Does this make sense

[soberdennis]

the Texas Rangers own the rights to the name Washington Senators.
For that reason the Expos could not take the name long associated with Washington Baseball.
Why is that? Do the Rangers plan on moving back to Washington some time.
It's not that a city owning a name does not have precedence in sports. The Browns in the NFL come to mind immediately. But even in baseball, if the Orioles move, they won't take the name with them. Every team in professional baseball, major or minor, has been named the Orioles.
For that matter, why the Rangers and not the Twins? The Twins were the Senators first.
The truth is neither the Twins or the Rangers will ever use the Senators name again. Shouldn't that name belong to the city of Washington?

[Brian McKenna]

art modell gave the city of cleveland the name browns - he could very well have kept it - likewise i would imagine calvin griffith gave the name senators to the city or the american league after he moved

[soberdennis]

Ok. But it still doesn't make sense.

[KCGHOST]

It may not make sense but it is legal. If the Nats really wanted that name they could probably buy it from the Rangers.

[JohnGelnarFan]

I wish they would,if that's the case. It's great having a team in Washington again and that for years they were called the Nationals,but I'll always feel that they should be called the Senators.

[joepepitone]

The Expos/pre-Nats could have pulled a sneaky one by calling themselves:ahem... THE SENATEURS!!! This retains that subtle French quality and the buy out from the Rangers is not needed:clapping The CFL (Canadian Football League) was so close in naming the Baltimore team THE KOLTS just to stick it to the Indy/N.F.L. Copyrights are for fascists.

[JohnGelnarFan]

You know,the more I think about it,that doesn't sound bad! They could use the original Script across their uniforms and still pay homage to their roots in Montreal. The new owners may not want to do something like that but I like the idea JoeP! :clapping

[Brian McKenna]

i was actually hoping washington would call their new team the grays

[Timbones]

I'd like to see the club establish its own identity. It's time for something new.

[princethomas]

I think that the Washington Senators deserve to be remembered better than they are. The Nationals should be the rebirth of the Senators. I read that the Nationals was the official name of the Senators anyway. In my opinion, the Nats should allow the Senators to be removed from the Defunct Team list. 1900-1972 and then from 2005 on. If Soriano is going to set a team record, it should be measured against the Senators, not the Expos. Let the Expos be the Defunct team.

[Aa3rt]

1899 The Washington Senators of the National League are one of four teams eliminated when the league reduces from 12 to 8 teams.

1901 Washington is one of the franchises included in the rival American League. From 1901-1905 this franchise is known as the Senators.

1905 The Washington team renames itself the Nationals. This is the official name through the 1955 season.

1912 Clark Griffith becomes manager of the Washington Nationals, a position he would hold for 8 years, through 1920. During this time frame sports writers would sometimes call the Nationals the "Grifs" or "Grifmen".

Clark Griffith becomes owner of the team-(unsure of the precise date)-he supposedly says that every state has a senate so the name Senators does not have a special distinction, however as Washington is the nation's capital the name Nationals is more appropriate.

1954 Clark Griffith dies, the team is taken over by his adopted nephew Calvin.

1955 Giving in to popular sentiment, Calvin makes the official name of the franchise the Senators.

1960 After a couple of years of making overtures to move the team, the Washington Senators franchise is moved to Minneapolis. Originally expansion of both the American and National Leagues was to take place in 1962. However Calvin insists that the American League expand a year earlier so that the franchise records can be transferred to Minnesota. Fearing a loss of anti-trust exemption, (due to abandoning Washington) the American League owners agree. Thus, in 1961 the American League begins play with 10 teams, the ORIGINAL Washington Senators having moved to Minnesota with the franchise records, and the EXPANSION Senators and Los Angeles Angels beginning their first year of play.

An excellent writeup on the original Senators franchise can be found here (http://www.sportsecyclopedia.com/al/wasdc/nats.html).

After the 1971 season, Bob Short took the expansion Senators to Texas. So...The Minnesota Twins ended up with the franchise records, the Texas Rangers ended up with the franchise name and the fans in Washington ended up without a team for 34 years.

Does it make sense? No, however I will admit that I was originally in favor of naming the relocated Expos the Senators-two years later I'm not so sure, I've grown comfortable with the team name the Nationals. They'll never replace the Senators that I grew up rooting for but they are now my team, although I've always followed the American League more closely.

[captsapp]

So the records of the team called the Nationals/Senators until 1960 belong to the franchise in Minnesota, and the records of the Senators from 1961-1972 belong to the Texas Rangers, right?

