Washington advances in playoffs. Really.

by Phil Wood

There's a certain irony, I think, that it took someone named Washington - Texas skipper Ron Washington - to take the District's former AL team to a postseason series victory.

It only took 50 years.

Maybe this has never occurred to you, but since the original Washington franchise moved to Minnesota in 1961, subsequent teams - the expansion Senators/Rangers, the Mariners of Seattle, Washington, and the former Expos-now-Nationals, have never won a league championship.

My nutty scenario had the late Calvin Griffith, upon leaving town, hiring some practitioner of black magic to place a curse on future "Washington" baseball teams. Obviously, the Rangers still have to beat the Yankees to go to the World Series, no simple task. But beating a 96-win team - winning every game on the road - is impressive.

A best-of-5 series is a crapshoot, for sure, but give the Rangers credit. There were multiple off-the-field issues they had to contend with, including Ron Washington's positive drug test, and the on-again, off-again sale of the franchise that was finally on-again, to Hall of Famer Nolan Ryan and Chuck Greenberg.

Cliff Lee, C.J. Wilson, Colby Lewis and Neftali Feliz give Texas a chance to win. In the postseason, that's about all you can ask for.