I must have one of these bully t-shirts from the souvenir line that Nats blogger Ball-Wonk has created to "call on the spirit of Teddy Roosevelt to power the Nats to victory."

TR likely would approve, though truth be told, he wasn't a baseball fan, never once attending a ballgame in Washington during his seven years as president.

Said his daughter Alice:

"Father and all us regarded baseball as a mollycoddle game. Tennis, football, lacrosse, boxing, polo, yes - they are violent, which appealed to us. But baseball? Father wouldn't watch it, not even at Harvard."

This didn't prevent TR from being portrayed as a ballplayer by the occasional cartoonist or from speechifying at baseball fields like the old Orioles park in Baltimore. (Via the Maryland Historical Society.)

Around the Horn

* England has captured the Ashes in cricket. (Via Andrew Sullivan)

* You'd have to read a good many papers to find a baseball columnist in the mainstream media today as eloquent as Jeff Kallman. See his brief and gracious tributes recently to forgotten Cubs pitcher Bob Hendley, who courted baseball immortality one night 40 years ago, and to the late play-by-play announcer Chris Schenkel.

* George Will, hardball cognoscente, dishes Katrina demagogues a solid knock.