Expos move to be announced Thursday

[CanadianChris 0]

I don't want to start it's own topic, but does ANYONE like Selig? (no, I don't in case anyone will ask)

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[Dr. Tom 0]

Re: Angelos. I would hope he dies, but his sons are probably even worse than he is. I don't see him selling the Orioles anytime soon, since I'm sure he still sees himself as the man who saved baseball in Baltimore, a moniker that the late Edward Bennett Williams deserves. New ownership would be good for the team, IMO, as Angelos has become a polarizing figure both within MLB and his own city.

 

Re: The Expos. I guess everybody wins, in MLB's usual cynical way: the owners get a free new stadium the taxpayers have said they don't want, the fans will eagerly scarf up tickets and merchandise for a while, and the nation's capital gets an actual local team. The fans of Montreal lose out, but had they bothered to support the team before now, it wouldn't have gotten this far. I know they had some ownership issues up there, but still.

 

Re: Selig. He sucks a savage sausage, and the best thing he can do for baseball is die in public.

[lomasmoney 0]

well its hard to get behind a team that has owners who constantly trade away any talented players you have for three bats and two large sized jockstraps

[bob_barron 0]

The fans in Montreal did support the team when they did well. Last year when they were pushing for a Wild Card spot 20,000 people filled Olympic Stadium to see them play the Phillies.

 

Would you support a team that you couldn't watch on TV, went through owner after owner and traded away good player after good player?

 

1994 just killed that franchise

[The Czech Republic 0]

I don't want to start it's own topic, but does ANYONE like Selig? (no, I don't in case anyone will ask)

He's the worst thing to ever happen to professional sports in North America.

I'd have to say Gary Bettman raped the NHL worse than Selig did baseball. Like it or not, he's presided over this huge baseball renaissance. Gary Bettman is responsible for 3,000 people watching a Calgary Flames game in Greensboro.

 

The stadium thing is ugly on the inside, but on the surface, it's great that the Vet, Three Rivers, Riverfront, Atlanta-Fulton and County Stadium are all gone. The Wild Card is finally gaining acceptance, I think, and at least Bud Selig is a baseball man and a baseball fan. He's not the worst thing ever. As the owner of the Brewers, I think he was a reasonably fair owner, at least in the 80s. Sure he's corrupt, but I really think that deep down, Bud wants to do the right thing and means well, he's just sort of an incompetent putz. Meanwhile, Bettman has tried to mold the NHL into the NBA On Ice, and it's been a major failure. Two lockouts now under his watch. Oodles of unsuccessful team relocations and bankruptcies.

 

The best commissioner is David Stern. I don't know enough about Tagliabue, he just strikes me as a guy with a stick up his ass.

[EVIL~! alkeiper 0]

The fans in Montreal did support the team when they did well. Last year when they were pushing for a Wild Card spot 20,000 people filled Olympic Stadium to see them play the Phillies.

 

Would you support a team that you couldn't watch on TV, went through owner after owner and traded away good player after good player?

 

1994 just killed that franchise

That's essentially the essense of the problem. The owners failed to properly market the team, and attendance fell accordingly.

[Guest MikeSC]

What's with all this hippie whining about the Expos moving? If some of you would have bothered going to the games, then maybe they would still be in that crappy stadium.

 

And that's just what the D.C. area needs -- a taxpayer-funded baseball stadium. It's done WONDERS for Pittsburgh.

 

Goodbye Expos, now go out there and make a buttload of money on some city dumb enough to take you in...

MLB logic --- sure, teams have bombed in Washington twice, but hey, it'll work this time!

-=Mike

[Guest Salacious Crumb]

Looks like Las Vegas gets hosed yet again. Why not go to a place where the people are dying for sports, remember this is the only place the XFL worked, instead of a place where baseball failed twice.

[EVIL~! alkeiper 0]

Las Vegas does have a AAA team. I don't know the attendance numbers, but I'll track them down.

[EVIL~! alkeiper 0]

Here we go. Las Vegas drew 306,628 fans this season, an average of 4,946 per game. That ranks juat 48th in the minors. I know AAA and the majors are two different animals, but that is not encouraging. I think the problem is that LV is tourist based, and teams need a strong season ticket base to draw big attendance numbers.

