I had not known the last game of the second version of the Senators’ franchise was a forfeit, but the Washington, D.C. newspapers have taken a few looks back at it over the decades. Timothy Dwyer of the Post wrote in 2004:

Thursday, Sept. 30, 1971, began as a dismal, rainy day in Washington. Good weather for a funeral, not much good for baseball. Ron Menchine, the radio voice of the Washington Senators, remembers waking up that morning, seeing the rain and then making a wish about that night’s game, the final home game of the final season for the Senators.

“I hope it keeps raining,” he thought, “and they rain the damn thing out and I won’t have to broadcast it.”

His wish did not come true. The rain cleared out by the afternoon, and by evening about 14,000 people showed up at Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium. Owner Bob Short was home in Minnesota, sitting next to a squawk box, listening to the game on the radio. He had not come for the funeral because it was decided that it might be too dangerous for him.

It was a good decision.

Word of Short’s plan to move the Senators to Texas, which began to surface in the dog days of the summer, was not viewed as a good decision by baseball fans in Washington. They had lost their team once before, in 1960, gotten it back, and now their beloved Nats were leaving again, not for Chicago or New York or Los Angeles, but for Arlington, a dinky, nowhere town between Dallas and Fort Worth with all the big-league stature of an anthill.

On Sept. 21, the first day of autumn, owners met in Boston and approved the move to Texas. The announcement came late at night, just in time for the 11 o’clock news.

Dick Bosman was watching with his wife, Pam, at their Fairfax home. “I turned to my wife and said, ‘That’s it, we’re going.’ ”

The mood in the clubhouse the next day was grim. “It was like the whole team had been traded,” he said.

The last game finally came, and Bosman was again the starting pitcher. He had a difficult time focusing on the Yankees.

“I was angry,” he said. “I was resentful and I was angry. This was a place where it was my first major league club, my first major league ballpark. I met my wife and got married there. I was angry we were leaving.”

As he warmed up, he could tell right away that the fans — who were chanting and hanging obscene signs — shared his emotions.

“I think all of us felt that way,” he said. “I really had a hard time in that game. I had a hard time separating the emotions, and there was chaos in the stands, there was chaos in the field. I’ll never forget it.”

The Senators fell behind to the Yankees, staring up at a 5-1 score in the sixth inning. Bosman had given up home runs to Bobby Murcer, Roy White and Rusty Torres. But the Senators had one more comeback left in them. Frank Howard hit his 26th homer of the year, and the Senators grabbed a 7-5 lead in the eighth inning.

Del Unser was in right field, having moved over from center late in the game. He noticed the fans gathering along the right field line. A few had run onto the field before the inning began and were cleared off when an announcement was made warning that the game would be forfeited if they didn’t leave.

In the ninth inning, Murcer bounced back to the mound for the second out. And fans poured onto the field. They grabbed the bases, including home plate. They started digging up the mound and even ripped off pieces of the scoreboard.

Unser ran for the dugout. “I saw them going crazy, and I just hoped I could get to the dugout. It was basically you just grab your hat and run for it. It was a little broken-field running through the crowd, but nobody was after us, they were after souvenirs from the stadium.”