The more things change, the more they stay the same: People make fun of Washington’s Major League Baseball franchise. Witness an awards ceremony held Monday at the National Press Club in which the Smithsonian Anacostia Community Museum honored legends of the Negro Leagues.
In his keynote address, Jimmie Lee Solomon, the executive vice president of baseball operations for MLB and a former partner at Baker & Hostetler in D.C., noted that the players on the Washington Homestead Grays were known for their prodigious home runs, “far outshadowing their dismal white counterparts on the Washington Senators.”
So we had to ask honoree William “Sonny” Randall, who played for the Grays, as well as local semi-pro teams the Georgetown Aztecs, D.C. Indians and Washington Black Sox: Would the Grays have beaten today’s Nats? “Oh, yeah,” he laughed.
Also appearing were former Grays player Jim Tillman. Negro League players Monte Irvin and Bucky Williams were honored in absentia.
As for Solomon, he also addressed what he didn’t know, offering a disclaimer at the outset of his remarks. “I don’t have a clue about A-Rod’s personal life,” he said. “I stay out of that stuff.”193
