July 28, 2020

By Danny Gallagher

Canadian Baseball Network

When the news came out a few weeks ago, it raised a few eyebrows, not for the names mentioned, but for the fact it might be years before a major league baseball team would be awarded to Nashville.

A group calling itself Music City Baseball announced that former Expos general manager Dave Dombrowski was being brought on board as an advisor for a potential franchise along with managerial legend Tony La Russa and former pitcher Dave Stewart.

Dombrowski told a Nashville reporter that he had even checked with the commissioner's office in advance of him coming on board with the Nashville group to get a sense of what MLB was thinking about Nashville.

Dombrowski wondered whether it was a good idea to accept an advisory role, assuming that it would lead to something more substantial like a title of club president and GM. Dombrowski obviously got assuring news because he and his wife and family have moved to Nashville, all of which means that city is a competitor to Montreal getting a team back.

Hey, who ever thought life was easy?

Major league ball is a sport played in the U.S., except for the Blue Jays. It's a sports controlled by Americans. Portland, Ore. wants a franchise. Las Vegas is in the mix and other venues like Charlotte, N.C. and Austin, Tex. have been mentioned as sites for MLB teams.

"We are excited to be involved with Nashville. It's a very dynamic city,'' Dombrowski told me in an email exchange.

The Nashville news, even if it might smack of jumping the gun too soon in the hiring of people, tells you a bit about the vision and foresight that Music City Baseball possesses.

Dombrowski was the first GM of the Florida Marlins when he was hired away from the Expos in 1991, so he knows a thing or two about expansion franchises. He has been at the helm of two teams that have captured World Series titles.

Dombrowski told me he wasn't approached by prospective Montreal owner Stephen Bronfman about hooking up with his group. From what we know, Bronfman and his group are concentrating on the shared franchise concept with Tampa Bay, a weird, fantasy scenario that is unlikely to come to pass and one that supposedly wouldn't commence closer to 2027 or 2028.

Can you wait close to 10 years for the return of to Montreal? I've always been saying that the people in New York at some point will give Tampa Bay owner Stuart Sternberg approval to sell his franchise 100% outright to Bronfman's group which would move it to Montreal. But even then, it could be years before that happens.

Bronfman has a solid rapport with commissioner Rob Manfred so he has an in with the powers that be. Bronfman has scored a lot of brownie points with the folks in baseball.

It would seem that the consensus is that Montreal would get a new franchise, either through relocation or expansion because of Bronfman’s strong ownership status as the son of the original majority owner Charles Bronfman.

"I'm not really sure about Montreal’s present picture in regards to a getting a franchise,'' Dombrowski told me. "I know that it is a major-league city, and many people in the game love the city. However, I personally do not know where their present ownership situation stands, and the ability to build a new ballpark.''

Former Expos managing general partner Claude Brochu admits he’s skeptical of Montreal's chances of returning to the big show.

"It will be very difficult to get a team back in Montreal,'' Brochu said in an interview. "The shared franchise will never work and all talk of this is a set-up and manipulative.

“It reminds me of the locals (in Montreal) getting eaten alive by Jeffrey Loria's New York lawyers, except this time, it is Tampa. They never understood the politics and they were out of their league, and it's the same again.

"The local (Bronfman) group will never be able to bring together the $3-billion U.S. I calculate is required for an expansion franchise. They've admitted as much,’’ Brochu said.

An associate of Bronfman told me that Bronfman is not doing interviews at the moment "out of respect for MLB and Covid.''

If a team does return to Montreal, my choice to run Bronfman's ship is another former GM with the Expos, another chap with the initials DD: Dan Duquette.

Duquette would return to run his former team in a heartbeat. He was the Expos GM for close to 2 1/2 years before landing his dream job as GM of the Boston Red Sox in early 1994. Prior to being the Expos GM, he was the team's assistant GM under Dombrowski.

"I enjoyed the time in Montreal. Our two boys, Daniel and Dana, were born in Canada,'' Duquette told me in a LinkedIn exchange. "Daniel works for ESPN as director of social media and Dana is an amateur talent scout for the Florida Marlins and he covers New England, New York and Canada.''

Duquette's ability to read the game and players resulted in the Expos becoming better and better through the trade market and free agency and especially after he appointed Felipe Alou as manager May 22, 1992.

Operating under a restricted budget, Duquette pushed the wheels in motion for success with a series of trades that set the Expos up for great seasons in 1993 and 1994, although the 1994 season was washed away by the strike and cancellation of the season.

In the meantime while looking for the right baseball opportunity, Duquette is keeping busy. He told me that he has formed Duquette Consulting, a management firm that devotes its energies to working with both the public and private sectors in providing needed PPE supplies for global delivery during the COVID-19 pandemic.

His firm said in a website statement that it "has created a consortium of PPE suppliers and emergency experts for global delivery of PPE in an expedient and cost competitive manner.''