Expos de Montréal

[Boosterfire]

J'étais au stade vendredi, et l'ambiance était simplement fantastique. On se croyait à une partie de séries. La partie d'ailleurs, fût excellente, avec une victoire des Jays sur un simple en fin de neuvième!

[eastender85]

Construire un stade de 500 millions sans le payer, c’est possible!

 

http://blogues.radio-canada.ca/bloguesportif/2014/03/31/construire-un-stade-de-500-millions-sans-le-payer-cest-possible/

[IluvMTL]

From the National Post

 

http://ww2.nationalpost.com/m/wp/blog.html?b=sports.nationalpost.com/2014/03/28/mlb-returns-to-montreal-if-only-for-a-weekend-a-decade-after-expos-relocate

 

With Montreal Expos long gone, a weekend reunion with baseball might be the best the city can hope for

 

Sean Fitz-Gerald

Friday, Mar. 28, 2014

One former Expos player believes it is his “destiny” to return baseball to the city. Pierre Obendrauf/Postmedia News

 

MONTREAL – Jim Beattie, an Ivy League graduate from Dartmouth raised six hours away in South Portland, Maine, set out to learn French after he was named general manager of the Montreal Expos. And then he stopped: “I realized the best thing for me to do was say, ‘Je suis Américain,’ and ‘Je ne parle pas français.’”

“As long as they knew that I was American,” he said with a chuckle, “I at least got a little bit of slack.”

Beattie already had a connection to the region. He attended Expo 67, the world’s fair held in Montreal; he went on a road trip in high school to watch the Quebec Nordiques; he had family in the Gaspé Peninsula. And from 1995 to 2001, he did his best to lead a once-beloved baseball team through six of its final nine seasons in Montreal.

The Expos — known as “Nos Amours” in their better days — left for Washington, D.C., before the 2005 season, moving after years of sparse crowds in a crumbling stadium. A decade later, baseball is returning, if only for a weekend, which might be the best that fans in Montreal can ever hope for.

Organizers say they have sold 80,000 tickets for a two-game pre-season series between the Toronto Blue Jays and the New York Mets that begins Friday night at Olympic Stadium. Those ticket sales are fanning the nascent discussion that Montreal deserves another shot at a Major League Baseball team, a discussion that is being held in both official languages.

“I don’t think anybody could dismiss Montreal,” said Beattie, now working as a scout for the Blue Jays. “When you have a city of the quality and the lifestyle of Montreal, I think it should always be in the conversation.”

One former Expos player believes it is his “destiny” to return baseball to the city, and a feasibility report commissioned by Montreal’s board of trade suggests baseball would be “financially viable” in the city “under a set of realistic assumptions.” Some big names have offered support, including Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who wrote last summer on the social media website Twitter that he hoped fans “will one day be rewarded with a team in Montreal.”

The problem? Talking is the affordable part, the easy action that offers hope.

There are a number of explanations for why the situation deteriorated. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Frank Gunn

 

Since the feasibility report was tabled in December, no billionaires have stepped forward to lend a wealthy public face to the cause. No current major league team is as readily available for relocation as the Expos were 10 years ago. And the city still has that crumbling stadium, and nothing more, to offer a baseball team.

“In the foreseeable future, it is highly unlikely,” said Marc Ganis, a Chicago-based sports consultant familiar with franchise movement. “Baseball failed miserably. And it actually became, in many ways, a real albatross around Major League Baseball’s neck there for a few years, it was such a bad situation.”

There are a number of explanations for why the situation deteriorated, from the charmless stadium that developed a habit of falling apart, to the players strike that wiped out the rest of the 1994 season in mid-August, while the Expos had the best record in baseball. Hopes of a downtown stadium came and went, feeding the downward spiral.

The Expos effectively became a feeder system for other teams in baseball, selling off top players when they became too expensive. In the spring of 2000, under new owner Jeffrey Loria, the team had no television deal, and had no English-language radio contract.

