Table of Contents
Stadium Guide by Baseball Tripper
History
If you did not already know, the Washington Nationals are not in Washington state, but rather Washington D.C. instead. However the team has not always called this location home or used this team name either. You may know them better as the Montreal Expos who were formed in 1969 as the second team to call Canada home. We could do a whole other article on the Montreal Expos’ history, but we will instead focus on the now Washington Nationals. They moved to Washington D.C. after their contract expired letting them be purchased by the MLB. With this change in ownership, the MLB knew how bad the city of Washington D.C. wanted a baseball team after seven other major league franchises had called the city home only to move onto other locations instead. This was the most recent move in MLB history when it occurred in 2005, which is only 16 years away from this current season.
Like many other teams, the Nationals struggled after this relocation but they shined with the draft picks of Stephen Strasburg and Bryce Harper on their side. In fact they started winning for the first time shortly after those two players were drafted (2010). The team won their first division title in 2012, which guaranteed them a spot in the playoffs for the first time since moving there in 2005. It was safe to say that fans were excited in the city, but their excitement would be short lived. They did not amount to much in the playoffs, but they continued to give it a shot when they won the division titles again in 2014, 2016, and 2017. The Nationals did eventually win a World Series title and did so very recently actually. It came in 2019 and it was ironic since they did not win their division but rather snuck their way into the playoffs with a wild card victory.