It’s not looking good for Montreal baseball fans
This week delivered nothing but bad news for those hoping to bring MLB back to city
This was not a good week for Montreal baseball fans hoping for a return of the Expos.
Last Sunday night, Denis Coderre was voted out as mayor of Montreal, losing to Valerie Plante. Coderre was one of the biggest Expos fans in Montreal and a driving force behind bringing Major League Baseball back to the city.
Then a report came out about an investigation by the CBC, Radio-Canada and the Toronto Star that found Stephen Bronfman and his Montreal-based investment company Claridge Inc., were key players linked to a US$60-million offshore trust in the Cayman Islands that might have cost Canadians millions of dollars in unpaid taxes. Bronfman and Mitch Garber are two of the businessmen involved in trying to bring the Expos back.
On Monday, Bronfman insisted he has “never funded or used offshore trusts.”
Later in the week came news the Quebec government had given the go-ahead to replace the infamous roof at Olympic Stadium at an estimated cost of between $200 million and $250 million — roughly half the estimated cost of a new downtown ballpark. There are plenty of Expos fans who believe the Big O — which was never a friendly place for baseball — played a big role in the departure of the team.
That’s three strikes, but former Expo Warren Cromartie insists it doesn’t mean Montreal is out when it comes to bringing Major League Baseball back.
“I look at this as a baseball game and now we got a new pitcher, so we got to make adjustments,” Cromartie, who founded the Montreal Baseball Project five years ago with a goal of bringing a team back to the city, said this week from Tokyo, where he is working with MLB Japan and the History Channel. “We haven’t spoken to (Plante), I don’t know what her plans are. I guess when we sit down and talk with her we’ll figure it all out. But it’s not something that we’re just not going to do anymore … that’s not going to happen. We’re going to sit down with her and talk about it. I still do believe that Montreal needs the Expos and the Expos need Montreal.”
Coderre definitely believes Montreal needs the Expos, but Plante doesn’t seem so sure. During a French-language debate before the election, Plante criticized Coderre for what she described as behind-the-scenes negotiations to spend taxpayers’ money on a new stadium. Plante said she wasn’t against the Expos returning, but promised a referendum on a new ballpark if it involved taxpayers’ money.
Coderre wasn’t interested in a referendum, possibly because he knew what the result would be. Taxpayers have become less willing over the years to have governments shell out public money to wealthy owners for new stadiums where they can charge fans big money to watch millionaire athletes play a game.
When asked about the Expos after his election loss, Coderre said: “The dream is still there. I’m still nuts about it.”
But how many taxpayers are nuts about spending money on a new ballpark that would have to be filled 81 times a year in a city that has become more Canadiens obsessed than ever to the detriment of the Impact and Alouettes, who have only 17 and nine home games, respectively, each season and can’t sell out their stadiums? If the Expos aren’t winning, would Montrealers still go after the novelty of a new stadium wears off?
“I don’t feel personally any type of setback or anything with this,” Cromartie said after Coderre’s defeat. “I came into this thing just myself five and a half years ago (with the Montreal Baseball Project) when nobody was talking baseball and look where we’ve gotten to now. Baseball has this tremendous way of transcending through politics, through uneasy times. It always has a way of finding itself and that’s what baseball does. We still have the support.
“I believe in Stephen Bronfman,” the former Expo added. “He is the one who’s going to make it all happen, along with myself and the rest of the group. He’s the one that I went to when I wanted to try and formulate this group and I still believe in what he’s doing. I have his back. He’s going to be a part of this thing. He’s going to be there when it happens … Garber, too. I know them both on a personal level and they’re baseball fans. They want it to happen. We still have that group maintained and I’m there.”
The question is how many others are still with him?