Tuesday, September 28, 2004

 

Goodbye, Montreal Expos

The death certificate for the Expos is just about to be signed. In a matter of days, Major League Baseball's first Canadian team will be no more. The Expos will be packed into a rusty U-Haul and unceremoniously dumped into the District of Columbia. There, they will undoubtedly lose the Expos name, lose the classy logo, and colors, the history. Now that Selig and MLB have wrung every possible drop of misery and lucre from the transaction, they will finally put the Expos down.

But it won't end there. There is already one lawsuit against MLB on this subject, brought by the former minority owners of the Expos. There might be another from Orioles owner Peter Angelos. There might not be enough time to get RFK Stadium up to MLB standards by Opening Day--not that the Expos would notice any difference. They're moving the team before they sell it, thereby losing any leverage they might have by selling to a wide variety of bidders. They're banking on a stadium deal from a City Council that may be voted out of office before next season.

Believe it or not, this move could be the beginning of a whole new set of troubles for the franchise. Don't be at all surprised if the "Expos question" is still high on MLB's list in two or three years.

For a nice, detailed, viterupative summary of how badly baseball has screwed the city of Montreal, please check out this article by John Brattain.

And goodbye, Montreal Expos. You will be missed.

Jefferson 9:27 AM

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