Um, Montreal Wants Another Baseball Team??? Do They Deserve It???

[Brian Damage]

It has been seven years since the Expos left town, but the dream of Major League Baseball returning one day remains for many fans.

And that dream has now been given some hope thanks to Rodger Brulotte, the former longtime French-language broadcaster for the Expos.

Last Friday, on radio station CKAC, Brulotte said he has been approached by an unnamed business group interested in trying to bring baseball back to the city - and we're not talking about the minor leagues.

Brulotte also posted the news on his RDS blog and was a guest Tuesday afternoon on Mitch Melnick's radio show on The Team 990. Brulotte said he had rebuffed the group of investors several times over the last couple of years before finally taking them seriously.

Brulotte says the fact that a recent Conference Board of Canada report declared Montreal could still support Major League Baseball under the right conditions led the unnamed group to publicly explore the city's appetite for it.

The Expos moved to Washington after the 2004 season and were renamed the Nationals. Wednesday marked the 20th anniversary of one of the greatest moments in Expos history, when Dennis Martinez pitched a perfect game against the Los Angeles Dodgers.

"The Expos were regularly stripped of their talent and mismanaged," said MLB. com reporter Barry Bloom, a longtime baseball writer. "They would need a new stadium above all else, but the precedent is there.

"Seattle lost the Pilots and got the Mariners. Milwaukee lost the Braves and got the Brewers. Kansas City lost the Athletics and got the Royals. New York lost the Dodgers and Giants, and got the Mets. And we know what happened in Washington."

Brulotte told Melnick a possible site for a new stadium would be the area around the Hippodrome, where this month's U2 concert was held.

It would take a very special ownership group to make baseball work in Montreal. Either it would need to have money to burn or would be looking to acquire a team for several purposes. The logical answer would be a multimedia company with several platforms to offer sports content on.

There would be a few contenders. Preparing to launch a French-language all-sports TV station that will include the Impact in Major League Soccer next year, Quebecor has multiple media platforms in two languages spread across the country. Similarly, Rogers Communications fills Rogers Sportsnet programming with the Toronto Blue Jays, and Bell Media now has the Canadiens in two languages.

"At this time, it would be unfair to speculate on any one of these groups," Brulotte said Wednesday, while refusing to name the group he has spoken with.

The thought of a Montreal baseball team with solid ownership and a viable media deal would be difficult for many to imagine. After all, this is the same market where Expos games were only available on Internet radio in English in 2000 and few of their games were carried on English TV during the last decade of their existence.

A small groundswell of support for baseball has been building in Montreal since last July, with the Hall of Fame induction of former Expo Andre Dawson, which attracted a busload of Montreal fans to Cooperstown, N.Y. Local hip-hop artist and fervent Expos fan Annakin Slayd's 2010 Expos YouTube tribute, Remember, is approaching 100,000 views, and members of the 1994 Expos attracted a sellout crowd of more than 650 to the annual Montreal Sports Celebrity Breakfast in March.

Former Expos play-byplay man Dave Van Horne also paid tribute to the club when he received the Hall of Fame's Ford C. Frick Award for excellence in baseball broadcasting last weekend in Cooperstown.

"Before doing anything, I told the group to get their business plan together," Brulotte said. "It has to include plans for a stadium, for radio and television rights, for everything, as though they already have the franchise."

In terms of an actual team to relocate or secure via expansion, MLB.com's Bloom says the small-market Tampa Bay Rays are not moving because they have a long-term stadium lease, and MLB commissioner Bud Selig has insisted expansion will not be in the cards any time soon.

Bloom added that one market that is in serious trouble is Oakland, with A's owner Lew Wolff desperate to move the team to San Jose, a territory that is currently owned by the rival San Francisco Giants. Ironically, precedence for territorial negotiations was set in 2005, when the Expos became the Nationals and Washington came to an agreement with Baltimore in order to facilitate the relocation.

Can baseball return to Montreal?

Read more: http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/...#ixzz1TYVgbGjZ

[MrCleveland]

Perhaps soon, but not now. And they'll probably wind-up in the AL.

I wonder if they'll be a 32nd Team soon?

[biffbronson]

This obviously would be tremendous for Montreal, but the notion of one of the US cities losing its team is very saddening to me. The fan support seemed pretty poor in Montreal from what I recall.

Surprising that the A's could be a team on the move -- the article doesn't mention that the Athletics have already moved twice: from Philly to KC, and from KC to Oakland.

[tiredmike59]

That's one thing we don't have to worry about here, even when the
cardinals suck,people still flock to see them. I wish that was true for
the rams and the blues.