The Washington Nationals begin the fight Tuesday night for their first-ever World Series title.
The Nationals came from behind to beat the Brewers in a truly wild wild-card game, upset the mighty Dodgers in dramatic fashion, and then swept the Cardinals en route to their first National League pennant. Their success has brought excitement to the nation’s capital, but if it weren’t for the 1994 MLB players’ strike, Washington might not have a baseball team at all.
From 1969 to 2004, the Nationals franchise was the Montreal Expos. They were Canada’s first MLB team.
The Expos were never a powerhouse. They made it to the playoffs just once in 1981, defeating the Phillies in the Division series but losing to the Dodgers in the League Championship series.
Unfortunately for the Expos, their best season ever came in 1994.
Through 114 regular season games, the team had the best record of the 28 MLB teams, 74-40, and were on pace to win 105 regular season games. Remarkably, they did this on a $19 million payroll, the second-lowest in the big leagues.
Their roster was loaded with talent. Their starting pitching staff featured Cy Young Award runner-up Ken Hill and Hall of Famer Pedro Martinez. Meanwhile, their starting lineup featured four All-Stars: catcher Darrin Fletcher, shortstop Wil Cordero, and outfielders Moises Alou and Marquis Grissom. In addition, their other starting outfielder, Larry Walker, is now a serious Hall of Fame candidate.
The team had the pieces for success, but, instead, the MLB Players Association went on strike on Aug. 12, as the two sides could not come to terms on a new collective bargaining agreement.
Although both sides had the right to fight for their own best interests, the Expos were among the biggest losers in the labor dispute. If they kept at the pace they had all season, the Expos would have made it to the postseason for just the second time in franchise history, and they probably would have been favorites to win the World Series.
The team would have earned more money and drummed up interest in baseball in the Montreal area. As David Lengel put it in The Guardian, “The play-by-play announcer Gary Thorne once said that Montreal could have expected to earn at least $20m during that postseason; instead they took out loans for roughly $20m.”
The new collective bargaining agreement did not feature lucrative revenue-sharing, which would have massively helped a low-budget operation such as the Expos. They could not afford to keep together their team of budding stars and ended up trading away star pitcher Hill, closer John Wetteland, and outfielder Grissom. Outfielder Walker left the team through free agency.
The whole situation angered Expos fans. Some bought into a conspiracy theory that the league wanted to prevent a Canadian team from winning the World Series for a third year in a row (the Toronto Blue Jays had won it in 1992 and 1993). Fans were not happy when the team sold off many of its star players and finished dead last in 1995. The strike damaged the league’s reputation across the country, but the Expos had a chance to be revered in their city and gain fans. Instead, their best chance to grow their popularity got squandered by a labor negotiation.
Attendance in Montreal plummeted. In 1994, the team drew a respectable 24,543 fans per game, a number which likely would have risen as the team got closer and closer to the postseason. Had they won the World Series, attendance surely would have surged in 1995. Instead, it dipped to 18,189 per game and never recovered.
By 2001, the Expos were drawing an abysmal 7,935 fans per game. For reference, the Miami Marlins had the worst home attendance in 2019, averaging 10,000 fans per game.
The declining interest in the team combined with Quebec’s bilingual population presented other issues for the team: an inability to find a television deal or even an English radio broadcast for the 2000 season. There was an internet broadcast, but nearly half of Canadians didn’t have the internet then, and many who did had a slow dial-up connection.
By 2001, the Expos were losing $20 million per season, and so came the threat of MLB contraction, going back to 28 teams by eliminating the Montreal Expos and the Minnesota Twins.
It didn’t end up happening. In 2002, the Minnesota Supreme Court ruled that the Twins could not break their lease with the Metrodome, their home venue. Then, later in the year, the MLB Players Association and the owners agreed to terms to delay any potential contraction until 2006.
However, prepared for contraction, the other 29 MLB owners bought the Expos from Jeffrey Loria prior to the 2002 season so they could eventually disband the team. They were then stuck with the highly unpopular ballclub.
With the team failing to turn a profit in Montreal, MLB began seeking new owners and a new location for the Expos. On Sept. 29, 2004, MLB announced the Expos would be moving to Washington, D.C., for the 2005 season. The multipurpose Robert F. Kennedy Stadium, which hosted the Washington Senators from 1962 to 1971 before they became the Texas Rangers, gave Washington an advantage because it gave the Nationals a temporary home before a new stadium (Nationals Park) would be ready for them, as it was for the 2008 MLB season.
In 2006, an ownership group spearheaded by Ted Lerner bought the Nationals for $450 million. The group has owned the team ever since.
Now, the former Expos are a big-market club. According to USA Today, the Nationals payroll ranked third this season at about $204.5 million.
It is a franchise that has not only drafted well, but they have been willing to spend on free agents when necessary, something the Expos were not capable of doing.
Had the 1994 MLB players strike not happened, the history of the franchise would be very different. Maybe the Expos would have won the World Series and created more lifelong baseball fans. Perhaps someone else would have seen the market potential for a team in Montreal, bought the franchise, and poured money into it in Canada.
But the past is the past and can’t be changed. Now, the Nationals have a chance at bringing Washington, D.C., its first World Series since 1924.
Tom Joyce (@TomJoyceSports) is a freelance writer who has been published with USA Today, the Boston Globe, Newsday, ESPN, the Detroit Free Press, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, The Federalist, and a number of other media outlets.
