bob Allison, one-time Washington Senators stars who moved with that ill-fated team to the Twin Cities in 1960, would some years later torment a rookie on the new, replacement Senators with rats? Oh, yes. Derwent has some memories. He was one of the new Senators' last two batboys, an experience that gave him a lifetime of memories, some of which he shared Saturday with local members of the Society for American Baseball Research at a gathering in an Ellicott City bookstore.