The Montreal Expos: A Franchise from 1969 to the Move to Washington
The Expos played 36 seasons in Montreal, built a 74-40 team in 1994 that never got its postseason, and became the Washington Nationals in 2005. This article traces the club, the park, the stars and the move.
For 36 seasons the Montreal Expos were the first major league baseball team to play outside the United States. They won 2,755 games and lost 2,943, a winning percentage of .484, and they reached the postseason exactly once. Yet their best team may be the one most often named when fans talk about what might have been: the 1994 Expos, who had the best record in baseball, 74 wins and 40 losses, on the day a players' strike stopped the season.
The franchise did not die in 2004. It moved to the nation's capital, took the name Nationals, and in 2019 won the World Series, the only pennant and the only championship the franchise has ever had. The historical record treats Montreal and Washington as one continuous club, which is why the record book can show a World Series title next to a team that no longer exists under its old name. This article follows the franchise through its Montreal years and the decision to leave, with every figure drawn from the historical record and every claim about history limited to what is well documented.
An expansion team named for a World's Fair
The Expos joined the National League in 1969 as one of two National League expansion clubs added that year, the other being the San Diego Padres. The name came from Expo 67, the world's fair that Montreal had hosted two years earlier. The owner was Charles Bronfman, an heir to the Seagram liquor fortune, and the first manager was Gene Mauch, who held the job from 1969 through 1975 and compiled 499 wins and 627 losses in 1,127 games.
The club played its first game on April 8, 1969, at Shea Stadium in New York, and won, 11-10, against the Mets. That was the high point of the season. The 1969 Expos went 52-110, last in the NL East and, per the historical record, the worst record in the franchise's history by winning percentage. Their home was Jarry Park, a small park in a city neighborhood that the club used from 1969 through 1976. The best season attendance there was 1,424,683.
The early rosters were stocked with expansion-draft veterans and a few young pitchers. Bill Stoneman, who pitched for the club from 1969 to 1973, threw 15 shutouts, the second-highest total in franchise history. Steve Rogers, who arrived in 1973 and stayed through 1985, would eventually win 158 games, throw 37 shutouts, and become the franchise's career leader in both.
Carter, Dawson, Raines and the Olympic Stadium years
By the middle of the 1970s the Expos had assembled a group of young players that would form the backbone of the club for more than a decade. Gary Carter, a catcher, reached the majors in 1974 and went on to play 12 seasons for the club in the historical data, with 220 home runs and 823 runs batted in as an Expo. Andre Dawson, an outfielder, arrived in 1976, won the Rookie of the Year award in 1977, and hit 225 home runs for the club through 1986. Tim Raines, an outfielder who debuted in 1979 and who would play for the franchise until 2001, stole 635 bases in an Expos uniform, by far the club record, and walked 793 times, also the club record. Tim Wallach, a third baseman who played for the club from 1980 to 1992, hit 204 home runs and collected 1,694 hits.
In 1977 the club moved into Olympic Stadium, the concrete stadium that Montreal had built for the 1976 Summer Games. The Stade Olympique would be the Expos' home for the next 28 seasons, and its best attendance came in 1983, with 2,320,651. The design was supposed to include a retractable roof, and the roof was a long-running problem. For the story of why baseball began to look at covered and indoor parks in the first place, see domed stadiums and the Astrodome.
The team improved quickly. Dick Williams took over in 1977 and managed through 1981, winning 380 and losing 347 in 727 games. In 1979 the Expos won 95 games and lost 65 and finished second in the NL East, behind the Pittsburgh Pirates. They won 90 in 1980 and finished second again. In 1982 and 1983 they won 86 and 82, finishing third in each. The decade had a pattern: near-contention, strong players, no division title, in an NL East that included the Phillies, Pirates, Cardinals and Mets, all strong at various times.
1981: the only October
The one Expos team to reach the playoffs did it in a season split in two. A players' strike that summer wiped out part of the schedule, and the leagues decided to declare the first-half and second-half winners in each division, with a short series to settle the title. The Phillies won the first half and the Expos won the second half, which put the two clubs in a best-of-five divisional series. They won it, three games to two, the only postseason series the club ever won in Montreal's name.
