looks like the expos have their bags packed and ready to go - right from the start of the game, losing now 9-1 in T5. all 5 fans at the game will be sorry to see them go - especially the a**hole who threw a golf ball on the field during the game. if they find him - his punishment should have to be having to sit in an empty olympic stadium next year for 81 days.
The problem is that once MLB purchased them, they were doomed. Baseball is now is about money and profits rather than the game. Honestly I can't see them competing in DC especially with the proximity to Baltimore. Give them a few years and they will be back. However, why did the Montreal fans wait so long to voice their opinion? However I can also understand that fact MLB saying they were going to move the team from day one contributed into such listless fan interest.
Dr.
Dr.
http://www.montrealgazette.com/sports/baseball/Jack+Todd+Montreal+shot+team/10223058/story.html
[h=1]Jack Todd: Montreal has a shot at MLB team[/h]
[h=2][/h]
By Jack Todd, Special to The GazetteSeptember 21, 2014 6:21 PM
[h=1]Washington Nationals celebrate their 3-2 win against the Miami Marlins at Marlins Park on Saturday in Miami to complete a four-game sweep of Jeffrey Loria’s team.[/h][h=2]Photograph by: Eliot J. Schechter, Getty Images[/h]
In the wee hours Saturday night or Sunday morning, I had an odd dream, possibly the result of the painkillers I had taken for a wonky back.
I dreamed the Expos had just clinched a wild-card berth on the road and had come home to play an exhibition game against a team of old-timers at the Big O. But there were some concerns about the pitching staff because the old-timers had won the game, led by the big bat of one of my all-time favourite sluggers, Harmon Killebrew.
Killebrew hit three home runs and drove in seven runs against the dream Expos –– a remarkable feat, given he died three years ago.
Meanwhile, the Franchise Once Known as the Expos is cruising into the post-season. The Washington Nationals won’t have to battle for a wild-card berth. After a slow start, they have dominated the league this season the way the Expos did 20 years ago, until their season was cruelly cut short by the baseball strike that was the beginning of the end.
The Nationals can do it all. They have the pitching and the sluggers and they play spectacular defence, beginning with Denard Span in centre field. Bryce Harper’s act is hard to stomach, but Stephen Strasburg did every Expos fan in the world a favour Sunday by leading the Nats to a four-game sweep of Jeffrey Loria’s Marlins with a 2-1 win in Miami. Strasburg is leading the National League by a razor-thin margin in strikeouts, even if he isn’t quite the pitcher it appeared he would be prior to his Tommy John surgery. The Nationals are the best team in the NL with a 91-64 record heading into the final week of the regular season.
They are definitely in the mix for a World Series crown, along with my Baltimore Orioles, the Los Angeles Dodgers and the California Angels of Greater Los Angeles and Anaheim (or whatever Mike Trout’s team is called this week.) That would be a franchise first, but how you feel about a Washington championship is an individual thing. From my own unofficial poll, I would say former Expos fans who embrace the Nats are greatly outnumbered by those who despise them.
All that might become moot if the other dream (the real dream, you might call it) comes true. Whatever else happened in Major League Baseball this season, from Clayton Kershaw’s brilliance to the Blue Jays sitting on their hands at the trade deadline and letting a shot at the post-season slip away, none of it matters around here like the remarks of the outgoing commissioner.
Bud Selig Jr., the man who deservedly gets a healthy share of the blame for the demise of the Expos 10 years ago, took the rebirth of the Expos from pipe dream to something a great deal closer to reality with a few words as he prepared to exit the stage at long last.
Selig was obviously paying attention when the Blue Jays and Mets (two teams that aren’t exactly loved around here) drew a total of 96,350 fans for two exhibition games at the Big O in March. Asked whether that meant he could see a team back in Montreal, Selig said: “I think they would be an excellent candidate in the future. No question about it. That (the attendance) was very impressive.
“They have much work to be done,” he added. “There’s certainly in my case no hard or angry feeling toward Montreal. We tried to keep a team there. It’s a long story now. But I thought that was marvellous.”
Next to having a deep-pockets owner step up and say he’s beginning construction on a new Montreal ballpark, Selig’s statement was the next best thing. The preternaturally cautious commissioner normally doesn’t commit to cream in his coffee without 18 months of consultations.
Mind you, Selig is free to say what he pleases. The task of bringing a team back to Montreal (or refusing to do so) now falls on the desk of Rob Manfred.
To keep the dream alive, ExposNation, the non-profit organization that promotes Montreal as a viable Major League Baseball location, will host a Pitch and Catch Rally on Sunday, Sept. 28, from noon to 2 p.m. at Loyola Park in N.D.G. Former Montreal Expos pitcher Derek Aucoin will give the first 100 kids who show up the opportunity to hit off him.
