Sports History

Washington, D.C. hosted the 1969 All-Star game at RFK stadium. It was a thrilling event that drew baseball fans together to watch the greats of the MLB, including hometown hero Frank Howard, go head-to-head. But the game also made history as the first, and only, All-Star game to be postponed due to weather. A torrential rain storm disrupted the city's plans, but that didn't stop more than 45,000 fans from coming out to RFK the next afternoon. 

Scout Joe Cambria of the Washington Senators was in Florida in the summer of 1938, seeking out new recruits for D.C.’s major league baseball team. When he watched Forrest “Lefty” Brewer pitch for the St. Augustine Saints that summer, the scout had no doubt that this was a player who could help turn around the struggling D.C. club. On June 6, 1938, Brewer threw a no hitter in the minor leagues. Exactly six years later he jumped out of a plane over Normandy, France on D-Day.

For one season the American Basketball Association set up shop in the Nation's Capital, as the defending league champion — and star player Rick Barry — moved from Oakland to D.C.  But almost as soon as the Washington Caps arrived in 1969, they were gone. So why didn't D.C.'s team last?

In the winter of 1969, the Washington Senators baseball club was in transition. After a flirtation with comedian Bob Hope, the team had just been sold to transportation magnate Bob Short. Short, who looked across town and saw the Washington Redskins hire legendary coach Vince Lombardi, was looking for his own splashy hire – “a storybook manager, the kind people dream about” who could be the savior he felt the franchise needed. The answer? Ted Williams.

“Now this is no easy thing — naming a sports team,” Washington Post reporter Bob Addie wrote in the spring of 1973. Naming anything can have complications: the right name is memorable, hopefully catchy, and looks good on jerseys, while a bad name becomes a joke — or worse, an embarrassment. That was why there was such surprise that Abe Pollin, who had recently become owner of the new — and still unnamed — NHL hockey team that was coming to the D.C. area was “toying with the idea of having a contest to name the baby.”

Is it possible for a man to play Major League Baseball with one leg? Not for most men, but most men aren't Bert Shepard who played for the Washington Senators in 1945 after losing his right leg in World War II.

Decades before Venus and Serena Williams dominated women’s tennis on the WTA tour, the Peters Sisters — Margaret Peters, a.k.a. “Pete", and Roumania Peters, a.k.a. “Repeat” — from Georgetown, were unstoppable champions in the all-black American Tennis Association.

Mike Tyson, the so-called "Baddest Man on the Planet," was known for his antics, in and out of the ring, as much as he was known for his boxing ability. While Tyson's sole fight in the nation's capital isn't his most well-known fight, the bout was certainly historic.

When American Johnny Hayes won the marathon at the 1908 London Olympics, it set off a nationwide craze for long-distance running, dubbed "Marathon mania."

In 1972 a local teen took the Olympics by storm. At just 15 years old, Melissa Belote won three gold medals and set three world records. But in her hometown of Springfield, VA, she was already a household name.