March 2010

A Second Serving

I just finnished reading Remembering the Montreal Expos by Danny Gallagher and Bill Young. It took me through the rich history of the Montreal Expos and deep into their later years. I found it weird is how much it made me think of the Toronto Blue Jays and their unpredictable future.

In the final years of the Expos, an art dealer named Jeffery Loria purchased the franchise and promised to save it from the relocation rumors. He tried to get a stadium built in downtown Montreal, but failed and ultimately ran off to the Florida Marlins with Montreal’s superb scouts and brand new spring training facility. This guy is a donkey in my books because he took anything left of value in Montreal south to Miami and left Bud Selig and Major League Baseball as the owners of the Expos, which could have only meant contraction or relocation of the Expos.

00'Stad_Expos.jpg

That was the purposed Labatt Park, the 2000 design. A perfect location for a new ballpark in Montreal’s downtown core, accessible from all sides of the city and next door to the Bell Center, home of the National Hockey League’s Montreal Canadians. They later altered the plans slightly to make the project cheaper but neither the 2000 design or the plan that came later were funded. Labatt and The Government of Quebec were supposed to be the main investors but The Government refused to fund a baseball stadium while hospitals were being closed across the Provence and Labatt refused to pay the Government’s portion of the bill, so it never got done.

It scares me thinking back to the Expos final years and comparing them to the present-day Toronto Blue Jays, but if you really break it down, they are quite similar:

1 Loria purchases the Expos promising that he will save the franchise – Rogers Communications purchased the Jays the summer of 2000, however I trust Rogers more because they are able to fund an entire franchise and increase the teams budget at their own expense when requested.

2 Montreal trades away long time ace and fan favorite Pedro Martinez for top prospects (Carl Pavano and Tony Armas Jr.) who don’t live up to expectations – Toronto Trades Roy Halladay for Kyle Drabek, Travis D’Arnaud, and Brett Wallace, we have yet to see how these prospects turnout but I am hoping for the best.

3  Expos home, Olympic Stadium better known as the Big Oops or the Big Owe, begins to fall apart – The Jays’ home, Rogers Center has yet to have any big construction errors revealed and I doubt it has any. I consider Rogers Center a great feat for the City of Toronto and one of the best stadiums of it’s time. However, it is now sub par to the likes of PNC Park, Petco Park, New Yankee Stadium, really almost any other MLB park.

4 Expos set league lows for attendance – Well, Toronto isn’t near that, although they are in the bottom 10 for season attendance annually. Look for the Jays to be in the bottom 5 this year.

It is a scary thought when It comes to the Jays leaving. I am a Tigers fan but I like the Blue Jays, I feel that I have to. Really with the Jays, it’s a matter of whether you look at the glass half empty or half full. Baseball just isn’t as popular in Canada as it used to be, Toronto just needs another ’92 and they will be set. I really like what Jays rookie GM Alex Anthopoulos is doing with the team, building for the future around current stars Adam Lind and Aaron Hill with high ceiling prospects and international talent. He has the right idea, I’m just hoping that his plan comes through.

Things are looking up for the Blue Jays and by 2011/2012, look for them to be at the top of the American League East with the Yankees and Red Sox.

Goodbye for now, and thanks for reading.
Mike

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