This time next week we could know a whole lot more about the future of Major League Baseball in Montreal. Or Not.
The Toronto Blue Jays will host the Cincinnati Reds games on this coming Friday and Saturday at Montreal’s Olympic Stadium.
For the Reds and the Jays, the games wrap up their Grapefruit League seasons, exhibition games filled with sound and fury signifying not a heckuva lot.
For Montreal baseball fans, it’s different story. Anxious to recapture the beauty that was once the Montreal Expos, the games are pretty darn important, one more effort to entice Major League Baseball to find its way back to Montreal.
Plagued by bad teams that resulted in poor attendance, the Expos left for Washington, DC in 2005.
For many, including Montreal’s mayor, Denis Coderre, the departure left a deep void that has gnawed at the heart of city. (Mr. Corderre adores baseball enough that he recently announced an $11-million in funds to refurbish many of the city’s baseball diamonds.)
Absence has, indeed, made a lot of hearts grow fonder.
Case and point: a pair of exhibition games between Toronto and the New York Mets at the end of spring training last year drew just under 100,000 people.
Supporters of an MLB team in Montreal say that turnout delivered a potent message to any MLB team owner who might be thinking that relocating to Montreal would provide a healthy bottom line.
It’s certain that when the Expos left they were no longer a major factor in the city’s sporting life. Attendance had dwindled as the team got worse. Montreal, the convention wisdom held, was not a major league city. Not so fast.
Felipe Alou, a long-time manager of the Expos, believed otherwise.
“Montreal fans are excellent fans, smart fans, baseball fans,” he said. “But they are not stupid, and they won’t be insulted by somebody trying to tell them that a bad team is good. That’s why the fans stay away.”
They did not stay away a year ago.
The question now: will the fans do it again, and if they do, what kind of effect will big crowds have on the long march to get a team (preferably a team called the Expos) back here?
Dave Kaufman is a talk show host on CJAD Radio in Montreal. He grew cheering for the Expos and has been something of a force in the bid get a team back.
He spoke to RCI from his home in Montreal.
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