[CanadianChris 0]

Here we go. Las Vegas drew 306,628 fans this season, an average of 4,946 per game. That ranks juat 48th in the minors. I know AAA and the majors are two different animals, but that is not encouraging. I think the problem is that LV is tourist based, and teams need a strong season ticket base to draw big attendance numbers.

That's exactly the problem, and it's been cited in the past as a reason Vegas doesn't have a major league team. There's not enough interest among locals, given that there are a few other things to do in town.

 

Well, that and the fact that you can't gamble on a Vegas team's games in Vegas. I would suspect that casino owners don't want a team for that reason...the casinos would take a hit if a Vegas team ever made it to a World Series, or Super Bowl, etc.

[Zetterberg is God 0]

Although I'm not surprised by the announcement, it doesn't make it any less sad. Watching the history of the Expos today on the Score was a great tribute to the past glory of the team but also a depressing reminder that this is the end. I still maintain that the Expos would have at least won the NLCS if not the World Series in '94. I will still cheer for this franchise no matter where they are, but it certainly will not be the same.

[The Czech Republic 0]

Just to ask, where would you guys liked to have seen the Expos move to, provided they MUST leave Montreal? I still gotta say Norfolk, partly because I designed some cool artwork like the emblem for the cap and stuff.

[pappajacks 0]

Baseball could have thrived in Montreal the last 10 years if the team was run properly.

 

If we were talking about relocation 20 years ago, teams like Atlanta, Cleveland, Seattle and San Francisco would be long gone. Look how those markets flourished with a winning team and a new stadium. Montreal is no different. Montreal has a population of 3 million, and that doesn't include the potential of the market, which included in the past Quebec City, Ottawa and northern Vermont.

 

The 1994 strike killed the franchise. Instead of investing in the team, the owners decided to hold a firesale and trade away Walker, Grissom, Hill and Wetteland. Pedro Martinez and Moises Alou soon followed. For years the owners in Montreal pocketed revenue sharing money instead of spending that money on players.

 

There is a reason the team drew an average of 10,000 a game the last few years: firesale after firesale, crappy stadium not located downtown and constant relocation threats have made thousands of fans turn away from the game.

 

Don't get me wrong, baseball isn't as popular as hockey in Montreal and Montreal isn't and will never be as baseball crazy as St-Louis, Chicago, Boston and New York. But, if run properly with committed owners, it's no worse a baseball town than most MLB cities.

 

1994 strike, Claude Brochu and Jeffrey Loria are mostly responsible for the death of the franchise.

[Dogbert 0]

Don't forget the PQ government in Quebec.

 

Ever since the resounding loss in the 1980 referendum on sovereignty, the Parti Québecois did everything in its power to drive the English-speaking Quebecers out of the province, so that the sovereignty-backing French-speakers would be the only ones left, and the province could separate.

 

The thing is, the anglos were the ones supporting baseball, while the French ignored it (it's an English sport, you see). Once the large majority of the English-speakers were gone, baseball was doomed.

[EVIL~! alkeiper 0]

One little number I'd like to point out.

 

2002 Attendance

Montreal: 812,045

Florida: 813,118

 

And an article from Jim Caple....

 

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/columns/stor...&page=caple_jim

 

Major League officials are congratulating themselves today but the announcement that the Montreal Expos are moving to Washington, D.C. is a colossal failure and a downright shame.

 

 

 

The Expos weren't completely void of fan support.

 

 

Everyone insists the Expos are finally moving but I'm not so sure. Remember, before the Expos move there is still the little matter of finding an owner, getting a stadium officially approved by the city and fighting off any lawsuits from Montreal. Despite what everyone is saying, I think there is at least as good a chance that the Expos will play next season in Montreal as in RFK Stadium.

 

 

And frankly, no one ever goes broke betting against baseball accomplishing an objective on time.

 

 

Even if the deal goes through as planned, it seems foolhardy. Jayson Stark reports that Orioles owner Peter Angelos has to be guaranteed revenues in order to allow the move. When you consider that, plus all the money major league teams paid out running the Expos the past couple years, wouldn't it have been much easier to have simply used that money to build the Expos a stadium in Montreal and keep them in one of North America's largest markets?