This is not an event on a par with the exhibition games, but the point is to keep the pot bubbling. And maybe, just maybe, Bell will finally step up to the plate. After all, this is hardly the first time Bell has kept you waiting, now is it?
Then if we can just do something about the sheer, unbridled lunacy of putting a new roof on the useless toilet known as the Big Owe at a cost between $200 million and $300 million, when either figure would represent a substantial down payment on a new ballpark.
O Captains our Captains: Unlike the majority of fans I’ve heard from, I don’t believe the Canadiens’ decision not to name a captain for this season means anything at all.
Captains don’t mean what they did back in the days of Jean Béliveau or Bob Gainey, when the right captain could lift a team by sheer force of will. Unless you have a Mark Messier on hand, I don’t believe the identity of the captain matters much. One of the captain’s primary tasks is providing meaningless quotes for the media and anyone who can talk can do that.
On the other hand, while no one can quarrel with the “A” handed to Andrei Markov, Tomas Plekanec and P.K. Subban, giving the same honour to Max Pacioretty is a little strange.
Pacioretty is a leader, in the sense that anyone who can put a puck in the net 39 times in a season is a leader. But he’s also a guy who will skate back to the bench and leave a teammate (Brendan Gallagher, specifically) stretched out on the ice after a borderline hit.
Everyone likes Pacioretty. He’s not a guy you can detest like that other Max, Maxim Lapierre. But that doesn’t mean he’s a leader. If you’re going to give a letter to someone, make it a player who commands genuine respect, one whose game stepped up in the playoffs rather than going the other way.
Brandon Prust, for example. Or Gallagher, who is the opposite of Pacioretty –– a power forward in a finesse forward’s body.
[h=1]Jack Todd: Montreal has a shot at MLB team[/h]
[h=2][/h]
By Jack Todd, Special to The GazetteSeptember 21, 2014 6:21 PM
[h=1]Washington Nationals celebrate their 3-2 win against the Miami Marlins at Marlins Park on Saturday in Miami to complete a four-game sweep of Jeffrey Loria’s team.[/h][h=2]Photograph by: Eliot J. Schechter, Getty Images[/h]
In the wee hours Saturday night or Sunday morning, I had an odd dream, possibly the result of the painkillers I had taken for a wonky back.
I dreamed the Expos had just clinched a wild-card berth on the road and had come home to play an exhibition game against a team of old-timers at the Big O. But there were some concerns about the pitching staff because the old-timers had won the game, led by the big bat of one of my all-time favourite sluggers, Harmon Killebrew.
Killebrew hit three home runs and drove in seven runs against the dream Expos –– a remarkable feat, given he died three years ago.
Meanwhile, the Franchise Once Known as the Expos is cruising into the post-season. The Washington Nationals won’t have to battle for a wild-card berth. After a slow start, they have dominated the league this season the way the Expos did 20 years ago, until their season was cruelly cut short by the baseball strike that was the beginning of the end.
The Nationals can do it all. They have the pitching and the sluggers and they play spectacular defence, beginning with Denard Span in centre field. Bryce Harper’s act is hard to stomach, but Stephen Strasburg did every Expos fan in the world a favour Sunday by leading the Nats to a four-game sweep of Jeffrey Loria’s Marlins with a 2-1 win in Miami. Strasburg is leading the National League by a razor-thin margin in strikeouts, even if he isn’t quite the pitcher it appeared he would be prior to his Tommy John surgery. The Nationals are the best team in the NL with a 91-64 record heading into the final week of the regular season.
They are definitely in the mix for a World Series crown, along with my Baltimore Orioles, the Los Angeles Dodgers and the California Angels of Greater Los Angeles and Anaheim (or whatever Mike Trout’s team is called this week.) That would be a franchise first, but how you feel about a Washington championship is an individual thing. From my own unofficial poll, I would say former Expos fans who embrace the Nats are greatly outnumbered by those who despise them.
All that might become moot if the other dream (the real dream, you might call it) comes true. Whatever else happened in Major League Baseball this season, from Clayton Kershaw’s brilliance to the Blue Jays sitting on their hands at the trade deadline and letting a shot at the post-season slip away, none of it matters around here like the remarks of the outgoing commissioner.
Bud Selig Jr., the man who deservedly gets a healthy share of the blame for the demise of the Expos 10 years ago, took the rebirth of the Expos from pipe dream to something a great deal closer to reality with a few words as he prepared to exit the stage at long last.
Selig was obviously paying attention when the Blue Jays and Mets (two teams that aren’t exactly loved around here) drew a total of 96,350 fans for two exhibition games at the Big O in March. Asked whether that meant he could see a team back in Montreal, Selig said: “I think they would be an excellent candidate in the future. No question about it. That (the attendance) was very impressive.
