Go Nats

By Crispin Sartwell

Extremely intelligent philosophy professors such as myself have been known to contemplate an extremely irritating problem known as "the ship of Theseus." The Greek hero Theseus spent many years wandering around the Mediterranean sea.

So let's suppose that the planks of which the ship consists start rotting, and Theseus has to replace them here and there in his travels. After awhile, there remains not a single piece of the boat in which Theseus started out. Here's the problem: is he still sailing the same boat?

The ship of Theseus confronts us with the difficulty of specifying what extremely intelligent philosophy professors call "the conditions on identity over time." What changes can a thing undergo and remain the same thing it was?

We, the sports fans of DC, face this problem in the most intense and immediate way. Periodically, groups have protested the name "Redskins." But the latest protest seems particularly serious, having been made by the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments.

Now what makes the Redskins the same team that moved here in 1937 from Boston? Or: what are the conditions on identity over time of sports franchises? Obviously the players are entirely different, as are the ownership, equipment, stadium, coaching: in short, almost everything. Are the Redskins now the team on which my Dad's hero Sammy Baugh played, or my heroes Sonny Jurgensen (who I still say is the best passer I ever saw), Charlie Taylor, John Riggins? Why, exactly?

One possible answer is that the only really persisting quality is the name. The team is Sammy Baugh's team because it's called "the Redskins." And that thought, when you get down to it, is a large part of the reason that fans resist a name change. We're afraid of losing the entire history of the team and not just a name. Of course, the owners also resist a name change because they'd be left with a load of useless merchandise.

I wonder whether you think the present Wizards are "the same" team that played as the Bullets in Baltimore with Earl the Pearl? Or here's what John Madden would call "an all-day sucker": who are the old Cleveland Browns, that is, the ones Paul Brown (and for that matter Marty Schottenheimer) coached? The present Cleveland Browns (an expansion franchise in 1999)? Or the present Baltimore Ravens (who moved to Baltimore from Cleveland in 1996)?

And who the heck are the Washington Senators? The team my Dad saw move to Minnesota in 1960 (for which Walter Johnson pitched), or the team that I saw move to Texas in 1972 (with Frank Howard)? Let's say they close the Minnesota franchise, or move it back to DC. Which is what, and what is which?

Picture another ship floating around the Med, picking up the discarded pieces of the ship of Theseus and over time consisting of exactly the same bits of wood as the original ship. Which ship is now the ship of Theseus?

So for all you philosophy heads and sports fans out there, let me provide a solution to the question of identity over time. Actually the ship that Theseus is floating around in *is* the original ship, the Wizards are the Bullets, and the Redskins would be the same team after a name change.

It's a persistent *history,* not any particular persisting component, that marks identity over time. That history consists of an overlapping series of players, coaches, owners, uniforms, water boys. And though the team would lose something when it lost its name, it would not lose its history. I could change my name and still be me, though there's not a whole lot of me now that was part of me when I was a charming toddler.

So if the Redskins become the Washington Bureaucrats or the Internal Revenue Service Agents, they'll still be Sammy and Sonny's team. And each piece of merchandise will mutate into a collector's item. We will survive and prosper.

As to the Senators: just as Theseus left his ship for me to contemplate 3000 years later, I leave the Nats for the logicians of three millennia hence.

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