joined the National League (the London Tecumsehs were refused admission to the National League in 1877 because they refused to stop playing exhibition games against local teams). The team enjoyed a widespread following until about 1994 (when the Expos were in first place in the NL East); after the strike shortened year a series of poor management decisions, disputes with the city, and neglect by the ownership caused the Expos to be routinely last in MLB attendance. In 2004, the Expos, then owned by MLB itself, moved to Washington, D.C. and became the Washington Nationals. Gary Carter, a popular player in Montreal along with Andre Dawson are members of the Hall of Fame whose plaques have an Expos cap on. In 1977, the Toronto Blue Jays joined the American League. They won the World Series in 1992 and 1993. On July 12, 2022, Philadelphia Phillies manager Rob Thomson became the first Canadian to ever manage a Major League Baseball team in Canada. Thomson was also the first Canadian-born manager since 1934. In 2003 an attempt to create the Canadian Baseball League was launched, but the league folded halfway through its first season. A few Canada-based teams play in low-tier American circuits. Some of these teams such as the Winnipeg Goldeyes draw crowds of 7,000 on a regular basis, making them one of the highest attended low-tier baseball teams in all of North America. See List of baseball teams in Canada. Cuba The early years (1864–1874) Baseball was introduced to Cuba in the 1860s by Cubans who studied in the United States and American sailors who ported in the country. The sport quickly spread across the island nation. Nemisio Guillo is credited with bringing a bat and baseball to Cuba in 1864 after being schooled in Mobile, Alabama. Two more Cubans were sent to Mobile, one being his brother Ernesto Guillo. The Guillo brothers and their contemporaries formed a baseball team in 1868—the Habana Baseball Club. The club won one major match—against the crew of an American schooner anchored at the Matanzas harbour. Soon after this, the first Cuban War of Independence against its Spanish rulers spurred Spanish authorities in 1869 to ban playing the sport in Cuba because Cubans began to prefer baseball to viewing bullfights, which Cubans were expected to attend dutifully as homage to their Spanish rulers in an informal cultural mandate. As such, baseball became symbolic of