Spring Training history for the Washington Nationals goes back 21 years now to its beginnings in 2005. The setting was a town about an hour east of Orlando called Viera near the Melbourne beaches on the Atlantic Ocean side. Yes, that town near Cape Canaveral where they launched rockets. The inaugural year was a year of getting to know each other. Everything felt kind of rented and not permanent. Viera felt as temporary and contrived as RFK Stadium since we all knew that the team would be out of there in a matter of years.

A year later, Ryan Zimmerman entered his first Spring Training before the 2006 season, and the Virginia local guy immediately became a fan favorite. After a few years, he made it known that he was not a fan of the long preseasons in Florida, the wins don’t count, the stats don’t count for players like him, so let’s get north and start the season.

As the face of the franchise during most of his time as Employee No. 11, that sentiment of how Zim felt about Spring Training was likely shared with much of the clubhouse. Certainly the team’s former television network didn’t see much value in Spring Training either. But is this year different? Is 2026 the most important Spring Training in the 20+ years since the Nats came to DC?