Washington is getting excited these days about two heroes, but they’re not named Barack Obama and Mitt Romney. They’re Stephen Strasburg and Ryan Zimmerman.
For those of you who don’t follow baseball (and that’s your loss), Strasburg is the brilliant young pitcher for the Washington Nationals, and Zimmerman is the star third baseman. As of this writing, they’ve help propel the Nats into first place in the National League East. Only Ron Paul winning the Republican nomination could have been a more surprising development.
Nothing can define a region more clearly — or create a sense of unity more effectively — than a successful sports team. Think of New England’s Red Sox Nation or Green Bay’s Packer Backers or the nut-balls who drive their RVs across the Southeast on fall Saturdays following the University of Alabama football team. (It’s possible to be buried in an officially licensed Crimson Tide coffin.) The Nats have not quite reached that level of fanaticism, but this city sure could use a strong infusion of community pride and spirit.
Many local residents are transplants who retain ties to their hometown teams. Steve grew up in New Jersey rooting for the Yankees and he still does, even after living here for almost 35 years. On summer nights, in the age before satellite radios, you could visit the grounds of the National Cathedral (the highest point in the city with the best reception) and cars would be lined up in the parking lot listening to games back home in St. Louis or Cincinnati or Detroit.
Moreover, the area is split among three distinct geographical regions — Maryland, Virginia and D.C. — so people here lack common institutions as well as a common history. Washington kids don’t grow up chanting “Rock Chalk Jayhawk” (Kansas) or “Hook ‘em Horns” (Texas) or even — thank goodness — “Wooo Pig Sooie” (Arkansas). The closest they can come to a local anthem is the fight song of the Washington Redskins, which includes the deathless lyric “fight for old D.C..” (Sweet, but not exactly Notre Dame’s “Shake down the thunder from the sky.”)
In fact, the capital’s cohesiveness is growing weaker, not stronger. Swifter air travel makes commuting easier —turns out Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta flies home to California many weekends on military aircraft. Many lawmakers, particularly conservatives, run against Washington as Gomorrah-on-the-Potomac, so fewer of them are bringing their families — and their loyalties — to town. Add in the poisonous partisanship that clings to Congress like a toxic cloud, and the result is a region splintered into countless jagged pieces.
