After the Expos left for Washington D.C., the odds that Montreal would ever get a chance to lure a Major League Baseball team back to the city would be on the level of no way and Youppi!
Well, there are rumors of a group of investors expressing interest in getting a Major League Baseball team back to “The City of Saints” and those rumors is being spread by former French-language Expos broadcaster, Rodger Brulotte:
Brulotte also posted the news on his RDS blog and was a guest Tuesday afternoon on Mitch Melnick’s radio show on The Team 990. Brulotte said he had rebuffed the group of investors several times over the last couple of years before finally taking them seriously.
Brulotte says the fact a recent Conference Board of Canada report declared Montreal could still support Major League Baseball under the right conditions led the unnamed group to publicly explore the city’s appetite for it.
In the current state of the Canadian economy and the fact that Winnipeg got it’s hockey team back, it’s not totally out of the realm of possibility. The group faces the same issues that Seattle does for an NBA team; they need a new stadium and they’ll have to lure a team in financial peril or get an expansion team from the MLB.
However, it would have been nice to see a group of investors done a little bit more to save the team when it was actually there but I guess trying to get one back is better late than never. Viva Los Expos!
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Could Expos return to Montreal? [Montreal Gazette]
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- smokehouse56 - Jul 31, 2011 at 9:11 PM
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Similar to the old Hartford Whalers of the NHL. The lost their NHL team because of lack of fans and attendance. Can you imagine a city with one major league team, than losing it? Now they have nothing. Wouldn’t they love to have an NHL team in downtown Hartford, CT? A place to go during the long winter, a team to cheer for. They must be fools.
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- contentservicing - Aug 5, 2011 at 12:00 AM
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Dude, did you even read the Montreal Gazette article? About 6 cities have lost teams and regained them. And if you knew anything about the history of the franchise, you would know that firesales, a horrible stadium and its even worse location were also factors. Do some homework next time.
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- noahsidel - Aug 11, 2011 at 3:14 PM
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First of all, we set all kinds of MLB attendance records in the 80s and early 90s. Second of all, the lack of a salary cap shredded our team and that’s why people stopped going. Third, we have a major league hockey team – the Canadiens. Fourth, you’re obviously just an idiot.
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- nikiaf - Aug 1, 2011 at 9:06 PM
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There’s no doubt the city can support it; nearly all of the conditions leading to the team’s move to Washington no longer exist. From the sound of it, there’s an ownership group looking to take this seriously, something that hadn’t been present since Charles Bronfman was at the helm. Also the Canadian dollar is no longer worth 60-something US cents, meaning player salaries are no longer an impossible expense to deal with. The addition of additional revenue-sharing programs and the luxury tax also help. On top of this, there are now two full-time sports radio stations in Montreal, one English and one French, as well as one of each in terms of TV sports channels, plus a new French-language one set to launch next year. Olympic Stadium can still be a viable ballpark, it just needs some major renovations. Look at Rogers Centre in Toronto, while it’s no Fenway, it works quite well; and since Le Stade is looking set to get a functional retracting roof, put in some new corporate boxes and an HD scoreboard and suddenly it doesn’t seem so bad any more. It’s also worth mentioning that Expos hats and shirts are among the hottest items in town right now among young people. You can’t pass 3 people downtown without spotting an Expos logo. Amateur baseball has never been more popular, and both sports radio stations broadcast Blue Jays games, starting last season. They were so popular that several more were added for this year.
I apologize for the very long post, but based on what I’ve just mentioned, I strongly believe that baseball can succeed in Montreal, as the team left mostly due to incompetent ownership and a government that couldn’t in good conscience but money into a ballpark when hospitals were falling apart. I can say right now that I’m willing to buy season tickets, and I know quite a few others who will do the same. Bring back my Expos!