“They have much work to be done,” he added. “There’s certainly in my case no hard or angry feeling toward Montreal. We tried to keep a team there. It’s a long story now. But I thought that was marvellous.”
Next to having a deep-pockets owner step up and say he’s beginning construction on a new Montreal ballpark, Selig’s statement was the next best thing. The preternaturally cautious commissioner normally doesn’t commit to cream in his coffee without 18 months of consultations.
Mind you, Selig is free to say what he pleases. The task of bringing a team back to Montreal (or refusing to do so) now falls on the desk of Rob Manfred.
To keep the dream alive, ExposNation, the non-profit organization that promotes Montreal as a viable Major League Baseball location, will host a Pitch and Catch Rally on Sunday, Sept. 28, from noon to 2 p.m. at Loyola Park in N.D.G. Former Montreal Expos pitcher Derek Aucoin will give the first 100 kids who show up the opportunity to hit off him.
This is not an event on a par with the exhibition games, but the point is to keep the pot bubbling. And maybe, just maybe, Bell will finally step up to the plate. After all, this is hardly the first time Bell has kept you waiting, now is it?
Then if we can just do something about the sheer, unbridled lunacy of putting a new roof on the useless toilet known as the Big Owe at a cost between $200 million and $300 million, when either figure would represent a substantial down payment on a new ballpark.
O Captains our Captains: Unlike the majority of fans I’ve heard from, I don’t believe the Canadiens’ decision not to name a captain for this season means anything at all.
Captains don’t mean what they did back in the days of Jean Béliveau or Bob Gainey, when the right captain could lift a team by sheer force of will. Unless you have a Mark Messier on hand, I don’t believe the identity of the captain matters much. One of the captain’s primary tasks is providing meaningless quotes for the media and anyone who can talk can do that.
On the other hand, while no one can quarrel with the “A” handed to Andrei Markov, Tomas Plekanec and P.K. Subban, giving the same honour to Max Pacioretty is a little strange.
Pacioretty is a leader, in the sense that anyone who can put a puck in the net 39 times in a season is a leader. But he’s also a guy who will skate back to the bench and leave a teammate (Brendan Gallagher, specifically) stretched out on the ice after a borderline hit.
Everyone likes Pacioretty. He’s not a guy you can detest like that other Max, Maxim Lapierre. But that doesn’t mean he’s a leader. If you’re going to give a letter to someone, make it a player who commands genuine respect, one whose game stepped up in the playoffs rather than going the other way.
Brandon Prust, for example. Or Gallagher, who is the opposite of Pacioretty –– a power forward in a finesse forward’s body.
http://www.paherald.sk.ca/Opinion/2015-04-05/article-4101220/Bring-back-the-Expos%3F/1
[h=1]Bring back the Expos?[/h]<dl><dt class="author">Brett Smith</dt><dd itemprop="datePublished">Published on April 05, 2015</dd></dl>
<section class="text" itemprop="articleBody">[h=2]Exhibition games in Olympic Stadium raise calls for return of Montreal franchise[/h]Major League Baseball was back in Montreal again during the weekend.
<figure>
</figure>© Paul Chiasson/The Canadian Press
A fan holds up a sign during a pre-game ceremony when the Toronto Blue Jays faced the Cincinnati Reds in MLB exhibition play on Friday night in Montreal. It is the second consecutive year the Blue Jays have hosted exhibition games in Olympic Stadium.
<aside class="aside">[h=2][/h]</aside><aside class="aside">
</aside><aside class="aside">
<section class="article_text">While it might not have been the home team some in la belle province would’ve wanted, more than 96,000 fans packed in to Olympic Stadium during the two-game exhibition set between the Toronto Blue Jays and the Cincinnati Reds.
It was the second consecutive season the Blue Jays played exhibition games in Montreal to great fanfare and greater attendance numbers for Olympic Stadium. These exhibition contests has given the “Bring back the Expos” movement momentum by showing MLB that Montreal is willing to support a team.
The benefits for baseball in Canada are obvious. A second team would re-establish the rivalry between the Jays and the new Expos. Plus, it spark additional interest in the sport at an amateur level, leading to the potential of more future big leaguers from this country.
But while the feel-good return of the Expos via relocation or expansion, it might not be the right decision for the city or MLB.
Some point to the positive attendance numbers for the exhibition games in Montreal during the last two seasons. New MLB commissioner Rob Manfred has said that the league uses these games as initial tests to measure the interest of a potential market.
