EXPOS ARE GONE, BUT THEIR STYLE IS NOT FORGOTTEN
Sales of apparel bearing their logo show no signs of slowing, says Matthew Hansen.
When professional baseball returned to Montreal last week with the St. Louis Cardinals and Toronto Blue Jays playing a pair of exhibition games at Olympic Stadium, baseball fans might have noticed a lot more Expos caps on display around town. But the sightings aren’t unique to Montreal. Expos caps have enjoyed renewed popularity across Canada and the United States.
Lids Canada, a sports apparel chain with 139 stores in Canada, confirmed Expos cap sales continue to rise.
“Our sales of Expos caps and apparel continue to increase every year, not just in Montreal, but across Canada,” Lids director of buying Len Stener said last week.
Stener said they are Lids’ No. 5 selling cap, behind only the Blue Jays, New York Yankees, Los Angeles Dodgers and Boston Red Sox, and ahead of the World Series champion Houston Astros.
During the early 2010s, Expos caps and jerseys became particularly popular among hip-hop and rap groups, such as OutKast, and also became a staple of urban fashion in Canada and the U.S.
The Expos logo is one of the most iconic in baseball history. A lowercase “e” merges with an uppercase “M” and flows into a lowercase ‘b.’
It was designed by the legendary Clair Stewart, a partner at the now defunct Stewart and Morrison design firm in Toronto. Stewart died in 2008, just four years after the team’s demise, but his logo is enjoying an incredible afterlife.
Charles Bronfman, the original majority owner of the Expos when they began play in 1969, vividly recounted the moment he saw the logo design.
“One morning (former team president and GM) John McHale phoned and said Clair Stewart wanted to show us uniform designs,” Bronfman said last fall. “I walked over. There were two designs. One was traditional, the other was fabulous in my eyes.”
The symbol was a departure from sports logos at the time and it remains striking and instantly recognizable. Bronfman said he is continually surprised to see Expos caps in New York City, where he lives.
“Every time I see someone in an Expos hat here, I smile and I scratch my head,” he said, adding when he presented the logo design to colleagues during the late 1960s, the reception was less than enthusiastic.
“When I first showed it to (Expos manager) Gene Mauch, he absolutely hated it,” Bronfman said. “Mauch was a traditionalist. He said the players won’t wear it. He wouldn’t wear it. ‘They will think it’s a kids’ cap.’ The tricolour reminded him of a beanie.”
But when Bronfman explained they were going to sell millions of those caps, doubters in Expos management quickly changed their minds.
Bronfman, who sold the team to a consortium in 1991, has a different take on the business of the sport.
“I don’t think the players own baseball and I don’t think the owners own baseball,” he said. “The fans own baseball. I really, really mean it.”
Could that mean wearing the Expos hat is a symbolic taking back of the team? It’s safe to say the Expos were the ultimate underdog.
The Expos were a team that wouldn’t have existed were it not for the lofty ambitions of former mayor Jean Drapeau and Bronfman, and the players became unlikely heroes in a town where hockey is king. Though the socalled “small-market” team competed against clubs with budgets as much as 10 times larger, the Expos, at 74-40, had the best record in baseball in 1994 before a strike ended the season.
The 1994 strike marked the beginning of the end. During the seasons that followed, fans endured a series of fire sales as the Expos jettisoned stars while reducing payroll. The on-field product suffered and attendance plummeted. In 1999, art dealer Jeffrey Loria bought a minority ownership stake in the team. He later became majority owner before selling the team in 2002 to MLB, which relocated the Expos to Washington, D.C., where they became the Nationals after the 2004 season. Now there’s a movement afoot to bring an MLB team back to Montreal.
I don’t think the players own baseball and I don’t think the owners own baseball. The fans own baseball. I really, really mean it.
Bronfman’s son Stephen is part of a group of investors in talks to land an MLB team for Montreal, through expansion or relocation of an existing franchise. A feasibility study has been conducted and Stephen Bronfman said last week he has no intention of seeking money from Montreal taxpayers, but he does need “help” from Mayor Valerie Plante and will meet with her “in a few weeks.”
But MLB issued an email statement last week, which said, in part: “What we’ve always said is that we will not return to Montreal without a firm plan for construction of a new stadium, including its financing.”
While the team played its last game in Montreal in 2004, wearing an Expos cap has become more than just donning the cool logo of a former baseball team. It has become a statement.