The number of times Washington lost a major league baseball team, in ten years.
The saying
First in war, first in peace, last in the American League. It was a joke made at the city's expense for half a century, and for most of that time it was accurate. The Senators finished in the bottom half of the league in the great majority of their seasons.
1924
Walter Johnson had pitched for Washington since 1907 and was the best pitcher of his generation on one of the worst teams. He was thirty six before he reached a World Series.
He lost the first game and lost the fifth. In the seventh, with the score tied in the ninth, he came out of the bullpen and pitched four scoreless innings until Washington scored in the twelfth on a ball that bounced over the third baseman's head.
It is the only World Series the city has won with that franchise.
The first departure
In 1960 the owner, Calvin Griffith, applied to move the club to Minneapolis. The league approved it and, to keep a team in the capital, granted Washington an expansion franchise that took the same name.
The second
The new Senators were bad for ten seasons and drew poorly. In 1971 the owner, Bob Short, moved them to Arlington, Texas, where they became the Rangers. The last home match was abandoned in the ninth inning when spectators came onto the field and took the bases.
After
Washington had no baseball from 1972 until 2005, when the Montreal Expos were moved there and renamed the Nationals.
The city that lost two teams was given a third by a third city losing one.