 But according to "Baseball-Reference", the franchise lasted just the 1873 season, and were nicknamed the Blue Legs.The first team in Washington, the Potomac Club, was formed in the summer of 1859, and the Nationals were formed in November of the same year; both teams consisted mostly of government clerks.The two teams practiced in the backyard of the White House and played each other in the spring of 1860; the Nationals consistently lost to the superior Potomacs, but the latter disbanded on the outbreak of the Civil War while the Nationals kept playing, and by the end of the war were "solidly in the esteem of Washington fans, with the club's shortstop, slight, 23-year-old Arthur Pue Gorman, the darling of the spectators.