Joe (pronounced jho-A) was a talented French-Canadian player who lined up at center for the Caps during the mid-nineties. Washington Capitals Centers #10- Joe Juneau In compiling and ranking this list I took into consideration each player’s tenure, their offensive prowess, their defensive prowess and intangibles such as leadership and the amount of love and support showed by fans. Some were drafted, some came in trades and one was truly home-grown. The Washington Capitals have had excellent talent at center since their inception in 1974. The Wizards and the Redskins remain mired in long-term mediocrity, but Washingtonians will absolutely take what they can get.This article was originally published in May, 2012. It’s a fantastic feeling and you can feel it throughout the city.” “I’m getting the same vibe as 2018 when the Capitals won the Stanley Cup and everybody just embraced everybody” said Ted Peters, a Nats superfan who comes to games dressed like a cruise ship captain and goes by the name Captain Obvious. The Capitals won hockey’s Stanley Cup in 2018 after years of near-misses, and the Washington Mystics won their first WNBA title in September. After winning the first two games in Houston, the Nationals return home Friday for Game 3 with an eight-game playoff winning streak and in the unlikely role of World Series favorite.Ī Nationals victory would also continue the recent championship streak for a city largely accustomed to sports futility. From there the team has somehow morphed into a juggernaut. Even squeaking into the playoffs as a wild card was considered a pleasant surprise. After the Nationals lost their best player, Bryce Harper to free agency, very little was expected of this year’s squad. Part of the charm of this year’s team is their underdog story. “With the country so divided, this is just something that’s good and something to cheer for.” We really do need this,” said Rowena De Leon of Rockville, Maryland. Normally the bars of Capitol Hill would have been packed with debate-watching parties, but instead baseball seemed to decisively dominate politics. That was evident last week when the fourth Democratic presidential debate went head-to-head with the Nationals’ game 4 against the St. From 1972 until 2005, when the Montreal Expos relocated here, a generation of local fans was forced to either live without a hometown favorite or unnaturally root for the Baltimore Orioles.īut Nationals fever has become undeniable. Two separate incarnations of the Washington Senators have left town, becoming the Minnesota Twins and the Texas Rangers. There also isn’t much of a local history of baseball success. Washington is a city filled with transplants, many of whom bring their hometown sports loyalties with them. The Nationals announced Friday that the first pitch for game 5 will be thrown by Jose Andres - a local celebrity chef and humanitarian who is a vocal public critic of Trump over immigration and the government response to Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico. If so then some of those DC divisions will be publicly on display. Trump said Thursday that, if the Nationals don’t sweep, he planned to attend Game 5 on Sunday. “I did want to come out here with my Nationals hat on but they told that would violate some type of rule,” he joked. 17, at the start of what would become a disastrous press conference that may have strengthened the impeachment case against his boss, acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney started off with a Nationals reference. Nationals fever has even popped up inside Trump’s White House. Still, a fast-moving gentrification wave has produced a host of racial and economic tensions with longtime black residents fearing that DC’s “Chocolate City” identity is being erased. As a city of 700,000 people, Washington is overwhelmingly Democratic. This is something that’s an antidote to that.”Īs the nation’s capital, Washington is split by the passions and anger surrounding Donald Trump’s presidency and the impeachment inquiry in the Democratic-led House. It’s helping us deal with the other stuff that’s really terribly frightening that’s going on politically. It doesn’t matter what your political persuasion is at the moment. Judith Gilbert, a 25-year DC resident, said, “You can feel it.
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