“He could have almost forced a franchise to move out of New York City, the way things were happening in Montreal,” said Andrew Zimbalist, an economics professor at Smith College, in Northampton, Mass.

Warren Cromartie spent nine of his 10 seasons in the big leagues with the Expos. AP/Ray Stubblebine

 

“They had probably had their fill of broken promises — promises made, promises broken — over the years about new stadiums,” former Expos president Tony Tavares said. “I think baseball fans in general were just pretty put off. And the only ones left standing were the rabid ones, if you will.”

And there were not many of those, not in those final days inside the cavernous stadium.

“Nobody wants to spend time indoors,” Expos supporter Matthew Ross said. “So if you have a choice of going to Crescent Street to have a beer outside, or driving all the way to the east end and sitting indoors in a piece of s— ashtray, it’s a no-brainer.”

Ross is the founder of ExposNation, a non-profit group dedicated to promoting Montreal as a viable home for baseball. The group has organized trips to Toronto to watch the Blue Jays, and it will be involved this weekend, with an information table at Olympic Stadium for the two games, and with a rally scheduled at a downtown hotel on Sunday.

Ross said he believes Major League Baseball may return to Montreal within “five to eight years,” and that a “couple of major entities” are investigating the possibilities. He did not offer any specifics.

According to the board of trade’s feasibility report, which was prepared by Ernst and Young, a new team and a new stadium would cost $1.025-billion. A new downtown stadium would account for $467-million of that total, an open-air facility with 36,000 seats.

The report suggested the team would “ideally” play in the American League East — and not in the National League, where the Expos played — to develop rivalries with the Blue Jays, as well as the New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox. The new team’s payroll would “be in line with smaller market teams.”

It cost $400,000 to complete the study, and the board of trade paid for half, with the rest coming from contributions of anywhere between $10,000 and $20,000 from a handful of donors requesting anonymity, according to board president Michel Leblanc. Like Ross, he also declined to offer any specifics.

“If the question is, ‘Are you aware there are hurdles?’ The answer is, ‘Of course we are,’” Leblanc said. “No one here wants to live in a fairy tale. The idea here is that we look at this from a non-complacent angle.”

The Expos — known as “Nos Amours” in their better days — left for Washington, D.C., before the 2005 season, The Gazette/Phil Carpenter

 

Warren Cromartie spent nine of his 10 seasons in the big leagues with the Expos, and he has dedicated his days to luring a team back to Montreal. He founded the Montreal Baseball Project and, in many regards, he has become the face of the cause.

“It’s the loyalty that I have, the love that I have for the city,” he said. “I truly believe this is my destiny to be doing this. I’m not doing this to get pats on the back.”

He lives in Florida, where he hosts a radio show, but said he has spent part of four years working on the project. On Saturday night, his organization will host a gala dinner for the 20th anniversary of the 1994 team that never got the chance to compete in the playoffs, with stars such as Pedro Martinez, John Wetteland and Canadian Larry Walker scheduled to attend.

Cromartie said he has been talking to business leaders around Montreal.

“We’re trying to do the diligence that we need to do behind the scenes, and to have a good ownership,” he said. “Because let’s face it, in Montreal, we have very limited room for error.”

That is typically the case anywhere, and not just in Montreal. Officials in Washington had stiff competition when they were chasing the Expos, having lost their own baseball team, the Senators, 33 years earlier. And that was the second time Washington had lost a team — Washington teams have moved on to become the Minnesota Twins and the Texas Rangers, respectively.

The Expos effectively became a feeder system for other teams in baseball, selling off top players when they became too expensive. And that's not even including Youppi!, who became the Canadiens' mascot after the Expos left town. Dave Sidaway/Postmedia News

 

With the Expos in play, Mark Tuohey, an attorney based in Washington, became chair of the District of Columbia Sports and Entertainment Commission, responsible for convincing baseball owners to give the city another chance. Beyond just the competition from other markets interested in the franchise, Washington faced strong opposition from the Baltimore Orioles, who were concerned about territorial infringement.

