​​A brief history of baseball in DC

 

Professional baseball was first played in Washington DC in 1871 as part of the National Association of Base Ball Players (NABBP or National Association).  Professional baseball continued to be played in the Nation's Capital under various names and for numerous organizations until the Washington Nationals joined the National League for the 1886 season.  The Washington Nationals played in the National League until they were victims of a downsizing of the league from 12 teams to 8 in 1900.  The Washington Senators joined the rival American League for its inaugural 1901 season.  The Senators won their first and only World Series in 1924, defeating the New York Giants in 7 games.  In 1960, the owners of the Washington franchise announced the team was relocating to Minneapolis.  The American League announced the same year that it was expanding and awarded a new team to Washington, retaining the Senators name, for the 1961 season.  After 10 mostly lackluster seasons, on September 21, 1971, the Senators' owners announced they were moving the team to Texas, where they became the Texas Rangers.  Washington was without a baseball team until 2005, when Major League Baseball moved the struggling Montreal Expos team to Washington where it became the Washington Nationals.

 

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Headlines

​The timeline below charts headlines that appeared in various publications, both print and online, found using the search criteria: Revitalization Southeast waterfront DC.  For the purposes of the timeline I was interested in what was being talked about regarding the redevelopment of the Nationals Park Area of Southeast DC.  I used the Washington Post website, ProQuest Historical Newspapers, and Google in my search efforts and limited my study to articles, press releases, and other forms of published items.  Most of the pertinent articles, not surprisingly, came from the Washington Post.  As can be expected, there was a surge of articles fitting this search criteria as soon as Major League Baseball (MLB) announced that Washington DC was one of four cities under consideration to receive the Montreal Expos franchise that had been taken over by the league in 2002.  The pace of articles picked up after the official announcement in September 2004 that the team was moving to DC.  Reports remained steady from that time until Nationals Park opened in 2008. 

 

After the opening of the new ballpark, there was a sharp decline in articles.  There is a two-part explanation for this.  The first was that most of the land available for revitalization around the stadium had already been purchased and corresponding development projects already approved, so the city had shifted its revitalization efforts to Southwest DC (around the marina area and Buzzard Point).  The second​ reason was the impact of the economic downturn.  Several of the companies with projects slated for development had difficulty securing funding or went bankrupt, stalling revitalization efforts.  Many of the articles after 2008 deal with  these issues.