Jinxed franchise, jinxed city? - Gorch on the porch: Steve Gorches ...

No, I'm not talking about the Chicago Cubs. That's more like a lost cause. But the Washington Nationals' collapse on Friday night at the hands of the defending World Series champion St. Louis Cardinals is just another knife in the heart of baseball fans in Washington D.C. The Nationals franchise dates back to 1969 as the Montreal Expos. In all those years there have only been two playoff appearances -- this season and 1981, both losses in the first round of the playoffs.

The 1955 Original Cast Recording (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

But the city of Washington dates back further with the Senators playing from 1901 to 1971 before becoming the Texas Rangers. The Senators' futility rivals the Cubs over the years. They've only won one World Series (1924), made it to the Series two other times (1925 and 1933) and finished a season with a winning record of any kind just 26 percent of the time. Twice the Senators lost 110 games or more, and that was when they only played 152 in a season. The Senators even had a musical made about the team's futility called "Damn Yankees"?in which a long suffering Senators fan chooses to sell his soul to the devil in exchange for his baseball team finally beating the Yankees in the 1950s. So blowing the biggest lead in a playoff series clinching game on Friday (6-0) and blowing a two-run lead in the ninth inning with the Cardinals down to their last strike twice is nothing new to Washington fans. By the way, the previous record for a blown lead in a playoff clincher was four runs, and one of the times it happened was 1925 by, you guessed it, the Senators.

Source: http://blogs.post-trib.com/gorches/2012/10/jinxed-franchise-jinxed-city.html

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