For the fourth straight spring (or what passes for spring here in Quebec), baseball fans will crowd Montreal’s Olympic Stadium Friday and Saturday (it has a roof) to watch a pair of meaningless Spring Training exhibition games.
This year it will be the Toronto Blue Jays against the Pittsburgh Pirates.
But in a larger sense–for local fans, at least–the games are not so meaningless.
Another big turnout will be another step in the drive to bring Major League Baseball back to Montreal, something many have hoped for since the Expos left town for Washington, D.C. following the 2004 season.
The more the people show up, the more–the thinking goes–the cartel that runs Major League Baseball will see the light and return.
And for a while this week, it appeared that might be closer than anyone could have imagined.
Stories circulated in newspapers and websites across the country, including the front page of Quebec’s largest mass-circulation tabloid, Le Journal de Montreal, on Thursday that the time was at hand–that five multimillionaires had met the conditions laid out by Major League Baseball to bring back a team–either an expansion franchise or an existing one whose fortunes have dwindled.
The Canadian Press news agency quoted an anonymous source saying, “We are no longer looking for investors and we believe we have all the ingredients to be able to welcome a team, be it an expansion one or one that already exits.”
The story said the investors, who include Stephen Bronfman, the son of Expos’ original owner Charles Bronfman, had support from two levels of government and potential locations and designs for a stadium.
All that was needed, the source told CP, was the okay from MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred.
Alas, a hard rain began to fall.
On Twitter, Montreal Mayor Denis Coderre said nothing had been agreed upon.
One of the investors, Mitch Garber, CEO of Caesars Acquisition Company and Chairman of Cirque du Soleil, told Montreal talk show host Mitch Melnick of TSN 690 Radio that the reports of support from two levels of government and that locations and designs of stadiums had been drawn up were premature.
The gist of it all: everybody should bide their time and keep calm.
Matthew Ross is a talk show host with TSN 690 Radio in Montreal and the founder of Exposnation.com, which has over 165,000 members on its Facebook site.
He has been relentless in his efforts to bring major league baseball back to Montreal.
I spoke with him by phone on Friday.
ListenWith files from The Canadian Press, Le Journal de Montreal, Montreal Gazette, Globe and Mail
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