It was an intricate, complicated process. And that was even with the quiet support of the sitting U.S. President, George W. Bush: “Sure, it was somewhat tacit, because it had to be,” Tuohey said. “But he was very supportive.” Bush had ties to baseball as a former owner of the Texas Rangers.

Tuohey, who was raised in Rochester, N.Y., and has skied in Mont Tremblant, near Montreal, broke the challenge facing the city’s hopes for reviving the Expos into four key categories.

“Before you get into this whole solicitation issue, you’ve got to figure out, ‘Do we have the political will, the economic base and the fan base to do this?’” Tuohey said. “And also, ‘If we’re going to build a stadium, how are we going to pay for it?’”

And Ganis, the sports consultant from Chicago, said those questions would not be easy to answer.

There are points in the feasibility report that raise unsettling questions about the best-case future of baseball in Montreal. The Gazette/John Kenney

 

“Montreal is a great city, great demographics, a wonderful population and a bit of a history with baseball,” he said. “But — and here’s the big but — the market never embraced Major League Baseball to the degree that is needed to support a Major League Baseball club.”

Some have wondered about the possibility Bell Canada, which owns TSN, would have interest in acquiring a baseball team in Montreal in order to fill some of the programming holes opened by the fact Rogers Sportsnet recently acquired the exclusive Canadian NHL rights for the next 12 years. Ganis was skeptical.

“If Bell is willing to take a loss leader — a major loss leader — in order to try and offset some of the degradation in their sports broadcasting operations, that would be the only scenario,” Ganis said. “On its own, it doesn’t make any sense.”

There are points in the feasibility report that raise unsettling questions about the best-case future of baseball in Montreal. Although the study ranks Montreal as the 15th largest market in North America, there is the suggestion that it would participate in the league with a small market payroll. Coupled with a desire to be in the AL East would put a new Montreal baseball team in precisely the same position as the Expos held near the end of their run — as a feeder system for the richer teams, unable to retain the talent they had developed. Blue Jays fans also know all too well how difficult it is to compete in the same division as the free-spending Red Sox and Yankees.

The report also raises the notion of “participation in the revenue sharing model” now in use in baseball. Ganis answered that with a rhetorical question: “Would Major League Baseball allow a team to relocate to a market that it knows will require major revenue-sharing?”

Cromartie is undaunted.

Blue Jays fans also know all too well how difficult it is to compete in the same division as the free-spending Red Sox and Yankees. The Gazette/Allen McInnis

 

“It’s not an impossible thing to do,” he said. “This is something that I know the people in Montreal want tomorrow. It’s not going to happen tomorrow. All we’re doing is preparing for it.”

A few minutes after the interview had ended, Cromartie called back. Earlier, he had said he occasionally writes a column for a publication based in Japan, where he also spent seven years as a player.

“One thing I wanted to tell you is that, as far as the Japanese thing, I would love to talk to Japanese investors, as well … because of my connection in Japan for seven years,” he said. “I’d love to bring Japan to Montreal.”

Cromartie said he has not had any talks with anyone in Japan.

“Not yet,” he said. “We’re trying to do this thing in-house, first.”

[Habsfan]

Construire un stade de 500 millions sans le payer, c’est possible!

 

http://blogues.radio-canada.ca/bloguesportif/2014/03/31/construire-un-stade-de-500-millions-sans-le-payer-cest-possible/

 

Très intéressant comme article et j'aime l'idée...mais est ce que c'est réaliste? Je ne suis pas convaincu. Il prend pour acquis qu'il pourra trouver 3000 personnes qui seront prêt à nous faire un chèque d'un quart de millions$...pas sûr que ce soit si facile que ça!?!?

 

En tous cas, je souhaite que ça marche, mais j'ai des doutes....

 

J'ai bien aimé aussi l'article de Sean Fitz-Gerald. Quand j,ai vu que c'était un article du National Post, je me suis dit: "Bon, un autre article pour basher Montréal!!"

 

Et bien j'ai été agréablement surpris que l'auteur a essayé de demeurrer le plus juste possible!

