Beltway Series
The Beltway Series is the name of the interleague series played between the Washington Nationals and the Baltimore Orioles. The series name is taken from the two beltway highways, the Baltimore Beltway and the Capital Beltway, that service Baltimore and Washington, D.C. The Beltway Series is expected to become a regular rivalry series in Major League Baseball.
The Series 2005 - Present
2005
The teams did not meet in the Nationals inaugural 2005 season, although they did play each other during spring training.
2006
During spring training in 2006, the Nationals and Orioles played each other in Washington on March 31 and in Baltimore on April 1. The first match up of the rivalry took place on May 19th, 2006 during the 2006 regular season, the Orioles won at RFK Stadium. This marked first time in 35 years that the Orioles played a regular-season game in Washington, as they played the Washington Senators, another team in the American League annually from 1954 to 1960. The Orioles continued that rivalry with the new Washington Senators from 1961 to 1971.
The two teams split the season series 3-3 with each time winning two games at home and one on the road.
2007
The Orioles and Nationals played six times again in 2007, with the Nationals taking the season series 4 games to 2.
2008
The Orioles and Nationals played their final exhibition game of 2008 at the new Nationals Park, the first MLB action to take place in the park. The Nationals won 3-0.
During the 2008 regular season the teams meet in Baltimore on the weekend of May 16-18 and in D.C. the weekend of June 27-29.
Controversy fueling the rivalry
Opposition to Relocation
Although this rivalry is new, many Nationals fans already feel strongly about it. Peter Angelos, the owner of the Orioles, opposed the move of the Montreal Expos to Washington, D.C. on the grounds that it would harm the Orioles financially, contending that the Orioles alone had a legal right to the Baltimore-Washington market. In the three full seasons since the Expos moved to D.C. the Orioles have drawn 6,942,876 fans to the ballpark, the Nationals have drawn 6,806,852. The Nationals were a larger draw in 2005, the Orioles were a larger draw in 2006 (drawing exactly 100 more fans that year) and in 2007 the Orioles were a larger draw by nearly 200,000 fans [1].
Interestingly, the original Washington Senators were well-established in the Baltimore/Washington market for over fifty years before the Saint Louis Browns moved to Baltimore to become the present-day Orioles.
Television Rights
The dispute was resolved when the Orioles were granted the right to broadcast Nationals games on their new television network, the Mid-Atlantic Sports Network. However, the deal was struck only days before the beginning of the 2005 season and many DC-area fans did not receive the new network for some time and were unable to watch most games. Furthermore, it has been reported that Angelos and the Orioles hold majority ownership in the network, which has led some Nationals fans to contend that the channel exhibits a bias in covering the Orioles compared to the Nationals (such as displaying the scores of Beltway Series games as "Orioles vs. Washington" as opposed to "Orioles vs. Nationals").
O!
The tradition of yelling "O!" during the line "Oh say does that Star Spangled Banner yet wave" in the Star Spangled Banner is a Baltimore Orioles tradition. Over the years it became a staple of Washington, DC area sporting events. The chant has had controversy in the past and the usage of the "O!" chant at Nationals games has reignited such controversy [2][3] [4].