Patrick Semansky/Associated Press
WASHINGTON — When Major League Baseball finally returned here for the 2005 season, this must have been the vision: a perennial winner with a roster of stars in a ballpark that sparked a neighborhood building boom.
“That was absolutely the dream,” said Jim Bowden, the Nationals’ first general manager after their move from Montreal. “When I came over, the team was owned by 30 clubs and run by the commissioner’s office. They wanted to find an owner that had the resources, lived in the D.C. area and had the pockets to build world championship-caliber teams.