Modifié 31 mars 2014 par Habsfan

[Exposteve]

Fin de semaine de baseball absolument incroyable. When I entered the Stadium on Friday night it's as if time had just stopped for 10 years. It felt like nothing had changed and we were about to watch an Expos game. The atmosphere is great, the games were fun, and as a die-hard Expos fan it was nice to be back at Olympic Stadium with a packed house... something I never thought I'd see again. While the Jays were the "home" team, and the fans cheered for them, it was clear that the Expos were the true home team. Most fans were wearing Expos gear and chanting Let's Go Expos.

 

While nobody will argue that Olympic Stadium is fun when it's full and loud, this weekend only further clarified that a new downtown stadium is needed for baseball to really work here. Yes, Olympic Stadium can be a viable short term solution. Yes, it's fun when it's full. But no, it's not suitable for a business crowd which is what would REALLY ensure the long-term health of the franchise. It's so dull and cavernous, even with 25,000 people in there (still a decent crowd) it feels mostly empty. While renovations could improve the concessions (which were a travesty all weekend long, running out of food, breakdowns of equipment), scoreboard and sound system... they won't be able to change the configuration of many of the seats which don't face the optimal direction, are too far from the field in many areas, and of course there's the roof. And EVEN if the roof was off, let's face it, it's not a true exterior vista, it's basically a giant hole in the ceiling. Plus, there are not nearly enough corporate suites. I'd love for Olympic Stadium to be a good long-term option, but I cannot believe in that project in the current context of MLB.

 

But back to the positive side, it's impossible for games to have gone much better. I'm sure organizers will bring the event back next year, and I'm sure it will be a success again. Montreal loves baseball - and now we have another example of how the market feels. Sure two games is not a full season. But two giant crowds for grapefruit league games with two non-home teams in a non-baseball stadium in a wet, snowy March at prices that are about 25% higher on average than what they charge in Toronto... that says something.

 

There are enormous obstacles in the way, even if all the stars align. Expansion requires two franchises and there's not currently another market locked and loaded for baseball. And relocation will always be the last resort for MLB, as it was for Montreal in 2004. While the Rays are #30 in attendance, they still have reasonably good TV ratings and have a good following - there's potential there.

[eastender85]

Très intéressant comme article et j'aime l'idée...mais est ce que c'est réaliste? Je ne suis pas convaincu. Il prend pour acquis qu'il pourra trouver 3000 personnes qui seront prêt à nous faire un chèque d'un quart de millions$...pas sûr que ce soit si facile que ça!?!?

 

En tous cas, je souhaite que ça marche, mais j'ai des doutes....

 

 

Je ne sais pas... apparemment ca se bouscule déja aux portes pour le faire ? Je n'Étais pas au courant de ce programme. Surement que les immigrants prêts à payer pour leur citoyenneté doivent s'en foutre un peu où va l'argent si elle leur permet de venir vivre ici.

[Habsfan]

While the Rays are #30 in attendance, they still have reasonably good TV ratings and have a good following - there's potential there.

 

Let's not forget that even though the Rays don't draw well, the team is profitable. They actually make money for the owners! I don't think they're in any rush to move!

Modifié 1 avril 2014 par Habsfan

[ToxiK]

Payer 275 000$ pour obtenir la citoyenneté canadienne, je crois qu'il y a bien des gens qui seraient prêts à payer un tel prix. Combien d'entre eux se sauveront dans une autre province dès qu'ils en auront la chance, ça c'est une autre histoire. Ma crainte si on crée un tel programme, c'est que tous les groupes de pression vont exiger qu'on leur donne cet argent pour financer leurs propres projets plutôt que pour un stade de baseball et qu'on se retrouve à la fin avec simplement une nouvelle taxe pour financer de nouveaux programmes sociaux.

[Habsfan]

Malheureusement tu as probabement raison!

[Malek]

275k c'est des peanuts pour des passeports pour ta famille. Je suis un peu déçu que ce ne soit pas plus que ça.

 

 

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