 

 

Of course, it would have. But that would have meant undermining ownership's indefensible policy of forcing communities to build stadiums at taxpayer expense. It would have meant treating fans with respect rather than disdain. So it was never even considered.

 

 

The fans in Montreal were treated abysmally in all this. They supported their team loyally for years until the 1994 strike ruined what promised to be their finest season. And after that, the city was abused and let down by baseball again and again. As the league repeatedly hinted at the Expos demise, Jeffrey Loria was allowed to purchase the team amid promises that he would oversee the team's renaissance. Instead, he ran the club into the ground, failing to put the games on radio in English at one point, and was rewarded with a sweetheart deal to go to Florida while the Expos were threatened with contraction. They also had many of their home games moved closer to Venezuela than Montreal. And baseball pointed to the low attendance as proof that the game would never be supported in Montreal.

 

 

Had any of this happened to a team in the U.S. -- the contraction policy, the shifted home games, the conflict of interests -- there would have been an enormous outcry. But because it happened to a Canadian team, no one noticed. Or cared.

 

 

That's the real crime here. Baseball treated a team and a city about as badly as it could and no one paid attention.

 

 

If tonight's game is to be the final one at Stadium Olympique, I suggest the fans enjoy some final smoked meat sandwiches, sing "O, Canada'' at the top of their lungs, cheer their Expos and then give baseball the raised middle finger it deserves.

[The Czech Republic 0]

Didn't "someone" buy 10,000 seats at Pro Player in late September just so the Expos wouldn't outdraw the Marlins?

[EVIL~! alkeiper 0]

Yes.

[The Czech Republic 0]

Here's the troll that screwed the Expos. Looks like Tony Schaivone mated with...something he shouldn't have mated with?

[Spaceman Spiff 0]

Tony Skee-vone and Eric Bischoff

[treble 0]

It's especially frustrating since playoff runs have really helped teams in the past (if the Mariners hadn't made it in '95, who knows where that franchise would be today. Same goes for the Marlins, winning last year could get them a new ballpark.), but the Expos never got their chance.

[Dogbert 0]

Well, there's the last home game. I watched it on The Score.

 

I'm not ashamed to say I cried at the end, like a lot of the fans in the park did.

[Guest Anglesault]

I don't want to start it's own topic, but does ANYONE like Selig? (no, I don't in case anyone will ask)

He's possibly the worst thing to ever hit baseball.

[Guest Anglesault]

I'm not ashamed to say I cried at the end, like a lot of the fans in the park did.

Did alot of people show up?

[MarvinisaLunatic 0]

The only thing I find stupid in this is that they moved the Expos to a city that had not one but two teams leave. Its also kind of ironic that, 51 years ago to the day today, it was announced that the St. Louis Browns were moving to Baltimore.

 

I can't see the Expos/Whatever being that great of a draw at RFK for the next 3 years. Im sure they'll beat whatever they drew in Montreal this year, but its a pretty good fact that the city of DC doesn't really support crappy teams (See Wizards and Capitals for proof). The new ballpark will probably help a lot but the new ownership group is going to have to do a lot to improve the franchise to the point where they are even remotely in contention.

[Guest Staravenger]

I'm not ashamed to say I cried at the end, like a lot of the fans in the park did.

Did alot of people show up?

I don't know, probably not a lot considering Montreals second home is Puerto Rico. Today was the end of an Era...well, not really, but for Expo fans it is.

[MarvinisaLunatic 0]

I see that one of the things included in Angelos' compensation is the creation of a regional sports network to cover the Orioles. I guess that means Comcast Sports Net plans to cover the DC team.

[treble 0]

There were about 31,000 people at the game tonight.

[Guest Staravenger]

Well at least they got a nice send off instead of playing in a near empty stadium, too bad I forgot to watch.

[kkktookmybabyaway 0]

too bad I forgot to watch.

Too bad I forgot to care.

 

Don't worry Expo fans, you guys can have the Pirates when they move in a few years. Maybe we can even ship you PNC Park, too...