The mercury in the thermometer is starting to rise, the tulips are blossoming and the winter coats and boots are being stashed away. Oh yes, it’s beginning to feel a lot like spring in Canada. After long, cold winters, Canadians come out of hibernation and celebrate each new spring with the start of the NHL playoffs. Other Canadians, however, head towards the diamonds for the start of the baseball season.
The fine citizens of Toronto are fortunate enough to have a Major League team. Those wishing to shake the winter cold with some spring-time warmth can head down to the Rogers Center on Opening Day and stretch out the winter devils in unison between the top and bottom of the seventh inning.
There was once a time when Toronto wasn’t the only city in Canada with a ball club. For those who forget, Montreal had the Expos from 1969 until 2004, when they moved to Washington to become the Nationals. The demise of the Expos can be atttributed to many factors; the 1994 strike, in particular, disrupted a season in which Montreal had the best record in baseball of 74-40 and were six games ahead of the Atlanta Braves when the season came to a sudden end on August 12.
Nearly 11 years after the final out was called at the Olympic Stadium on September 29, 2004 against the Florida Marlins, Nos Amours are gone but far from forgotten. Baseball in Montreal lives on every spring when the crack of the bat is first echoed throughout North America.
Last year, on March 28 and 29, the Blue Jays, once one of the bigger rivals of the Expos, hosted another team Expos fans loathed, the New York Mets, in two exhibition games at the Olympic Stadium. This marked the first time the great game had been played in Montreal since that tearful day nearly 11 years ago.
There was speculation in the months leading up to the game that ticket sales would flop. After all, it was just a pair of exhibition games between two teams the locals despise, and on Easter weekend, no less. That was before 46,000 fans arrived at the stadium for the Friday night match-up, which the suddenly fan-favorite Blue Jays won on a walk-off single in the ninth. Just over twelve hours later, 50,000 Montrealers filled the Big O to see Melky Cabrera blast a two-run shot, plating the day’s only runs.
Add ’em up and that’s 96,000 people who paid to watch baseball. They didn’t pay to see the Blue Jays. They paid to see baseball in Montreal, because they missed it.
Prior to each game, a ceremony to honor the Expos’ history took place. First, the late Gary Carter was honored alongside teammates from his 1981 club, the only Montreal team to ever reach October. Steve Rogers, Warren Cromartie, and Tim Raines spoke about “The Kid” as his wife and family stood with them.
Before the second game, members of the infamous 1994 Expos, deemed “the best team in baseball” were honored; the majority of the club present, including their former mascot, Youppi!. If you looked around the stadium during both ceremonies, the latter one in particular, you can see grown men in tears, being held by their loved ones. Those two Expos teams really meant something to the city.
Baseball is coming back in the form of the Blue Jays this weekend, as they host the Cincinnati Reds in another set of exhibition games. This year, Vladimir Guerrero and Orlando Cabrera will be honored before the Friday night game. They were two of the last Expos greats, nearly solidifying a playoff position for a team in shambles in 2003 before a late-season collapse, after the league refused Montreal’s right to September call-ups.
Unfortunately for the city, this is the only baseball action it will see until next spring. Since Carter’s passing in February of 2012, nostalgic fans and players have gathered not only to remember the Expos of the past, but also to talk about the Expos that may if a team was brought back to the city.
New MLB commissioner Rob Manfred said this week that Montreal needs a new stadium to have any shot at a second incarnation of the team. There’s just a few looming problems with this mandate: the city and the province do not have money to invest into a baseball-only stadium, no single investor with deep pockets is stepping up to the plate, and, frankly, Montreal is running out of urban space. A team would only be able to survive in the white-elephant Olympic Stadium for a season or two, before fans realize they do not want to travel so far East to watch a summer sport in a closed stadium.
Jack Todd wrote earlier this week that the provincial government has invested $220 million into maintaining the seldom-used stadium, and that doesn’t include the fees on fixing the problematic roof. It’s estimated that building a new stadium would cost about $500 million. If an investor with enough money to alleviate some or all of the cost of the new ballpark could be found, the government could pay less for a new stadium than it is already paying to keep the concrete infrastructure standing.
In 1998, when former team managing partner Claude Brochu approached the Premier, Lucien Bouchard, about funding a new downtown ballpark, Bouchard refused and pointed towards the closing of hospitals as a reason not to put money into professional sports. This time around, with austerity measures in full bloom and budget cuts being the main priority of the provincial government, it’s baffling to see how much money is being used on the Big “Owe”, and one might wonder if the government would now consider funding a new park or if it would simply refuse again, like in ’98.
Fathers who were ecstatic teenagers in 1994 will bring their sons, and young lovers who might remember the 2003 wild card run will pack the stadium. They can all enjoy their chiens chauds, bière froide and mais soufflé (French for hot dogs, cold beer and popcorn) and remember the teams that were. Baseball in Montreal is in full bloom every spring and this weekend is another reminder to the league that the fans weren’t the cause of death for the original Expos.
For now, fans can only dream about once again hearing “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” on a warm Saturday night in Montreal, but as the years go by and the support for a new team continues to grow, that fantasy is slowly becoming a reality.
