The Washington Nationals will be celebrating its 20th anniversary throughout the 2025 MLB season.
The team said its season-long celebration — called NATS20 — will feature in-park giveaways and appearances from its former players.
Fans will be able to pick their 20 favorite moments from the Nationals’ past 20 years. After the lists are submitted, the top 20 picks will be shown at Nationals Parks, starting on March 27 when the Nationals host the Philadelphia Phillies to begin the 2025 regular season.
The team, which moved to the District in 2005 from Montreal as they were known as the Expos, will have 20th anniversary patches on their caps throughout the year.
Washington Nationals legend Ryan Zimmerman joined Michelle Basch and John Aaron on WTOP to discuss the team’s plans for its upcoming 20th anniversary celebration.
Listen to the full interview below or read the transcript, which has been lightly edited for clarity.
Ryan Zimmerman: (I) think it’s just a fun celebration of which is kind of hard to believe that it’s been 20 years. We’re celebrating as an organization and as players, but we also want to celebrate with the fans. I’ve been here pretty much since the beginning, and I think one of the coolest things is kind of watching our fan base and people that miss baseball for so long get baseball back and learn how to be baseball fans again. I always say that we, the team and the fans have grown up together, and at the beginning, it wasn’t the best team to root for, and we had some tough years at the beginning. But, in 20 years, we’ve become, I think, one of the best organizations in baseball. We’ve obviously won a World Series and we had a whole 10- or 11-year run where we were very competitive and we’re going to be back there again soon. So it’s exciting for us to celebrate. I know the team has a bunch of fun 20 year opportunities for fans to get giveaways at the ballpark and sign up to win cool prizes and experiences. So it’s going to be a fun year.
Michelle Basch: And we have to pick our favorite highlights from those 20 years?
Ryan Zimmerman: Yeah, I think they’re doing a fan competition where they get to pick their favorite 20 moments over the 20 years. So that’ll be kind of cool to see what the fans think. I always think players, fans, everyone has a different idea of what their favorite moments are. So that’ll be a fun way to kind of look back on two decades of baseball in the nation’s capital and see what the fans think are their favorite times.
John Aaron: Yeah, it sounds awesome. I’m excited about the season. While we have you, I want to ask you is, not just a long time player, but as someone who truly respects the game, there’s a lot of buzz about this golden at-bat rule in baseball where you could send anyone to the plate at one time a game. I mean, is this a travesty? Is this a great idea? What do you think?
Ryan Zimmerman: Yeah, my buddy actually sent me that the other day, and I’ll be honest, I haven’t truly researched it yet. But I will say MLB, over the last four or five years, have done some really good things to change the game and for the better. And I think a lot of those ideas started off with how can they do this? The people that have been watching baseball forever won’t go for this kind of stuff. And to be honest with you, they kind of have. Now this rule, I don’t know, this could be an interesting curveball, I guess, for lack of a better word to throw in there. But I think it would definitely make the games a little bit different in the strategy and being able to put your basically your best hitter in any situation once a game would make for a lot of excitement. I don’t know how a traditionalist I feel about that, but I think we’re always open to looking into new things, but this one could be a little crazy,
Michelle Basch: Definitely! Well, Ryan, we appreciate you being with us. We’re looking forward to the next season.
Ryan Zimmerman: It’ll be a fun time. I’m excited and I hope the fans, most importantly, have a good time with it, because we couldn’t be here without all the fans. So we appreciate that and let’s have a fun year and celebrate 20 years.
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