Соперничество "Ориолс" и "Нэшнлс": История противостояния Балтимора и Вашингтона

Major League Baseball rivalry in Baltimore Washington, D. C area

| longeststreak = Plainlist|
Orioles, 7 (June 22, 2022–September 27, 2023) The original American League Orioles, however, would fold in 1902. The remains of the Orioles would be re enfranchised in 1903 in New York, eventually becoming the New York Yankees. Play between Baltimore and Washington resumed in 1954 when the St. Louis Browns relocated to Baltimore and became the current Orioles, once again giving both cities teams in the American League and regular meetings each season. This second period of play between Baltimore and Washington lasted through the 1971 season. The original Senators moved to Minnesota after the 1960 season and became the Minnesota Twins and were replaced by a second Senators franchise, which played from 1961 through the 1971 season. After the 1971 season, the second Senators franchise moved to Texas and became the Texas Rangers. The Orioles played 350 games combined against the two Senators franchises. Overall, the Orioles won the series with the Senators 224–126, which included an 89–65 mark against the original Senators and a 135–61 record against the second Senators franchise. After the departure of the second Senators franchise, various efforts to return MLB to the Washington, D. C., area occurred, including a 1973 effort that almost relocated the San Diego Padres to Washington for the 1974 season, bids to purchase the Orioles in 1975 and the San Francisco Giants in 1976 and move them, a large "Baseball in Washington in ′87" promotion in 1987 advocating that a team to come to Washington, calls in 1991 and 1994 for MLB to place an expansion team in Washington, and efforts to buy the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1995 and the Houston Astros in 1996 for a move to Washington. None of these efforts bore fruit, and Washington, D. C., had no Major League Baseball team from 1972 through 2004. Play between Baltimore and Washington did not resume until the advent of the Beltway Series in 2006.

The Nationals–Orioles rivalry is influenced by circumstances surrounding the Nationals' founding. Peter Angelos, the owner of the Orioles, opposed the move of the Montreal Expos to Washington on the grounds that it would harm the Orioles financially, contending that the Orioles would lose fans to a Washington baseball team and that the Orioles alone had had a legal right to the entire Baltimore Washington market since the departure of the second Senators team at the end of the 1971 season; in fact, the Orioles changed the team name on their away jerseys from "Baltimore" to "Orioles" in 1972 in an attempt to convince D. C. fans to adopt the Orioles as their "home" team. Ultimately, the owners of the other MLB teams approved the move to Washington in a 28–1 vote on December 3, 2004; Angelos cast the sole dissenting vote. The Orioles′ opposition to a baseball team in Washington created negative feelings among some Nationals fans toward the Orioles franchise, while some Orioles fans viewed the relocation of the Expos to Washington as an unwelcome intrusion that harmed the Orioles′ fan support and revenue. Even though the Nationals began play in 2005, the Orioles did not change the team name on their away jerseys back to "Baltimore" until 2009. In the first four full seasons after baseball returned to Washington, the Nationals drew 9,127,252 fans to their games, compared to 8,892,951 fans attending Orioles games. The Nationals were a larger draw in 2005, while both teams were about the same in 2006 (the Orioles drew exactly 100 more fans that year), and in 2007 the Orioles were a larger draw by nearly 200,000 fans. In 2008 the momentum swung back the Nationals' way, with the Nationals outdrawing the Orioles by over 370,000 fans, due in part to the opening of Nationals Park. In 2009, the Orioles again drew better, attracting almost 90,000 more fans than the Nationals, but from 2010 through 2017 the Nationals outdrew the Orioles annually, ranging from an advantage of over 95,000 fans in 2010 to one of over 496,000 fans in 2017, and during the eight seasons from 2010 through 2017 combined the Nationals drew over 2,200,000 more fans than the Orioles. In 2018, as the Orioles struggled through a historically bad season, the Nationals outdrew the Orioles by over 965,000 fans.

During a 2004 radio interview on WBAL in Baltimore a few months before MLB approved the relocation of the Expos in which he voiced his opposition to a team in Washington, Angelos declared that "there are no real baseball fans in D. C." The comment has fueled resentment among some Washington baseball fans ever since, given their support for the Orioles before the Nationals began play in Washington

