LOVERRO: Realignment could light a fuse under sleepy Orioles-Nationals rivalry

OPINION:

I know it has seemed more like a wake, but this year was supposed to be a celebration of the Washington Nationals’ 20th season. The team has noted some of the fonder memories of those two decades in a campaign called NATS20 and honored those who wore the uniform and contributed to it all.

Over those two decades, there has been joy, anger (more anger of late) and, the best of all, a World Series championship. But something has been missing during that time that can often energize a fan base.

There’s been no rivalry.

Oh, there have been moments against various National League East rivals – the Braves, the Mets, the Phillies – but never anything sustained that rose to the level of what we have witnessed between the New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox, or, more recently, the Los Angeles Dodgers and the San Diego Padres.

What has driven the Dodgers-Padres rivalry is a combination of geography and divisional competition in the National League West. But, save for the occasional successful San Diego season, it didn’t really take hold until recently, when the Padres made an organizational commitment to winning.

Padres-Dodgers may never reach the Dodgers-San Francisco Giants level of intensity, a rivalry that lasted for much of the 20th century and transferred west when both teams left New York for California in 1958. But right now the Padres-Dodgers rivalry is hot, stoked with the power of social media, like nearly everything else that serves as fodder for the instantaneous reactionary method of sharing news and opinions.

The Nationals have not had that with any of their NL East rivals, for various reasons, including the level of passion among the Washington fan base that ignites that intensity.

Rob Manfred may have an answer for that.

MLB’s commissioner has been criticized for his lack of passion for the game, but recently he dropped a bombshell that set off some lively discussions in an ESPN interview when he not only declared expansion was in play – as well as realignment of teams.

So, how about the Nationals and the Baltimore Orioles in the same division? How’s that sound? Get your blood going?

Maybe not now, with both teams struggling. But imagine during that stretch from 2012 through 2016, when both franchises were competing for postseason play in different leagues, if they had been competing in the same division for that opportunity? Now we’re talking rivalry, the likes of which baseball fans here have never experienced.

The whole Baltimore-Washington rivalry has existed, for the most part, in promotions and stories. The consensus has been that Baltimore has an inferiority complex to the nation’s capital, and most of the animosity has always been directed north to south – except toward the late Orioles owner Peter Angelos, his efforts to block baseball returning to the District and his MASN network controlling the Nationals television rights.

Attempts have been made to stir up the debate when the Commanders would have the occasional regular-season game against the Ravens, and, more often, when the Orioles and Nationals met during the season, this year six times. But it has never taken hold.

Play each other 13 times a season, though – particularly if both teams are competing for a division title – then you’ve stirred the pot.

There was a time when the Orioles were in the American League with the Washington Senators – the original edition of the Senators from 1954 to 1960 after the St. Louis Browns moved to Baltimore, and then, from 1961 to 1971, the expansion Senators.

There was no rivalry because the Senators were so bad during that stretch that no team would have considered them a true rival. The Orioles, though, would turn things around in the 1960s and go to four World Series during that time, winning twice.

“When we played the Orioles, it was nothing like a Subway Series,” the late former Senators outfielder Chuck Hinton told The Washington Times in a 2006 interview. “I always enjoyed playing against Baltimore because I knew their players and they knew me. But for most of us, it was just another game.”

“It was like they were laughing at us inside all the time,” recalled the late Paul Casanova. “We really wanted to win because a lot of our key players — guys like Chuck Hinton, Fred Valentine and Mike Epstein — had played for both teams. But they were just too good, especially after Frank [Robinson] got there in 1966.”

But those were different times, when both teams, even in 1969, drew less than 14,000 fans a game. For one game in April that season – the two teams played each other 18 times that year – the Senators drew 5,495 fans at RFK Stadium. The level of fan intensity in the world of sports today is far more passionate and present in daily life.

No one knows how the realignment would unfold, but it is difficult to imagine any such plan not including the Nationals and the Orioles winding up in the same division. When both teams are struggling like this year, there likely won’t be fireworks. But if they happen to both be competitive, it will turn into something that everyone had previously pretended existed – a real rivalry.

• Catch Thom Loverro on “The Kevin Sheehan Show” podcast.