The Senators' attendance figures had suffered after the arrival of the Baltimore Orioles in 1954 and Griffith then grew to prefer the less racially-defined demographics and profit potential of the Minnesota market.

However, Davis refused to play for the team and was traded for Bobby Mitchell, with Marshall later signing four other black players for the season as the last NFL owner to integrate.

[34] In 1961 and 1962, D.C. Stadium hosted the annual city title game, matching the D.C. Public Schools champion and the titleholder for the Washington Catholic Athletic Conference, played before capacity crowds on Thanksgiving Day.

[22][43] Subsequent efforts to bring baseball back to RFK, including an attempt to attract the San Diego Padres in 1973,[45][46][47] and a plan to have the nearby Baltimore Orioles play eleven home games there in 1976, all failed.

[48] The former was derailed by lease issues with the city in San Diego,[47] and the latter was shot down by commissioner Bowie Kuhn, who had planned to expand the league with four teams (aiming for Seattle, New Orleans, Toronto and Washington that would see an 14-team NL and AL).

Following the success of hosting matches in the 1994 World Cup and 1996 Summer Olympics, RFK became home to one of the charter teams of the new Major League Soccer.

However, later that year the stadium hosted the Redskins' final home game in Washington, D.C. After nearly a decade of negotiating for a new stadium with Mayors Sharon Pratt Kelly and Marion Barry, abandoning them in 1992 and 1993 in search of a suburban site and then having a 1994 agreement collapse in the face of neighborhood complaints, environmental concerns and a dispute in Congress (over what some members viewed as the team's racially insensitive name and the use of federal land for private profit), Jack Kent Cooke decided to move his team to Maryland.

On April 14, 2005, before a crowd of 45,496 including President Bush and MLB Commissioner Bud Selig, the Nationals beat the Arizona Diamondbacks 5–3 victory in their first game at RFK.

[56][57] Groundbreaking on the new soccer stadium, Audi Field, occurred in February 2017, and on October 22, 2017, RFK hosted its last MLS match, a 2–1 D.C. United loss to the New York Red Bulls.

[69] Robert Kennedy was not without connection to the stadium; as attorney general in the early 1960s, his Justice Department played a role in the Redskins' racial integration.

[73] Similar proposals to sell the naming rights to the National Guard,[72] ProFunds (a Bethesda, Maryland investment company),[73] and Sony[74] were formed and discarded in 2005 and 2006.

Former GW player Harry Ledford believed that most people were unwilling to drive on Friday nights to D.C. Stadium, which was perceived as an unsafe area and lacked rail transit.

[84] In its twelfth season, RFK hosted its first professional football playoff game on Christmas Eve 1972, a 16–3 Redskins' win over the Green Bay Packers.

In its ten seasons as the Senators' home field, RFK Stadium was known as a hitters' park, aided by the stagnant heat (and humidity) of Washington summers.

Slugger Frank Howard, (6 ft 7 in (2.01 m), 255 lb (116 kg)), hit a number of "tape-measure" home runs, a few of which landed in the center field area of the upper deck.

With two outs in the top of the ninth,[87] a fan riot turned a 7–5 Senators lead over the New York Yankees into a 9–0 forfeit loss, the first in the majors in 17 years.

The game was heavily promoted in the local press and the Whips, who were struggling to attract fans to their regular matches, provided additional incentive through a "Meet Pelé" contest.

Towards the end of the 1967 season, the Whips resorted to organizing British Isles sporting contests such as cricket, hurling, and rugby before games in hopes of luring expatriates.

Despite problems on and off the field, the team found itself in a battle for a playoff spot and towards the end of the season crowds swelled to as much as 14,227 in what proved to be the deciding match for the NASL Atlantic Division title.

In 1974, two Maryland businessmen purchased the rights to the Baltimore Bays of the semi-professional American Soccer League, moved the team to the District and renamed it the Washington Diplomats.

Success on the field during the 1978 and 1979 seasons (including a franchise-best 19 wins in '79) did not translate to ticket sales and even with a negligible amount of revenue from "indoor Dips" games at the D.C. Armory during the offseason, the franchise continued to lose money.

A complex conversion was necessary, at a cost of $40,000 each time, to change the stadium from a football configuration to baseball and back again; in its final form, this included rolling the third-base lower-level seats into the outfield along a buried rail, dropping the hydraulic pitcher's mound 3 feet (0.9 m) into the ground, and laying sod over the infield dirt.

Legend has it that Redskins head coach George Allen would order a large rolling door in the side of the stadium to be opened when visiting teams were attempting field goals at critical moments in games so that a swirling wind from off the Potomac and Anacostia rivers might interfere with the flight of the kicked ball.

Events D.C.—the city agency which operates RFK Stadium—began a strategic planning process in November 2013 to study options for the future of the stadium, its 80 acres (32 ha) campus and the nonmilitary portions of the adjacent D.C. Armory.

In addition to being the home stadium of DC United, the Diplomats, the Freedom, the Whips and Team America, RFK also hosted three friendly Washington Darts games in 1970.

[220][221] Several prominent members of the national team have scored at RFK, including Brian McBride, Cobi Jones, Eric Wynalda, Joe-Max Moore, Clint Dempsey, Michael Bradley, and Landon Donovan.

[227] When the American Le Mans organization tried to hold a second race at RFK in 2003, outraged residents forced D.C. officials to cancel the city's 10-year lease with the company.

[230] The official race lap records at the Grand Prix of Washington D.C. are listed as: The final stage of the 1992 Tour DuPont was a 14.7-mile (23.7 km) time trial from RFK to Rock Creek Park and back.

On June 10, 1988, Kingdom Come, Metallica, Dokken, Scorpions, and Van Halen performed at the stadium as part of the Monsters of Rock Tour.

With the reconfiguration of the stadium, it was replaced by a series of dark-green banners over the center-field and right-field fences in order to make room for out-of-town scoreboards and advertising signage.