April 14, 2005, 20 years ago: Major League Baseball returns to Washington, D.C. after 33 seasons away. Ironically, the new home team is the Washington Nationals, who had been the Montreal Expos from 1969 to 2004, and played their 1st home game in Montreal exactly 36 years to the day before.
George W. Bush, former owner of the Texas Rangers, recently re-elected but not a particularly popular President, received a decent hand from the 45,596 fans at Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium when he performed the usual Presidential duty of throwing out the ceremonial first ball. Presidents had done this in Baltimore, the next-closest MLB city to Washington, since Ronald Reagan restarted the tradition in 1984. William Howard Taft was the 1st President to do it, in 1910, but none had done it in Washington since Richard Nixon in 1969.
Also throwing out a "first ball" was Frank Howard, the former Los Angeles Dodgers and Washington Senators slugger, the Senators' most popular player in their last few years before they were moved to become the Rangers after the 1971 season, and the player who hit the last home in a regular-season game in Washington. (Exhibition games had been played there in the interim.)
When Nationals Park opened in 2008, there would be statues of Howard, early Senators pitching legend Walter Johnson, and Josh Gibson, Negro Leagues legend who had played home games in D.C. with the Homestead Grays (who split their games between D.C. and Pittsburgh).
The Nationals had a built-in Hall-of-Famer from the very start: The Expos' last manager, and thus the Nats' 1st manager, was Frank Robinson. Slugger of 586 home runs, the only player to win the Most Valuable Player award in both Leagues, and the 1st black manager in each League, he was winding down a half-century in professional baseball.
The Nats' opening opponents were the Arizona Diamondbacks. The game was scoreless until the bottom of the 4th. José Vidro led off with a double, José Guillén was hit with a pitch, Ryan Church popped up, Vinny Castilla tripled home Vidro and Guillén, and Brian Schneider hits a sacrifice fly to bring Castilla home. The Nats led, 3-0.
Castilla hit a home run in the bottom of the 6th, driving in Church, to make it 5-0. Liván Hernández pitched very well for 8 innings, but ran out of gas in the 9th, giving up a 3-run homer to Chad Tracy. Robinson brought Chad Cordero on to get the last 3 outs, and the Nats won, 5-3.
Castilla's home run
It would take the Nats until 2012 to make the Playoffs, and 2019 before they won a postseason series -- and then go all the way and win the World Series.
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