The National League Championship Series that followed was against the Dodgers. The series went the full five games, and the Expos lost, two games to three. The deciding game, on October 19, 1981, was a 2-1 game at Olympic Stadium, with Rick Monday of the Dodgers hitting a home run off Steve Rogers in the ninth inning. Montreal fans have called the day Blue Monday ever since.
That 1981 team, with the strike-year record of 60 wins and 48 losses in the historical data, was the only Expos squad ever to win a division title. It is a thin postseason résumé for 36 seasons, but it is the one on the record.
1994: the best team in baseball
From 1992 to 1996 the Expos had a young, quick, low-payroll roster and a manager who knew how to use it. Felipe Alou managed the club from 1992 to 2001 and posted 691 wins and 717 losses in 1,408 games, the most games of any manager in franchise history. His players included Larry Walker in right field, Moises Alou in left, Marquis Grissom in center, Pedro Martinez and Ken Hill on the mound and John Wetteland in the bullpen. Grissom stole 266 bases for the Expos between 1989 and 1994, second only to Raines; Wetteland recorded 105 saves in 1992 through 1994.
The team won 87 games in 1992 and 94 in 1993, finishing second both years. In 1994 they were better than either. By the second week of August they were 74-40, a .649 winning percentage that would have been about a 105-win pace over 162 games, and they led the NL East. Then the players' union struck on August 12 over the owners' demand for a salary cap, and the season ended. No postseason was played, and there was no World Series that year for the first time since 1904.
The historical record lists 1994 as a first-place finish, and attendance that year was 1,276,250 in a shortened season. What would have followed cannot be known. Nobody can say whether the Expos would have won the pennant, because the postseason was never played. But they had the best record in the majors when the games stopped, and that is the fact the city remembers.
The dismantling and the decline
The strike wiped out more than a season. It cut into attendance everywhere, and in a market the size of Montreal's, with a currency that traded below the dollar in which most big-league salaries were paid, the Expos could not keep a roster that cost real money. In the winter and spring after the strike the team broke up. Walker left as a free agent and signed with Colorado. Grissom was traded to Atlanta. Wetteland went to the Yankees, and Hill to the Cardinals. The 1995 Expos fell to 66 wins and 78 losses and finished in fifth place. The pieces would be sold off in a pattern that fans in many smaller markets would come to recognize.
There was a revival of sorts in 1996, when the club won 88 games and finished second. Pedro Martinez, who pitched for the club from 1994 to 1997, won the NL Cy Young Award in 1997 and was then traded to Boston, a deal that illustrated the club's economics. The Expos could discover a star and could not keep him. Vladimir Guerrero, a right fielder who played for the club from 1996 to 2003, hit .323 for it, the best average among Expos with at least 3,000 at-bats, and 234 home runs. Jose Vidro hit .301 as a second baseman. Pitcher Javier Vazquez struck out 1,076 batters for the club between 1998 and 2003.
By then the stadium was part of the problem. Olympic Stadium had aged badly, and the roof never worked as intended. Attendance dropped. In 2001 the club drew 642,745 fans, the lowest full-season figure in the historical record for the franchise since 1969, and the 2002 and 2004 crowds were 812,045 and 749,550. A club that had once passed 2.3 million could now count its crowds in the hundreds of thousands.
Ownership, contraction and San Juan
The ownership story is complicated. Bronfman sold the club in the early 1990s to a group of local investors. In 1999 Jeffrey Loria, an art dealer, bought a minority stake and became the managing partner, and he later held most of the club. In 2001, major league owners voted to eliminate two franchises, and the Expos and the Minnesota Twins were widely reported to be the targets; a legal fight in Minnesota forced the Twins to honor their stadium lease for 2002, and the contraction plan was shelved. In 2002 Loria sold the Expos to the other 29 clubs, collectively, and bought the Florida Marlins, whose owner John Henry in turn bought the Boston Red Sox. The sport thus owned a team it was trying to place.
Under that arrangement the Expos continued to play, and sometimes played well. Frank Robinson, the Hall of Fame outfielder, managed the club from 2002 to 2006, winning 385 games and losing 425 over 810 games. The 2002 team won 83 and lost 79 and finished second. The 2003 team went 83-79 as well. In both 2003 and 2004 the club played 22 of its home games in San Juan, Puerto Rico, at Hiram Bithorn Stadium, a way of finding more revenue for a club the league was trying to place. The 2004 Expos went 67-95 and finished last in the NL East, with their final season in Canada drawing 749,550 fans to its home games.
