In an era when some baseball players try injections or supplements to gain an edge, it’s comforting to know that fans can still root for a loser.

Teddy Roosevelt has become Washington’s most endearing mascot, emerging during the fourth inning of every Nationals home game with three other Rushmore-style Presidents to race around Nationals Park. Teddy’s winless streak remains unrivaled in all of professional sports since the race’s 2006 inception. Of course, losing every race requires some creativity. Our favorites from the 2009 season:

While Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke shepherds the nation through a financial storm, his wife, Anna Bernanke, is quietly navigating her own full-time project—to open a new private school.

The proposed school, Chance Academy, will offer an arts-oriented curriculum to prepare inner-city students for college. It was intended to open this fall at Joe’s Movement Emporium, a community arts center in Mount Rainier. Those familiar with Bernanke’s proposal say the building contract fell through at the last minute and she’s looking at other options for a site. According to these sources, the launch is being funded by the Bernanke family’s own money.

Apparently, a dinner more than a year ago with Kathleen Kennedy Townsend helped plant the seed: Townsend, a former Maryland lieutenant governor and daughter of Robert F. Kennedy, told Anna Bernanke about Touchstones Discussion Project, a nonprofit that aims to help students think independently.

Photograph by Scott Suchman.

No one knows what to make of Howard Gutman. When President Obama nominated him to be ambassador to Belgium this spring, the Belgian press couldn’t choose which of Gutman’s three hats to lead with: Was he a high-powered DC attorney? A Hollywood bit actor and would-be TV producer? Or a close Obama confidant?

Sure, he’s a longtime partner at Williams & Connolly, one of the city’s top law firms. But he also has a Screen Actors Guild card and a role in the upcoming movie Fame, and he was a top Obama fundraiser as well as one of the “Washington insiders” the GOP has attacked.

Gutman graduated from Harvard Law, clerked on the Fifth Circuit and for Justice Potter Stewart, and did a stint with FBI director William Webster before settling at Williams & Connolly in 1982. He spent two decades building a practice in corporate litigation and labor law as well as representing people such as Steven Rales and Nigel Morris. He also represented former Bolivian president Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada against charges of human-rights abuses.

What did our congressmen and women do before technology? With all the tweeting, texting, blogging and kindling going on these days, it’s a wonder they have time to update their Facebook pages. Luckily, Bob Latta has a solution. Hopefully it’ll help Jim Oberstar, who seems to have a problem hitting the right tiny keys, or Sherrod Brown, who’s singularly averse to capital letters.

In other news, Rick Perry is going to the State Fair, Joe Wilson’s audiences aren’t quite as prolific as he might hope for, Eric Cantor is friends with someone called SWAC Girl (who may or may not be a conservative superhero), Jason Chaffetz is making friends in high places again and Arlen Specter is watching the playoffs. And we don’t know, John Shimkus, but we’re willing to bet that reading the entire Harry Potter series, even including “Quidditch Through The Ages,” is much more entertaining than reading the Baucus bill.

Jack Nelson, one of Washington’s best and most respected journalists of the past 40 years, died Wednesday morning at his home in Bethesda. Barbara Matusow, his wife, told friends, “I want you to know that Jack passed away this morning. He looked very peaceful and beautiful, young even, which is a lovely image for me to hold on to.”

Barbara was a Washingtonian senior writer from 1987 to 2002, and she has continued to write for the magazine as a contributing editor. In the October issue, Barbara wrote about Jack’s taking part in the clinical trial at NIH and what a wonderful resource those trials can be for Washington area residents. She said Jack was very pleased with the story, especially the picture of him with Barbara and with Leo, his sheltie puppy.

Here is a link to the Washingtonian story.

And here is a link to the Los Angeles Times story today outlining Jack’s incredible career in Washington.

More>> Capital Comment Blog | News & Politics | Party Photos 

The Washington Post and the Columbia School of Journalism have spent much of this week celebrating the latest report on how to save journalism, this one by former Post editor Leonard Downie and Columbia University professor Michael Schudson.

But all the self-congratulation didn’t sit well with Jim Farley, head of news and reporting at WTOP radio, Washington’s all-news station. He called the report’s denigration of radio journalism “thin gruel—not based on any serious research.”

The Post devoted a chunk of Monday’s opinion page to a Downie-Schudson essay promoting their ideas, which boil down to suggesting ways for charities, government, and universities to help finance journalism. The new business model, they argue, is handouts and subsidies of various kinds.

Post media reporter Howard Kurtz used his Monday media column to give the Downie report more attention. Kurtz focused on the report’s listing of new ventures that show “journalism is being revived and reinvented in some encouraging ways.”

Two years ago, United Airlines trumpeted that it was the first airline to fly nonstop between the capitals of the world’s greatest powers: the United States and China. The new route was the result of heated airline bidding and a special ruling by the Transportation Department.

The route from Dulles International Airport was a big step in what economist Zachary Karabell calls “superfusion”—the growth of a single giant economy linking both countries.

Then came the global economic meltdown. Now United says it can’t find enough business to support year-round operation of the once-celebrated route; the airline has suspended it from October 25 through March 27. While United says it’s just a seasonal thing, the move is a sign of the cooling of bilateral relations between the countries amid the economic crisis and recent trade disputes.

Continuing the service, United spokesperson Sarah Massier says, “doesn’t really make sense if we’re not getting the passenger amounts we want.”

This article first appeared in the October 2009 issue of The Washingtonian. For more articles from that issue, click here.