If so, don't you think the Twins should have a ginormous picture of Walter Johnson hanging up in right field?

Peace
Scott

[Dodgerfan1]

Some teams that move to a new city should not keep their nicknames. If Milwaukee moved it's team, it wouldn't make sense to keep calling them the Brewers (unless they moved to another city that brews a lot of beer). The Twins should stay in Minnesota or their nickname wouldn't work well, and there are lots of Orioles in Baltimore. The Astros stuck with the name although they no longer play in the Astrodome and the Rangers seem to fit well in Texas.

Baseball is probably the one sport where obvious ill-suited nicknames get changed with a move. It didn't matter much if the Dodgers played in Brooklyn or LA (there weren't many trolleys left to dodge in Brooklyn in '58 anymore), the Giants move to SF didn't make the nickname 'Giants' any less appropriate, and the Athletics and Braves worked just as well in their new towns as their old.

Now in other sports, we have a problem. In the NBA, the Lakers were much better suited to sport that nickname while in Minneapolis than LA, and the Jazz worked SOOO much better in New Orleans than in Utah! In football, there aren't that many bad nicknames out there, although you may be hard pressed to find many cardinals in Arizona these days!

[Brownieand45sfan]

1899 (SNIP)However Calvin insists that the American League expand a year earlier so that the franchise records can be transferred to Minnesota. (SNIP)
I would have thought it would have been easier to transfer the franchise records if there were not a new Washington team coming until '62. Not sure why it would be "hard" in any event. He was the team's owner after all...

U.S. Trademark law is essentially "Use it or lose it". I don't see why a team couldn't call themselves the Washington Senators, St. Louis Browns, etc. Oh .. I am sure MLB would still fight it, arguing that they still use the name for merchandise. Their argument would be stronger with respect to old logos that have been in continuous use on merch since the team moved (argument is weaker on just the name alone on merch). The end result of such a legal battle would probably be that you could play ball as any team name that isn't presently taken, but you couldnt sell merch, or at least merch would have to be based on new designs.

There was a newspaper in St. Louis for 100 years called the Globe-Democrat. Newhouse Newspapers essentially colluded with the Post-Dispatch and killed it off. Soon after, a small entrepreneur started a monthly newspaper by that name in St. Louis. Same masthead and everything. I think Newhouse Newspapers might have fought that entrepreneur and lost.

[bryanac625]

the Texas Rangers own the rights to the name Washington Senators.
For that reason the Expos could not take the name long associated with Washington Baseball.
Why is that? Do the Rangers plan on moving back to Washington some time.
It's not that a city owning a name does not have precedence in sports. The Browns in the NFL come to mind immediately. But even in baseball, if the Orioles move, they won't take the name with them. Every team in professional baseball, major or minor, has been named the Orioles.
For that matter, why the Rangers and not the Twins? The Twins were the Senators first.
The truth is neither the Twins or the Rangers will ever use the Senators name again. Shouldn't that name belong to the city of Washington?

I think every team and city are a little different in how they celebrates their baseball history.

The Dodgers and Giants still remember their roots in New York. Of course, they took their names and colors with them to California.

Connie Mack never managed the Philadelphia Phillies. However, there is a statue of him outside the Phillies' Citizens Bank Ballpark.

When the Expos moved to necome the Nationals, they left behind the retired numbers of Expos players. This was absolutely the right thing. Those numbers belong to the city of Montreal, not to Washington, DC.

In the case of Cronin, the original Senators meant a great deal to him as he was part of that team. To me it did make sense then and now. As someone else mentioned, are the Twins and the Rangers ever going to call themselves the Senators? But the Rangers did celebrate the franchise's 40th anniversary be wearing the 1961 Senators home uniform for a turn-back-the-clock game. That didn't make sense then, and it doesn't now. How many people down in good ol' boy Texas give a hoot about big government DC?

Somewhere on one of these message boards, I said that a city should take ownership of a team's name and colors. With free agency today, I think the name and colors are all a fan has left. So if, say, your team's franchise moves, the name will remain inactive until a new team comes along.

I say the Washington Nationals should celebrate and embrace the history of the Nationals/Senators and the Expansion Senators. It should be treated as if it were their own history. Not so much all the individual records, but the championship emblems. They should fly a World Championship banner for 1924; and AL pennant banners for 1925 and 1933. A museum should be built next to the new ballpark to tell the DC history of the previous franchises. They could also retire # 33 for Frank Howard. In my opinion, The Minnesota Twins and the Texas Rangers have liitle or no use for that history.

