Washington Is A Good (Baseball) Town. So Is Houston.

Early in the Reagan Administration, when I was a smarmy young journalist trying to make a name for myself, I wrote a controversial op-ed piece in the Washington Post saying that Washington was not a baseball town and did not deserve its own team. Washington and Baltimore were one region, I argued, and Washington residents should root for the Orioles.

My piece raised the ire of no less than Shirley Povich, the legendary sports columnist for the Post—and father of TV talk show host Maury Povich—who devoted an entire column to trashing me, calling my words “the greatest compendium of flapdoodle ever accepted for the written page.”

I wore Povich’s criticism as a badge of honor for many years. Not only had I gained attention from the famous columnist, but I was secure in the knowledge that, no matter what he claimed, I was right: Washington wasn’t a good baseball town and didn’t deserve a team.

Decades later, as a Houstonian of advanced age, I have to admit that times have changed.