The Continuing Attempt To Educate A Montreal Fan About DC Baseball History..
On November 22, 2004, Washington, DC Mayor Anthony Williams appeared before the assembled national and international press at the Main Hall in Union Station in Washington, and announced that the MLB franchise that was relocating to the District from Montreal, QC, would be known as the Washington Nationals.
The speculation leading up to the unveiling had the names Washington...Senators, Nationals or Grays as the top three possibilities for the first team that was to call Washington, DC it's baseball home in over thirty years, since the last Senators franchise had departed for Minnesota in 1972 and become the Twins.
The first Senators had left Washington just twelve years earlier in 1960, and had been quickly replaced by Major League baseball with an expansion franchise which bore the same name.
The Homestead Grays were a barnstorming Negro League team originally out of Homestead, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Pittsburgh, who played out of Forbes Field, and later came to call Griffith Stadium, once the site of Boundary Field, which was also known as National Park, in Washington, DC, as their adopted home field.
When Mayor Anthony Williams announced the name of the new DC franchise, he told the crowd, as recounted by mlb.com's Bill Ladson, in an article entitled "D.C.'s team to be the Nationals", that:
"...I think Nationals gives us a fresh start. For example, in
our media guide, we're talking about having a page of
records from the old Senators, a page of records from the
Expos and a blank page writing our own records in
Washington. This is a new team. The record is going
forward here. We'll start with that."
The next step is the new stadium that is set to open this April with a game against the Baltimore Orioles before the Nationals open their third Major League season in DC several days later. The team has yet to name their new stadium.
*Nationals' Links*
MLB.com's Bill Ladson's article, "D.C.'s team to be the Nationals":
mlb.com's writer Michael Phillip's article, "Nationals exhibit stadium's progress":
Recent federalbaseball "Diary" entry by clockwerks which contains links to pics of new stadium: