November 24, 2004

For This Baseball Fan, "Nationals" Doesn't Cut It

Prefers the Washington Monument and Vivid Sports Writing

When Washington's mayor and the president of the city's new baseball team unveiled the team name this week -- the Nationals --Jerry Manley was in the crowd watching, doggedly wearing his sandwich board.

The sandwich board, front and back, touts the team name Manley passionately wants -- The Washington Wamos.

"No, no, it's a mistake," he called urgently from midway back in the crowd that watched at Union Station as a curtain was removed to reveal the team logo. "They're the Wamos. The Washington Wamos. Not the Nationals, please."

The Wamos?

In many respects, Washington is a one industry town -- the federal government and all its assorted politicians, lobbyists, contractors, and hangers-on. So in a town where POTUS flies and out of his backyard in a Marine helicopter, the people at SCOTUS wear black robes, and the TOTUS chip in to pay for the entire extravaganza, naming a baseball team the Wamos makes a certain amount of sense

The WAMO is the Washington Monument. WAMO is Park Service speak for the nation's tallest and most famous obelisk.

For weeks now, ever since he learned that major league baseball was about to return to Washington after a three-decade absence, Manley, 53, has lobbied for Wamos as the team name. Lacking any media access and money -- he gets a monthly disability check and occasional help from a brother -- he did the only thing he knows, build a sandwich board and start walking.

He marched as close to his beloved Washington Monument as often as the Park Police would let him. He paced back and forth as close to the White House as allowed. He has been a regular in Farragut Square and has trooped up and down 16th Street enough times to qualify as a certified lobbyist. Capitol Police regularly shoo him away from the Capitol and the Senate and House office buildings. The nearby Supreme Court security people keep him moving along as much as possible.

He has paced to and fro outside District of Columbia government buildings and managed once to talk briefly to District Mayor Anthony A. Williams as Williams left a limo and dashed up the steps into a building.

"He listened for a second or two about the Wamos name and then blew me off," Manley said in an interview.

Pressed about his fascination with the Washington Monument, Manley reached inside his sandwich board and pulled out a cloth bag, a sort of purse, that hangs around his neck. He extracted a document and handed it over.

It was a scholarly article from a British medical journal in 1993 about people who are obsessed with obelisks, what the researcher called "obelisk mania."

"That's me," Manley said. "That doctor came over from England and we spent a lot of time talking and walking around the WAMO. There are about a half dozen of us that doctors know about. We have this thing for obelisks."

Why the connection between the Washington Monument and baseball?

"WAMO reminds me of a baseball bat, a big old baseball bat," he said. "Think how far you could hit a ball with that bat."

He warmed to his subject. "Think of the sportswriters' metaphors and the similes of the play by play announcers each time a Wamos went to the plate and symbolically used the Washington Monument to take a whack at the ball.

"Imagine the headlines that newspaper editors could write about the Washington Wamos 'talking with a big stick' or paraphrasing Teddy Roosevelt and 'playing softly but carrying a big stick.'"

Manley paused to catch his breath. "Will you see any of that kind of vivid metaphorical writing about a team as mundane as the Washington Nationals? Not likely. Might just as well call them the Washington Imperialists. At least the writers could have some fun with that."

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