Gallagher: Enthusiasm keeps on building for return of team to Montreal
Former Montreal Expos catcher Mike Fitzgerald signs autographs at ExposFest in Montreal on Sunday. Photo: Danny Gallagher
By Danny Gallagher
Canadian Baseball Network
MONTREAL – Never-ending construction, traffic snarled into one lane, dust and detours. They are all enough to stifle the patience of a visitor navigating around this wonderful, cosmopolitan city.
As I noticed, the sign extremists from the provincial government and Montreal's City Hall surely must have forgotten to tell the people running the Five Guys burger chain that they had to install their store front sign in French as in Cinq Types or Cinq Hommes in the same fashion as Giant Tiger did with Tigre Géant and what other companies are required to do. KFC has switched to PFK as in Poulet Frit Kentucky.
But there to be seen in suburban Brossard was the sign Five Guys. They somehow got away with it.
This quirkiness of Montreal culture probably won't deter the people at Major League Baseball looking at Montreal as a potential new member. But will the terrible Canadian dollar be a detriment to the thinking of commissioner Rob Manfred and the 30 major-league owners when it comes to voting for an expansion team?
All we know is that the enthusiasm for a rebirth of baseball in Montreal is at an all-time high. We saw it on Sunday when 700 fans paying $150 each streamed into the Embassy Plaza in Laval to get autographs from more than 15 former Expos. It was wall-to-wall, bumper-to-bumper in the autograph room for close to two hours.
Later inside the ballroom as part of an Exposfest event superbly organized by Dina Bourdakos and Perry Giannias, fans sipped free beer and wine while eating appetizers in the form of spinach rolls and smoked meat sandwiches before getting into a pasta dish and salad followed by a scrumptious serving of pork with all the trimmings.
Three days of Expos 50th anniversary celebrations culminated with two days of Blue Jays games at the Olympic Stadium against the Milwaukee Brewers. This is the sixth consecutive year that the Jays have played exhibition games at the end of sspring training, allowing Expos fans to show MLB officials that Montreal is capable of supporting a new franchise.
Although he cautioned against saying how soon baseball will return to Montreal, prospective team owner Stephen Bronfman was gushing and smiling, telling reporters Monday, "We are ready.''
Bronfman, Mitch Garber and other potential owners are patiently waiting to accommodate MLB's agenda. The route to acquiring a franchise could still be years away. Manfred wants the stadium situations in Tampa Bay and Oakland rectified before he even considers expansion. That waiting game with Tampa Bay and Oakland has begun to stretch Manfred's patience.
Bronfman, Garber and Co. are sitting back, just waiting for the call.
This enthusiasm for the return of baseball would not even exist, if it wasn't for the drum-beating by former Expo Warren Cromartie, dating back to 2012. Seven years have gone by since Cromartie “got the ball rolling’’, as Bronfman said in praise to reporters Monday.
Eight years after the Expos left for Washington, somebody finally “got the ball rolling’’ and it was Cromartie, who organized reunions of the 1981 Expos and 1994 Expos in 2012 and 2014, respectively. Cromartie put the wheels in motion for the ’81 reunion just a few months following the death of his friend and former teammate Gary Carter.
Cromartie and his Montreal Baseball Project organization have laid the groundwork for years and they have been followed by some nifty work done by a group called ExposNation.
John Rotari, a big Expos fan and self-proclaimed baseball historian who lives in Laval, “truly’’ believes that Montreal will get a team back some day.
“Nobody would put as much effort into it as Bronfman has, if there wasn't a possibility,’’ Rotari said in an interview. “Although I have attended the last five years of exhibition games, I look forward to the day when I will be able to walk through the gates again with my boys to see Nos Amours. There is plenty of interest and buzz in this city when we talk the Expos. I have always believed that they would be back and now I'm even more optimistic.’’
Visiting Montreal from Toronto for the two-game series was seasoned sports fan Michael Murray, who is "extremely optimistic''.
Murray talked about the enthusiasm of a gentleman, who owns the restaurant where Murray has been going to for breakfast this week.
"He owns a sports bar and he told me that his bar was 80% full last night which is huge for a Monday,'' said Murray, a former executive with Hockey Canada. "He bought two dozen Blue Jays' hats and six jerseys as door prizes for both nights.
"The door man at our hotel, The Lowes Vogue, stopped me twice today wanting to talk baseball. We've bumped into a couple on our floor that came all the way from Halifax so there definitely has been a good buzz around Montreal.''
Nick Jeanvoine, who has read my book Blue Monday from cover to cover about 10 times, isn’t so sure about the return of a team to Montreal.
“I highly doubt I will see a team in this lifetime. I will be long dead before a new team will ever grace the city of Montreal,’’ said Jeanvoine, who lives west of Montreal in Pierrefonds. “It’s all talk and no action. When will we see the new team? Will I still be around when the so-called new team is here? God only knows.''
Bronfman’s group and real-estate developer Devimco are hoping to finalize purchase soon on a block of land in Montreal’s Peel Basin where a new stadium would be built. Devimco would apparently build condos and commercial outlets surrounding the ballpark. But no park will be built until MLB gives Bronfman and his group its blessing.
The patience continues.
Danny Gallagher’s upcoming business book Genius is about Montreal native Rick Mauran, who founded Swiss Chalet, Harvey’s and Mackenzie Financial.