This team is hoping to make Washington the capital of baseball. Washington Nationals Baseball Club owns and operates the professional baseball franchise that represents the nation's capital in Major League Baseball. The team was founded in 1968 as the Montreal Expos (the expansion franchise was awarded to Charles Bronfman, whose family built the Seagram's distilling business) but struggled for many years to build a fan base in Quebec. MLB, which took over the team from Jeffery Loria in 2002, relocated the Expos to Washington, DC, in 2005. Real estate developer Ted Lerner purchased the team from the league in 2006.