There, now I can move forward.
The Washington Nationals and Baltimore Orioles just completed their first series of the 2023 MLB season, and while television does its best at promoting this as a rivalry, it’s once again rearing its ugly head as to why it is not.
While the two cities may be rivals, their teams are not even close to that yet. Why? Because I believe that to be rivals, enough meaningful games need to have been played. The Orioles and Nationals just have not played enough of those games. Not yet.
Their ballparks are an hour away from each other, but aside from that fact, there’s simply not much hatred left to build a good rivalry.
They don’t play in the same division or the same league. Unlike the Mets and Yankees, they don’t share a city together.
Think about some of the games’ most historic rivalries: the brightest lights are on when either postseason games or games that can determine who wins a division are played out.
There are exceptions – think Duke-North Carolina in basketball or Yankees-red Sox in baseball. Regular season, postseason, it doesn’t matter. Those games just mean more.
But the games must matter first; it’s just that simple.
Since the Nationals moved to DC from Montreal in 2005, both Washington and Baltimore have rarely been good at the same time.
When Washington won the World Series in 2019, the Orioles were a 100-plus-loss team. Now the Orioles are competitive, a playoff-caliber team, while the Nats are clearly in a rebuild mode.
My daughter and I attended the recently completed O’s-Nats two-game series this week at Nationals Park, with the Orioles throwing back-to-back shutouts in the sweep.
With about 20,000 on hand for both games, the energy level in the stadium never reached fever pitch. Baltimore had a strong contingent of fans on hand, but couldn’t muster enough noise on their own to create a buzz.
Elizabeth, my daughter, lives in the DC area, and attends Nationals games on a regular basis. I’m a lifelong Orioles fan, who attended at least eight games numerous seasons recently when Baltimore lost 100 games or more routinely.
I was expecting some “playful banter” between the team fan bases. My daughter would disagree, she says I was looking for it. Or as she said, “you were baiting them.”
But nothing, the entire game.
In fact, toward the end of Tuesday’s game, the Orioles and National fans were sitting together, even chanting “Lets go O’s” in unison.
Huh?
One Nationals fan I chatted with (briefly) even said, “Wouldn’t it be great if both teams were good?”
Again, huh?
Now back to why this Beltway Series hasn’t reached a true rivalry yet.
If you were to consider on-field history to determine if this is a rivalry, the answer would be that no, nothing special has happened between these two clubs that would make a Nationals-Orioles game anything more than a friendly neighborly game between two teams and their fanbases.
The most meaningful games between the two teams could only happen in a World Series, which would require more than both teams to be good at the same time, but be borderline great at the same time.
Back to the Yankees-Mets for a moment.
This is MLB’s only true interleague rivals. Their annual Subway Series doesn’t have more significance on each team’s playoff hopes than any other regular-season series, but it means more than that to the fans.
This rivalry also means more because the Mets and Yankees have met for meaningful baseball in the past, specifically the 2000 World Series, which the Yankees won.
So, until the Beltway Series becomes the World Series, the Orioles and Nationals are simply a casual gathering between two friendly fanbases.
Ask Elizabeth, I did my part this week to heat things up. But those darn polite Nationals fans refused to take the bait.
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