 The team was founded in Washington, D.C. in as one of the eight original teams of the American League, named the Washington Senators or Washington Nationals (both names had been used in the club's early years and no official name was used thereafter).The team endured long bouts of mediocrity immortalized in the 1955 Broadway musical "Damn Yankees".The Washington Senators spent the first decade of their existence finishing near the bottom of the American League standings.