The Corner

The Washington Whatevers

Washington’s new baseball team probably will have to wait a while before it gets a name, as Bud Selig says he wants the new owners (who haven’t bought the team yet) to decide. The Washington Post is running a poll here. The clear frontrunner is the Senators, a traditional choice. The clear second-place option is the Grays, another traditional but less-known name. Then there’s the rest of the pack, which includes the Washington Monuments, a name that tends to make the rounds when D.C. has a sports-name competition (as it did a few years ago when basketball’s Bullets become the Wizards). The Washington Cicadas is sort of interesting, but I can hear the jokes now (“a winning season every 17 years”). And here’s an interesting one: the Washington Filibusters. I like the congressional reference as well as the historical one. (Wouldn’t it be neat if the Washington Filibusters played a series in a liberated Havana?) But there’s a nickname problem: What are we supposed to call them? The Fillies? Or the Busters?

John J. Miller, the national correspondent for National Review and host of its Great Books podcast, is the director of the Dow Journalism Program at Hillsdale College. He is the author of A Gift of Freedom: How the John M. Olin Foundation Changed America.
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