The Nationals recently announced plans for their 20th anniversary celebration in 2025, with a number of special events and giveaways promised, not to mention a ranking of the 20 greatest moments in club history.

We here were already planning our own 20th anniversary celebration, and why wait until 2025 to get started with that? The Nats already have completed 20 full seasons in D.C., so this is as good a time as any to get the ball rolling with a weekly series that will run every Sunday through the rest of December: The 20 Greatest Players in Nationals History.

What constitutes “greatness?” For these purposes, we’re considering a combination of quantity and quality, plus impact on and off the field. Some of these guys played many years here and had lots of time to make names for themselves. Some of them weren’t here very long but still made a difference with specific acts of greatness.

We only considered a player’s contributions for the Nationals at the major league level. It doesn’t matter what they did before or after they were in Washington. No one singular stat was deemed more important than any other. Postseason performance wasn’t required, but it certainly elevated some players’ cases for inclusion on this list. This is, to be clear, a subjective exercise. There’s no right answer. And that means there will surely be some healthy debate about the choices, which is how these things are supposed to be.

We’ll unveil five names each week, culminating with the top five on Dec. 29. And with that, we begin today with No. 16-20 …

A weekend of nostalgia commenced Friday night when Ryan Zimmerman was joined by four ex-teammates (Jayson Werth, Adam LaRoche, Ian Desmond, Danny Espinosa) atop the visitors’ dugout for a Q&A with Nationals fans who hung on the group’s every word and probably wished that event could just keep going on the rest of the evening instead of the actual game that began at 7:05 p.m.

It’s tough to be a Nats fan in 2022, and it’s probably going to continue to be tough to be a fan of this team for a while longer. So it may take more of this kind of nostalgia to bring a smile to everyone’s face.

Before today’s game, the Nationals will officially retire Zimmerman’s No. 11 jersey, the first such player in club history to receive that honor, though certainly not the last. You’ve got to assume No. 31 will stand alongside it a few more years down the road, perhaps No. 37 and/or No. 22 as well, depending on how things go.

It’s one of the few major milestones this franchise hasn’t experienced since arriving in town 17 years ago. There have been no-hitters and division clinchers, an All-Star Game and a World Series. Now there’s a retired number to unveil on the façade of the upper deck along the first base line.

And nobody else in team history would’ve sufficed to be the first.