Pining for the Expos

There’s a movement to bring back the baseball team to Montreal a decade after its departure

By: Andy Riga
December 1, 2014 October 29, 2019
00:00

There is activity taking place that could result in Montreal eventually regaining its lost Major League Baseball (MLB) team, the Expos, or nos amours, as the team still is longingly referred to.

For one, the Toronto Blue Jays, buoyed by a two-game pre-season visit this past March that drew almost 100,000 fans to Olympic Stadium, announced in early November that they will return in April 2015 for two more exhibition games.

A few days later, word got out that some big names are working quietly to return the crack of the bat to Montreal on a permanent basis – and that they have even met with the Tampa Bay Rays about moving that struggling team to Montreal.

The companies and entrepreneurs involved in this effort includes many ingredients needed for MLB’s return to Montreal:

– Stephen Bronfman, a former Expos team owner and a scion of the family that ran Seagram Co. Ltd. His father, Charles, brought that team to Montreal in 1969.

– BCE Inc.: a broadcaster eager to show the games of a Montreal-based MLB team, which already owns part of the Montreal Canadiens.

– Two successful Montreal businessmen: Mitch Garber, CEO of Caesars Acquisition Co.; and Larry Rossy, CEO of Dollarama Inc.

To add to this group, you could throw in: Denis Coderre, a keen mayor/booster who often is seen wearing an Expos cap; and the fans, who, a decade after the Expos’ departure to Washington, D.C., still gobble up Expos paraphernalia and jump at a chance to watch the Blue Jays live.

Yes, attendance dwindled in the Expos’ waning years. But blame that on an owner (American Jeffrey Loria) who seemed more eager to move the team than make a go of it, the badly located, miserable Olympic Stadium, and the bitterness that set in after 1994, when the Expos had the best record in the MLB, only to see the prospect of a World Series run evaporate when a strike cut the season short.

Last year, an Ernst & Young LLP (E&Y) study found it would cost more than $1 billion to revive the Expos – half of that to build a downtown stadium and the rest to buy a team.

Governments would have to chip in almost $400 million. The federal government won’t invest in professional sports facilities. Quebec, for its part, poured $200 million into a Quebec City arena in a bid to woo the National Hockey League and resurrect the Nordiques.

The province is in austerity mode, so shelling out for a ballpark would be dicey. But once the budget recovers, the E&Y study could be used to justify an investment. The study found it would take eight years for governments to recoup a $355-million expenditure, after which $1 billion in sales taxes and player income taxes would flow in over 20 years.

Hockey will always be No. 1 in Montreal, but this city is also a baseball town. The Montreal Royals were established in 1897; Jackie Robinson played in Montreal for the Brooklyn Dodgers’ farm club; and the Expos were the first MLB franchise based outside the U.S. Professional baseball’s return would boost the city and attract tourism.