PLAY BALL!
Toronto’s spring visits help keep city’s baseball dreams alive
The boys of summer are back, and a huge Montreal crowd witnessed the Blue Jays take on Boston in pre-season play Friday. The Jays lost 4-2, but their spring visits to Olympic Stadium help keep the city’s MLB dreams alive, writes Richard Griffin.
MONTREAL— One year ago at Olympic Stadium, Montreal mayor Denis Coderre was loudly beating the drum for Major League Baseball’s return to his city.
The Blue Jays hosted the Cincinnati Reds in a two-game set that weekend, and Coderre was relentless in his attempt to convince MLB that Montreal was indeed a baseball city.
For his part, MLB commissioner Rob Manfred did not say anything to discourage him. After Coderre travelled to New York to meet with MLB officials last May, he returned a wiser and more subdued mayor. Were there promises made by MLB that the next round of expansion could very well include Montreal? That seems a likely scenario.
“We want to show our credibility, but we know we have some homework to do,” Coderre said prior to Friday night’s Blue Jays-Boston Red Sox game. “Don’t negotiate in public, don’t put pressure in anybody. We all know there’s a process and that for some of it, we have to do our homework, and we’re doing it. The first 20 minutes you talk to Rob Manfred he’s talking about the love of baseball, the love of that sport.”
Coderre feels the three years the Jays have come to Olympic Stadium to conclude their spring exhibition schedule have been key to showing the baseball world Montreal can be a legit baseball town.
The expectation this year is that with mobile New Englanders coming up to cheer for the Red Sox, this two-game total will break the 100,000 barrier.
Coderre feels this impressive showing will only help the city’s cause.
“To bring back that passion you have to be present at every step,” the mayor said. “So these events are key. Those were important because we want to show we’re for real. We wanted to show the fans were behind us and that the love of baseball was here.
“It’s not nostalgia, it’s DNA.”
And make no mistake — Montreal is being used by MLB to ratchet up the pressure on Tampa Bay and Oakland to build new stadiums via large contributions from public funding. If that doesn’t get done, there’s always the possibility of re-location. But if the presence of a city ready, willing and able to take on major-league baseball does its job, then MLB expansion would be considered and likely wuld include Montreal.
The commissioner, however, carefully avoids negotiating publicly.
“I’ve been clear that a larger international footprint is important for our game,” Manfred told Sportsnet in a TV interview during the Jays’ post-season run. “I think Toronto enjoying success creates an atmosphere in which people are much more open to the idea of doing something more in Canada. I see baseball as a growth proposition, a growth business. And over a relatively longer term, I think the business will grow and there will be an opportunity for expansion.”
Coderre believes he has made progress and followed all the rules and advice Manfred offered him, but he’s not about to go away. In addition to selling out two exhibitions a year, Montreal is finding other ways to hold the stage and gain attention.
The mayor and businessman Stephen Bronfman, son of original Expos owner Charles Bronfman, jointly sent a letter to all 30 teams to make sure there was no misunderstanding of their intentions and ability to support a team.
“It’s part of our strategy to prove we’re serious to all these people,” Coderre explained to reporters, regarding the letter-writing campaign. “It’s normal and natural to keep owners up to speed — they are the ones who’ll make the final decision.”
“To have close to 300,000 people attend a weekend of exhibition baseball games over three years will speak volumes to the baseball world and have some bearing on the situations of the two teams looking to build new stadiums,” said Warren Cromartie, the former Expos outfielder who started the ball rolling.
He now heads up the city’s official baseball cheerleaders with an organization called the Montreal Baseball Project. “I am greatly encouraged by our progress, and I would like to see local and corporate support continue to build for this goal to make Montreal a Major League city again.”
The switch from Bud Selig to Manfred as baseball’s commissioner has been a positive one for Montreal’s hopes and dreams. Recall Selig was at the forefront of the idea to contract two franchises back in 2002, a motion the Jays, in fact, voted for. But when politicians in Minnesota stepped in and saved the Twins that also saved the Expos, because you need an even number of franchises in a sport that plays games every day.
Selig always remembered that when the Braves left Milwaukee in 1966 for Atlanta, John McHale led the way out of town. McHale then went on to become president of the expansion Expos in 1968, as Milwaukee was passed over by MLB.
There’s a new commissioner in place, and with that comes renewed hope that — just as Milwaukee replaced the Braves with the Brewers, Washington replaced the Senators with the Nationals and New York replaced the Giants and Dodgers with the Mets —Montreal will be able to replace the Expos with, well, the Expos.