Brad Wilkerson remembers feeling “pretty emotional” on Sept. 29, 2004.
That day, Major League Baseball announced that the former outfielder and first baseman’s Expos were moving to Washington, D.C. after years of dysfunction. That same night, Wilkerson and teammates played their final game in Montreal in front of 31,395 devastated fans.
The Expos, who became the Nationals in 2005, went out with a whimper that evening, losing to the Marlins, 9-1. But the real goodbyes came after the game, when Wilkerson and his peers stayed at Olympic Stadium an extra two hours so that they could thank and interact with the people their franchise was leaving behind.
