From Being the Montreal Expos to the Washington Nationals

The Washington Nationals is a baseball team that was once called the Montreal Expos. The move of the Expos and their transformation into the Washington Nationals is a source of debate for a lot of baseball fans and is a source of numerous controversies. One of the controversies that seem to have been part of the creation of the Washington Nationals is the building of the park they were supposed to play in, the Nationals Park.

The building of such a stadium was strongly opposed by most of the people in the county and in the state. The future home of the Washington Nationals, the Nationals Park, which will soon be opened in 2008, was and still is very controversial since the city was planning on putting up the stadium even without the much needed support of the people in the area, an unheard of practice when it comes to government funded infrastructure projects as big as this. The Washington Nationals are currently playing out of the RFK stadium and are slated to move to the new park on the opening day in March of 2008. The stadium that is slated to open in the first quarter of 2008 was supposed to cost around $581 million but is now projected to have a cost of around $611 million upon completion.

Another controversy that surrounds the move and the creation of the Washington Nationals is the viability of a professional baseball team in the area. Since there is very little support from the people in the area, there are those who argue that the move was ill thought out and did not represent good judgment and good business decision making. This meant that the possibility of making any money out of the team was pretty slim and that the people thought that the Washington Nationals were better off staying in Montreal.