Reviving Expos all the buzz at Big O
Blue Jays make annual pre-season stop in Montreal
It’s Groundhog Day all over again, the annual spring rite when we gather at Olympic Stadium to wallow in Expos nostalgia, demonstrate our love for baseball and, coincidentally, enrich the Toronto Blue Jays.
If a pair of meaningless exhibition games between the Blue Jays and the Pittsburgh Pirates don’t quite whet your appetite, there’s plenty more, beginning with the much deserved tribute to Tim Raines, the speedy outfielder who was finally elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame this winter on his 10th and final chance.
The festivities this year will include the Fan Jam on the esplanade leading into the stadium on Friday and Saturday. The tribute, set for 6:35 p.m. Friday evening’s tribute, just before the opening pitch, should be the big draw.
If Raines isn’t enough, Dennis Martinez, Steve Rogers, Bill Lee, Al Oliver, David Palmer and Jeff Reardon will also be on hand Friday and Quebec Major Leaguers including Claude Raymond, Denis Boucher and Derek Aucoin will be honoured Saturday.
The subtext, as always, will be the effort to bring back the Expos. What seemed an impossible pipe dream when the Jays first played these exhibitions four years ago has moved to the realm of the genuinely possible, even if a report this week that investors were awaiting word from Major League Baseball was premature.
The report by Frédéric Daigle of Presse Canadienne elicited a pithy response from Mayor Denis Coderre. Basically, Coderre said no deal is done, but the universe is unfolding as it should.
Mitch Garber, a member of the group trying to birth a new Expos franchise, said much the same thing: Talk of financial support from two levels of government and potential stadium locations and designs was premature, if not downright inaccurate.
There are at least a dozen groups working in some way for the return of the Expos, most with little more to offer than nostalgia and hope. The Garber/Stephen Bronfman group is the one with the clout, money and Bronfman name to make it happen.
No one I know has studied the file more thoroughly than Mark Sanchini, a history teacher at the Wilfrid Laurier School Board. Sanchini noted the Peel Basin site has been targeted but even with the demolition of the Bonaventure expressway, there isn’t enough room on the north side of the basin to locate a baseball park.
“The only viable piece of land,” Sanchini said, “is on the south side of the basin, in Goose Village.”
Sanchini says most of the land between Mill Street, Bridge Street, the Peel Basin and Wellington Street is owned by the city.
Sanchini compares the potential of Goose Village with the site of Petco Park in San Diego, an industrial park before the stadium was built that is now prime real estate.
It would appear we’re still some distance from seeing a deal closed to bring the Expos back, but the project has progressed light years since the Jays first played their exhibitions here four years ago, at a time when baseball seemed all but dead in Montreal.