With the Washington Redskins about to be embarrassed by the Baltimore Ravens in a pre-season game tonight, it was apparently time for the Washington Post to do one of those periodic battle-of-the-beltways, city-to city comparisons where we so often come out damned with faint praise.

True, it was written by a thoughtful longtime Baltimore resident who works in D.C. (and now owns a condo there), and she ably recites our civic virtues and venues – Pigtown and the Pratt Library, Berger cookies and The Wire, the Lantern Parade and Fort McHenry – and concludes that Baltimore is best.

“But all in all,” Frances Sellers states in her paean to Charm City, “Baltimore’s not a Very Important Place — which is just what its residents like about it. People go to Washington for opportunity; when they come to Baltimore they find community.”

As the headline puts it, “Baltimore integrity trumps D.C. importance.”

What do you think of the piece? Do you feel like the chubby gal who’s described as having “such a pretty face?” Or, face it, does Sellers have it right?

Either way, here’s something Sellers’ new hometown doesn’t have: Ray Rice, Lee Evans or Bernard Pollard.

See you guys on the field tonight . . .