However, it’s only a two-game commitment for the fans, some of which probably made the trip into Montreal for a weekend vacation with baseball as a perk. One of the problems the Expos faced was rapidly decreasing attendance numbers following MLB’s strike in 1994, wiping out a potential Toronto-Montreal meeting in that year’s World Series.
After a post-strike peak of more than 1.6 million fans heading to Olympic Stadium in 1996 according ExposNation.com, attendance sank to a low of 642,743 for the 2001 season -- an average of 7,935 per game. When watching the Expos on TV, it became a side sport to count how many fans were in the outfield bleachers during any given home game.
During that same season, when the potential relocation candidate Tampa Bay (at the time Devil) Rays were in the midst of a terrible 62-win season, they still averaged slightly more than 16,000 fans per game.
The main reason that Tampa Bay has been linked to relocation is their inability to get a new stadium. It would be the same problem in Montreal.
Manfred has said the Expos would need to find a new home if the team was to ever return to Montreal.
The Expos moved to Olympic Stadium in 1977 and were there for their entire run in Montreal, with some home games relocated to Puerto Rico in 2003 and 2004. The stadium was finally fully paid off in 2006 -- three decades after the 1976 Montreal Olympics. Unless there was a lot of private money invested by potential business partners, another large debt would be imposed on the province.
So, before everyone gets carried away with the bringing the Expos back, the reason why they left has to be considered in the first place. They were losing fans at an alarming rate and needed to fund a new stadium.
It’s easy selling out two games once a year. How committed would fans be to 81 dates a year?
</section></section>
[h=1]Bring back the Expos?[/h]<dl><dt class="author">Brett Smith</dt><dd itemprop="datePublished">Published on April 05, 2015</dd></dl>
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<section class="text" itemprop="articleBody">[h=2]Exhibition games in Olympic Stadium raise calls for return of Montreal franchise[/h]Major League Baseball was back in Montreal again during the weekend.
<figure>
</figure>© Paul Chiasson/The Canadian PressA fan holds up a sign during a pre-game ceremony when the Toronto Blue Jays faced the Cincinnati Reds in MLB exhibition play on Friday night in Montreal. It is the second consecutive year the Blue Jays have hosted exhibition games in Olympic Stadium.
<aside class="aside">[h=2][/h]</aside><aside class="aside">
</aside><aside class="aside">
<section class="article_text">While it might not have been the home team some in la belle province would’ve wanted, more than 96,000 fans packed in to Olympic Stadium during the two-game exhibition set between the Toronto Blue Jays and the Cincinnati Reds.
It was the second consecutive season the Blue Jays played exhibition games in Montreal to great fanfare and greater attendance numbers for Olympic Stadium. These exhibition contests has given the “Bring back the Expos” movement momentum by showing MLB that Montreal is willing to support a team.
The benefits for baseball in Canada are obvious. A second team would re-establish the rivalry between the Jays and the new Expos. Plus, it spark additional interest in the sport at an amateur level, leading to the potential of more future big leaguers from this country.
But while the feel-good return of the Expos via relocation or expansion, it might not be the right decision for the city or MLB.
Some point to the positive attendance numbers for the exhibition games in Montreal during the last two seasons. New MLB commissioner Rob Manfred has said that the league uses these games as initial tests to measure the interest of a potential market.
However, it’s only a two-game commitment for the fans, some of which probably made the trip into Montreal for a weekend vacation with baseball as a perk. One of the problems the Expos faced was rapidly decreasing attendance numbers following MLB’s strike in 1994, wiping out a potential Toronto-Montreal meeting in that year’s World Series.
After a post-strike peak of more than 1.6 million fans heading to Olympic Stadium in 1996 according ExposNation.com, attendance sank to a low of 642,743 for the 2001 season -- an average of 7,935 per game. When watching the Expos on TV, it became a side sport to count how many fans were in the outfield bleachers during any given home game.
During that same season, when the potential relocation candidate Tampa Bay (at the time Devil) Rays were in the midst of a terrible 62-win season, they still averaged slightly more than 16,000 fans per game.
The main reason that Tampa Bay has been linked to relocation is their inability to get a new stadium. It would be the same problem in Montreal.
Manfred has said the Expos would need to find a new home if the team was to ever return to Montreal.
The Expos moved to Olympic Stadium in 1977 and were there for their entire run in Montreal, with some home games relocated to Puerto Rico in 2003 and 2004. The stadium was finally fully paid off in 2006 -- three decades after the 1976 Montreal Olympics. Unless there was a lot of private money invested by potential business partners, another large debt would be imposed on the province.
So, before everyone gets carried away with the bringing the Expos back, the reason why they left has to be considered in the first place. They were losing fans at an alarming rate and needed to fund a new stadium.
It’s easy selling out two games once a year. How committed would fans be to 81 dates a year?
</section></section>
