Like magicians using sleight of hand, the Lords of Baseball played a round of "now-you-see-them-now-you-don't" with the Washington Senators in 1960, and then added a "now-you-see-them-again" to finish the trick.
Washington DC owned one of the American League's six original franchises, but after years of losing seasons, the fan base became disinterested and distracted. Owner Calvin Griffith saw greener pastures to the west and moved his franchise to Minnesota in 1960.
Knowing that lawmakers on Capitol Hill were not happy with a situation in which the national pastime would not be played in the national capital (the same lawmakers who decided whether baseball was exempt from antitrust laws) the Lords of the game awarded an expansion franchises to Washington right after Griffith departed with his team.
The second generation of Washington Senators picked up right where their predecessors left off, losing their first-ever game to the White Sox 4-3 on April 10, 1961 at Griffith Stadium. As the decade progressed, fans and lawmakers alike must have wondered why they wanted the Senators back. In their first four years, this edition of the Senators lost 100, 101, 106, and 105 games. In the next few seasons they were able to climb to the middle of the pack and when they hired Ted Williams to manage the team in 1969, they hit their high water mark with an 86-76 record and fourth place. They returned to their losing ways in 1970-71.
The only excitement for the franchise was the slugging of big Frank Howard, who had one of his best years for the 1969 team with forty-eight home runs, one-hundred eleven runs batted in and a .296 average. Howard hit over forty homers in 1968 and 1970 as well. While Howard was slugging and Williams was managing, new owner Bob Short (he bought the club in 1968) was being wooed by the city fathers of Dallas-Ft. Worth, Texas. Baseball had seriously looked at this area for its 1969 expansion, but decided to go elsewhere.
Texas Rangers History