The move to Washington
After years of studying bids from Washington, Northern Virginia, Portland, Las Vegas and other places, the league announced in the fall of 2004 that the franchise would play in the nation's capital in 2005. Washington had been without a team since 1971, when the expansion Senators left for Texas, and the original Senators had left for Minnesota after 1960. The new club was named the Nationals, a nod to the old Washington teams that had used the name.
The team's first Washington home was R.F.K. Stadium, a multipurpose stadium built for football and used by the old Senators. In 2005 it drew 2,731,993 fans, the highest single-season attendance in the history of the franchise, and a figure that suggested the market's hunger. The club remained under league ownership until a group led by the Lerner family bought it in 2006. The new Nationals Park opened in 2008, and its best attendance has been 2,652,422.
The move was bitter in Montreal. A city that had supported its team through a strike, a bad stadium and an ownership crisis lost its only major league club, and the contraction vote, the Puerto Rico games and the long period of league ownership had left the Expos with little chance. There is an irony in the numbers. The franchise's attendance record belongs to Washington, but it is Montreal's players who fill the all-time lists, among them Raines, Carter, Dawson, Wallach, Guerrero and Rogers.
Montreal's legacy in Cooperstown and in the record book
Three players who spent most of their careers in Montreal are in the Hall of Fame with Expos caps on their plaques: Gary Carter, Andre Dawson and Tim Raines. The historical data lists Raines at 13 seasons with the franchise, Carter at 12, Dawson at 11, Guerrero at eight, Larry Walker at six and Pedro Martinez at four. For how those players were elected, see how Hall of Fame voting works.
In the record book the Nationals' and Expos' histories are one list. The franchise's career leader in home runs is Ryan Zimmerman, with 284 as a National from 2005 to 2021, but second is Guerrero with 234, third Dawson with 225 and fourth Carter with 220. In stolen bases the leader is Raines, 635, and in wins Rogers, 158. The best record of any season by winning percentage is still the 74-40 of 1994, and the best over a full 162 games is the 98-64 of 2012.
What came after: Washington's years
The first years in Washington were lean, including 59-102 in 2008 and 59-103 in 2009. Then the club's drafts began to pay off. Stephen Strasburg, a pitcher, won 113 games for the franchise from 2010 to 2022; Bryce Harper won the Rookie of the Year award in 2012 and the Most Valuable Player award in 2015; Max Scherzer won two Cy Young Awards, in 2016 and 2017. The Nationals won the NL East in 2012, 2014, 2016 and 2017, with 98, 96, 95 and 97 wins, and lost the division series each time.
In 2019 they finished second in the division at 93-69 and won the wild-card game over Milwaukee, then beat the Dodgers in a five-game division series, swept St. Louis in the NLCS and beat the Houston Astros in seven games in the World Series. It came in the franchise's 51st season, and it is a reminder that the club's two identities share one record: the pennant that eluded Montreal came to the same franchise in another country. For how the 1969 club came to exist, see the expansion timeline, and for how other franchises have moved, see the Browns' move to Baltimore and other relocations.
Common questions
Did the Expos ever win a division title? Yes, once: in 1981, in the strike-shortened season, they won the second-half title and beat the Phillies in a divisional series before losing the NLCS to the Dodgers.
What was the best Expos team? The 1994 club, which was 74-40 when the strike stopped the season, had the best record in the majors. The 1979 club won 95 games, and the 1993 club won 94.
Where did the Expos play? At Jarry Park from 1969 to 1976, at Olympic Stadium from 1977 to 2004, with some home games in San Juan, Puerto Rico, in 2003 and 2004.
Did the Expos win a World Series? Not as Expos. The franchise's one championship came in 2019 as the Washington Nationals.
Who is the best player in Expos history? Carter, Dawson and Raines are Hall of Famers who wore Expos caps, and Guerrero, Rogers and Martinez had their best years in Montreal. No single answer holds up for every statistic.
Where to go next
For the broader story of franchise moves, read the Dodgers and Giants moving west and baseball's expansion timeline. For the current club, see the Nationals team page and the standings.