[Brownieand45sfan]

If you go to the following link, http://mlb.mlb.com/mlb/history/mlb_history_halloffame.jsp and click on "hall of famers by team" (on the right) you will see that MLB's rule for this list is that a current team only gets to count pre-franchise shift Hall of Famers if the franchise did not change its name. Therefore, no team gets to count e.g., Walter Johnson or Willard Brown, and George Sisler is a Brave only and Goose Goslin a Tiger only. And there is no provision for defunct teams (like there is on good ol' Baseball-Fever.com).

The one exception is the Washington Nationals, who for some reason alone get to hold onto their history, despite changing both city and mascot. Too recent a switch, I guess, for MLB to feel comfortable sending it down the memory hole.

Other weirdnesses:
John McGraw and Wilbert Robinson *are* Orioles but Hugh Duffy is not counted as a Brewer. :confused:

All this focus on mascot name is *despite the fact* that the Dodgers, Giants, Indians, Phillies and countless others did not always have their modern mascot.
:shrug:

The expansion Senators' lone Hall of Famer, Ted Williams, is not listed on the MLB 'by team' list under Senators or Rangers (or Nationals for that matter). But Teddy Ballgame is listed for his 1972 year with the Rangers on Wikipedia only.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_Rangers_(baseball)#Baseball_Hall_of_Famers
Go figure.

P.s. Seems like an odd dearth of Hall of Famers for a team with an 11-year history, especially compared with the N.L. 1962 expansion teams. But the Angels only produced one: Hoyt Wilhelm in his 1969 bow in L.A.

[welch]

I believe that part of the deal in allowing the Old Senators to move was that the "Senators" would continue on in Washington...as if nothing had happened. (And the Griffith family enterprise was legally something like "The Washington Baseball Club Operating in Minneapolis")

There was no such deal when Bob Short, the infamous, moved the new Senators to Texas.

However, I doubt that the Rangers would demand compensation, or even argue, if the new team called themselves the Washington Senators. MLB is a large genetleman's club, anyway, carefully exempt from anti-trust laws and such.

The only issue might be over which franchise gets a cut of any merchandise with any of the Nats/Senators logos. Cooperstown Caps have had sometimes offered a replica 1960 Senators hat; I used to have both the new Senators "swirly-W" blue and red fitted hats. Years ago, I bought a tee-shirt at the HOF with the late-50's Nats (Senators) logo: the cigar-chomping politician throwing a pitch.

Who claims royalties? I have no idea.

(I do know that the LA Dodgers blocked a Brooklyn man from calling his hotdog stand Brooklyn Dodgers Hotdogs.)

[D6+]

The expansion Houston NFL franchise comes to mind as another example of a team that couldn't use its nickname from the previous team in town. When Bud Adams moved the Oilers to Tennessee, for their first season in Tennessee he used the nickname Oilers. Adams though changed the nickname to the " Titans" when the team went from their temporary home in Memphis to the city of their current home, Nashville. The uniforms were also changed, including the logo.


Despite the radical changes, Bud Adams still owned the Oilers name and everything associated with the franchise, including it's records. I believe the Houston Oilers records are still associated with the current Tennessee " Titans". The end result is the name of the new Houston franchise became the" Texans" , as it was chosen in a contest of 5 possibilities.



It disturbs me to no end that nicknames, records, and logos remain the property of franchise when it moves to a different market. Though I would like to have seen the new Washington baseball franchise have the option of bringing back the name Senators, logo, and records, thankfully the Minnesota Twins and Texas Rangers have their own identity. Unfortunately, the same can't be said about a number of other franchises, lead by the Los Angeles NL baseball team and the Indianapolis NFL team. Traditions in Brooklyn and Baltimore, which ranked with any in Pro Sports, were destroyed by greed. In the case of the Baltimore Colts, incompetence by ownership in addition to greed.


art modell gave the city of cleveland the name browns - he could very well have kept it - likewise i would imagine calvin griffith gave the name senators to the city or the american league after he moved


I believe that Art Modell would have preferred to bring the Browns name, colors, and records to Baltimore. But because of substantial public pressure, the NFL would only approve Modell's request to move to Baltimore if he left the Cleveland Browns name, team colors, and records behind him. When the move was approved in early 1996, part of the agreement was an expansion version of the Cleveland Browns would start playing in 1999. A new stadium was built on the site that Cleveland Stadium, the long time home of the Indians and Browns, existed.