How D.C. Used To Cheer For O’s, Baltimore Rides For The Washington Capitals

Once upon a time, before the Nats were a thing, and when the Baltimore Orioles were packing Camden Yards on a nightly basis, Washington, D.C. was exclusively an Orioles’ town. They were, after all, the closest team to their city until 2005. Even today, if you run into an older sports fan in Northern Virginia or the District, it’s not guaranteed that they’ll be riding for the MLB team within an arm’s reach. Instead, there’s a good chance they’re still throwing on their black-and-orange cap come summer time. And the same way things were back in the day for D.C. is the way things have been for the city of Baltimore when it comes to hockey; they ride for the Washington Capitals.

A few weeks ago, I wrote about my most recent experience at Camden Yards and how the entire crowd erupted when a Caps-friendly graphic popped up on the video board. As a transplant to the area just a few years prior, it was cool to see the two cities united on some fronts. On Thursday, Katherine Fominykh of The Baltimore Sun shed even more light on The Charm City and their affection for Ovechkin and company. She wrote of the Hudson Street Shackhouse; how the bar has turned into Capitals HQ for fans to come enjoy the game among a sea of red.

“Football season aside, the Stackhouse is evidence of a bridging gap between the two cities’ sports fans, and external forces could be the reason for it.

While the number of people commuting from Baltimore to Washington for work is small compared to the total working class in the capital, the number has doubled from roughly 3,000 to 6,000 in recent years, the 2009-2013 American Community Survey estimates from the U.S. Census.

DeSantis credits the lack of an NHL team, and the 21-year absence of the city’s last minor league team, the Baltimore Bandits, with the transformation of the Caps fan base into a regional one.

“There is no competition,” he said. “As much as I’d like to have an NHL team come to Baltimore, it doesn’t exist.””

One of the most notable things that jumped out to me from Fominykh’s article, though, was that nine percent of all Baltimore households watched the game on Monday night. While nine doesn’t seem like a lot to folks not familiar with TV ratings, the number was the fourth-highest in the country behind the two cities competing (D.C. and Las Vegas) and hockey-crazed Pittsburgh (who are almost certainly pulling for the Knights).

You can read her article here.

For now, you’ve gotta think of it as a good thing for Baltimore. I mean, they need a winner, and the Orioles are anything but that. They were swept, ironically, in the three-game Beltway Series by the Nationals and have the worst record in their division. Maybe come football season they’ll have a winner with their name on it, but at least now they can root for the Caps like D.C. did for the O’s once upon a time. There’s no shame in it, after all. The distance between Baltimore and D.C. is only 38 miles and I’m sure the same thing happens when folks in San Francisco want to root for a hockey team. Like Baltimore, the Bay Area also has to put aside their baseball-football rivalry come hockey season, only with Los Angeles instead of D.C.