Friday, July 31, 2009

The Last Expo Has Left the Nationals!!!

I swear this will be the last "Deans" post I do this season. But as July 31 is the non-waiver trading deadline, there have been a lot of trading between teams all over the place. One that might have flown under the radar sent Nick Johnson of the Washington Nationals to the Florida Marlins for pitcher Aaron Thompson.

What makes this significant is that Nick Johnson was the Nationals' last link to the Montréal Expos, as he was with the organization in 2004, the teams final year in Canada. This makes pitcher Jason Bergmann the longest tenured Washington National on the team, making his MLB debut on 08/28/2005 (Ryan Zimmerman, the teams 1st round draft pick in 2005 is next, debuting 09/01/2005). Jason, also known as Jay, also becomes the Dean with the least amount of tenure of any of the 30 teams, now behind Jeremy Hermida of the Florida Marlins.

Bergmann, who was drafted into the Expos organization, never played in Montréal. So technically, he will always be a National (unless, of course, he gets traded). And he does have Topps cards, although not in the 2009 Topps base set, nor is he scheduled to appear in the U & H set.

Maybe he'll return in 2010.

Sincerely,

JayBee Anama

1 comment:

Bo said...

Personally I find these Dean posts really interesting. I was surprised how many of the deans were really under-the-radar guys like middle relievers. Maybe that's why Topps discontinued the idea; 1986 may have been a freak year where all the deans were at least minor stars.