The dispute with Angelos over the Expos′ move to Washington to become the Nationals was resolved when the Orioles were granted the right to broadcast Nationals games as well as Orioles games on their new regional sports television network, the Mid Atlantic Sports Network (MASN), which is headquartered in Baltimore. The ramifications of the way in which Major League Baseball and Angelos created the new network and the agreements behind its creation has led to ill feeling among some fans. In order to overcome Angelos′ opposition to the Expos′ move to Washington to become the Nationals and to head off any potential litigation over the matter, Major League Baseball (which owned the Expos/Nationals franchise from 2002 to 2006) and Angelos struck a deal in 2005 to create MASN. The deal gave the Orioles an initial 90 percent ownership stake in the new network, while the Nationals owned 10 percent. The agreement gave the Nationals an automatic increase in their ownership stake of one percent per year for 23 years, after which their share of the ownership would reach 33 percent and the annual increases would stop. Thereafter, the Orioles would own 67 percent of the network and the Nationals 33 percent of it in perpetuity. The Orioles also agreed to pay the Nationals $20 million per year through the 2011 season for the rights to televise Nationals games regardless of the actual fair market value of those rights, considered a good deal for the Nationals at the time because their fan base had not yet developed, their television coverage was sometimes spotty, and their likely lack of success on the field in their first few seasons would suppress their television viewership. The agreement required the Orioles and Nationals to renegotiate the annual amount the Orioles paid to broadcast National games for the 2012 through 2016 seasons, and then again for each five season period after that. The agreement has left the Nationals as the only Major League Baseball team that does not own its own regional sports network.

Major League Baseball and Angelos struck the deal to create MASN only days before the beginning of the 2005 season, before the completion of arrangements for Washington area cable television providers to carry MASN's two channels (MASN and MASN2). As a result of this, many D. C. area fans initially did not receive the new network via their cable television providers and were unable to watch most Nationals games for some time during the Nationals′ first season, leading to frustration with the network among Nationals fans. Furthermore, some Nationals fans contend that the majority ownership stake that Angelos and the Orioles hold in MASN leads the network to exhibit a bias in covering the Orioles compared to the Nationals, such as displaying the scores of Beltway Series games as "Orioles vs. Washington" – which critics see as sending a subtle message that the Orioles represent the entire Baltimore Washington area, while the Nationals represent only Washington – as opposed to a more neutral "Orioles vs. Nationals" or "Baltimore vs. Washington."

When the amount MASN pays annually to the Nationals to broadcast Nationals games first came up for renegotiation in 2012, another source of discontent arose between some Orioles and Nationals fans. The Nationals asked for MASN to increase its annual payment from $20 million to $118 million per year and some Nationals fans resent the delay in MASN increasing the rights fees it pays their team because of the impact it has on the Nationals′ revenues and the Nationals′ ability to sign expensive free agents. The Washington Post reported that the animosity between the teams over the television rights fee dispute may have played a role in the Orioles postponing two games of a three game home series against the Chicago White Sox, playing the third game without allowing fans to attend, and moving a subsequent series with the Tampa Bay Rays originally scheduled to be played in Baltimore to Tampa Bay due to security concerns during the civil unrest in Baltimore following the death of Freddie Gray in April 2015. The Nationals were in the middle of a long road trip at the time, so Nationals Park in Washington was available on short notice as a nearby venue that could have hosted Orioles games, and Commissioner of Baseball Rob Manfred had suggested that possibility earlier in the week. An Orioles spokesman would not comment on whether the teams' dispute affected Orioles′ rescheduling decisions, but another source with the team told The Washington Post that it had. The Nationals said that neither the Orioles nor MLB approached them about making Nationals Park available to the Orioles, and the Nationals never made the offer themselves. Other fans disagree, arguing that many fans never understood or have forgotten the connection of "O!" with the Orioles and that shouting "O!" during the anthem has become an established tradition that is valid at any sporting event anywhere in the Baltimore Washington region and does not necessarily signify support for the Baltimore Orioles. Speaking to the press before the next day's game between the clubs, Orioles manager Buck Showalter responded by saying, "You realize how big an area this [Washington] was for the Orioles before our owner [Peter Angelos] was kind enough to let them have a team here [in Washington]." For some Nationals fans and members of the Washington sports media, Showalter's comment rankled, as they felt that Angelos had exhibited no kindness at all toward baseball in Washington either before or during the Expos Nationals relocation process or in terms of the MASN television deal he struck with MLB. Asked about the Orioles′ interpretation of the postponement, Nationals General Manager Mike Rizzo responded that the weather forecast for May 11 had called — incorrectly, as it turned out — for rain to persist well into the evening and that Showalter had been in full agreement on May 11 that the game should be postponed. Rizzo added that the Orioles had refused to play on the teams′ next mutual off date, May 15 (which would have forced the Orioles to go 27 straight days without a full day off, which is more than the maximum of 20 allowed by the Collective Bargaining Agreement), necessitating that they play on June 8, and that the June 8 date actually was less favorable to the Nationals, who gave up an off day after a 10 day, three city trip to the United States West Coast, than to the Orioles, who were just completing a nine game homestand in nearby Baltimore. Given all of this, Rizzo said that the Orioles should "quit whining."

The idea that a rivalry exists between the Nationals and Orioles is itself controversial. Despite the marketing of the Beltway Series as a "Battle of the Beltways" and the animosity some Baltimore and Washington baseball fans feel toward one another's teams and cities, some observers – both sports journalists and fans – question whether a Nationals Orioles rivalry truly exists, arguing that it is a "manufactured" rivalry born of the media, marketing, interleague play, and coincidental geographical proximity rather than history or the significance of the games, and that the Beltway Series lacks the meaning of true rivalries found elsewhere in MLB.