Return of Expos requires patience
New ballpark, reborn franchise still possible despite change in city’s political landscape
If you’re waiting for the Expos’ return to Montreal, think of yourself as a hitter facing the late, great Pascual Perez.
You’re dug in, expecting the high heat, when Perez shakes his Jheri curls, does a little dipsydoodle on the mound — and comes at you with the Pascual pitch, a.k.a. the Eephus pitch, a.k.a. l’arc-en-ciel, that slowmoving rainbow that lands in the catcher’s mitt about the time the last of the fans are trickling out of the stadium.
If you want to hit the Eephus pitch, it takes patience.
Monday evening, for the fifth time in as many seasons, the Toronto Blue Jays come to the Olympic Stadium to play the final two games of their exhibition season. This time, the opponent will be the St. Louis Cardinals — once co-tenants and frequent opponents of the late, great Montreal Expos at their spring training headquarters in West Palm Beach.
Like potholes, geese flying north and people still wearing parkas when it’s 10 degrees Celsius out, the Blue Jays annual cash grab has become an annual harbinger of spring in Montreal. Crowds turn out at the stadium they once disdained. Old faces from glory days of the Expos reappear, most of them carrying the evidence of too many six packs where their six-pack abs used to be.
And the speculation heats up, the tantalizing prospect the Expos might return, the city’s fans hoping that showing up in force will help convince Major League Baseball the grand old game can work in this city, given the right ownership and the right ballpark.
If the attendance is a little skimpy this year, if there are blocks of empty seats at the Big O on Monday and Tuesday evenings, it isn’t because the fans have changed their minds about baseball. It’s because the Jays and the Cardinals are playing weeknight games ahead of Opening Day, when the season starts with a full-schedule bang rather than the usual game-here-postponement-there whimper.
And it could be the fans are getting wise to the con. Dangle the possibility of a reborn Expos franchise and they will come to enrich the Blue Jays and Evenko — but they won’t keep coming forever, not without some tangible prospect this is going to happen.
Something tangible was promised by Stephen Bronfman a year ago. Bronfman, with Mitch Garber one of the two leading figures in any attempt to bring Major League Baseball back to this city, was surprisingly definite last spring. After saying an expansion franchise could come with a price tag of $1 billion dollars or more, he didn’t flinch: “It’s a lot of money,” Bronfman said, “but we’re going to do it. It’s going to happen. Whether it’s two years or seven years, no problem. I believe it’s going to happen.”
A year on, it would appear it will be more like seven years before Major League Baseball returns to Montreal. We would expect to get an update of some kind from Bronfman or Garber or both ahead of Monday evening’s exhibition tilt between the Blue Jays and the St. Louis Cardinals but, in the meantime, however, the political landscape has changed.
Uber-cheerleader Denis Coderre won’t be waddling around the infield in search of photo ops this time. Coderre is gone, replaced in the mayor’s office by Valérie Plante and Projet Montréal. Coderre got the boot from voters because of his high-handed, autocratic ways and his tendency to throw truckloads of public money at one extravaganza after another: bridge lighting, granite tree stumps, the E-car race, and the most foolish boondoggle of them all, the bid for a handful of games during the 2026 World Cup.
Plante has other, greener priorities — but she’s yet to pull Montreal out of the World Cup, although the choice would appear to be a no-brainer. City and provincial governments combined could squander half a billion dollars on the World Cup bid and get a colossal FIFA hangover for the money. Or they could spend less money to help bring in a major-league baseball team that would play 82 games a year in this city for at least 20 years.
It all depends on the plan, if and when it’s unveiled. A new ballpark and a reborn Expos franchise isn’t going to happen without some level of public commitment. As Bronfman said last year: “Sports are about teamwork. To be successful, we need a team that works well together. The public and private sectors always work together.”
For now, what we get is two nights of the Blue Jays and the opportunity to pay regularseason prices to see exhibition baseball. We also get the opportunity to see the spectacularly talented Vladimir Guerrero Jr. in a Blue Jays uniform. (His father, newly elected Hall of Famer Vlady Guerrero, won’t be able to make it for family reasons.)
A lot of people here assumed Coderre’s defeat in the November election spelled the end for hopes the Expos will return. That is not (or should not) be the case. If the project was viable under Coderre, it’s equally viable under Val Plante.
My hunch? This thing is going to get done. But like the Eephus pitch, it’s going to take patience.
Dangle the possibility of a reborn Expos franchise and they will come to enrich the Blue Jays and Evenko — but they won’t keep coming forever ...