Life Without Major League Baseball
The middle aged waiter at the Greek restaurant on Rue Prince-Arthur in Montreal on Saturday afternoon was talking about more than just the special of the day while serving customers. He was chatting about his adopted city of the last 25 years, Montreal. The waiter, who explained he settled in Montreal instead of New York after leaving Greece and probably lost out on making a fortune in the States, admitted when asked that he may be one of the few people who miss Major League Baseball in Montreal. Montreal does not seem to be any worse off without Major League Baseball despite all of those who preach that having “Major League” sports teams in their cities because of the aura of “Major League” sports somehow makes their city economically and culturally more important. Montreal has not fallen off the map because the Expos baseball team left the city after the 2004 season.
Montreal still has the National Hockey League’s Canadiens, one of North America’s biggest brand names in sports and there is the Canadian Football League Alouettes and a NASCAR race but baseball was always considered the top of the tops by those in power in the media, in the political and business community in the United States and to some extent in Canada but there are just scant traces around Montreal that it was once a baseball city both in the minors and in the majors.
So does Montreal lack “big league status” because the city, whether it was the failure of local and province government, cable TV, radio and corporate support, could no longer function to the level of what is expected from a Major League town? The answer is no, “major league” status is something that is much more imagery than reality. Montreal did not build Jeffrey Loria, the last owner of the Expos, a new stadium when he was seeking one about a decade ago, At the end, the Major League Baseball-owned Expos could not get an English speaking radio contract, the franchise could not pull in necessary TV monies and the corporate support left, but then again the corporate support was waning anyway and it was not because the baseball team was bad, Montreal and the province of Quebec had changed drastically over the decades.
As the waiter was talking about the loss of the Expos and the recent sale of the Montreal Canadians to Molson, a transaction that needs National Hockey League approval, workers not too far from the Greek restaurant were putting the finishing touches on the “Festival International De Jazz De Montreal which starts on Tuesday and features an international superstar, Stevie Wonder, as the headliner. While the Jazz Festival is taking place, Montreal will be hosting another international event, The Montreal Just for Laughs Festival.
It might not be baseball but the comedic talent will include Lewis Black and others.
Does a city need sports to be considered a “Major League” town? Montreal has been on the decline since the National League awarded the city a baseball team in 1968 for the 1969 season. Ironically it was through sports that helped hasten Montreal’s fall from the international pedestal. Montreal’s long time mayor, Jean Drapeau, was a visionary who pushed for the city to host Expo 67, an international fair, got the Metro built and won the right to host the 1976 Summer Olympics. Drapeau and city leaders managed to get a baseball team without having a suitable stadium but a stadium would eventually materialize for the team if the franchise wanted to move into the Olympic Stadium that would be the centerpiece of the 1976 Olympics. Montreal’s lack of a real baseball park almost cost the city the franchise National League owners sold them. The team almost ended up in Buffalo, New York.
The stadium and the entire Olympic complex were supposed to be self-financing but the entire project was mismanaged and the cost overruns were enormous. Montreal ended up having to be bailed out by Quebec and in the end, the Olympic Stadium killed the Expos franchise. The stadium was too big and was located in the eastern part of the city far from downtown although the Metro stopped at the stadium. But that was only a part of the reason that baseball failed in Montreal.
Montreal was once the Canadian financial center but that started to change around the time when the city got the Expos. Montreal’s arrival in the National League happened a few months before the Parti Quebecois was founded and not long after France's President Charles DeGaulle's July 24, 1967 speech at Montreal's city hall where the French leader said, "Vive le Quebec" and added "Vive le Quebec libre" and that set the stage for a change that would have significant consequences culturally and economically and ultimately set up the city's baseball team to fail although that would take 35 years.
About 15 months later, two independence minded groups merged and formed the Parti Quebecois. The new alliance's mandate included the establishment of an independent French-speaking state that was aligned with the rest of English-speaking Canada and even though the new political party started slowly, the notion of an independent Quebec began to scare English businesses based in Montreal and a good many of those institutions went west to English-speaking areas like Toronto which would usurp Montreal as the Canadian financial capital.
The Parti Quebecois won the right to form a Quebec provincial government in 1976 and both the city and province saw businesses leave in an accelerated pace. Back in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the Canadian dollar was stronger versus the US dollar, baseball depended on people walking to the stadium and buying tickets and players salaries were minimal. At the time, Montreal fit right into Major League Baseball, a strong financial city with an international flair. But the financial wreckage of the Olympics and the separatist movement took a heavy toll on Montreal and baseball’s changing economics also began to weigh heavily on the franchise.
Losing the baseball team did not destroy Montreal’s image. Fleeing business leaders and the Olympics costs were a double whammy and on top of that, the Canadian dollar fell to around 62 cents against the US Dollar in the 1990s.
There is still interest in baseball in Montreal, but it seems to be very minimal. At some Metro stations there are reminders as stores sell Montreal Expos shirts along with Quebec Nordiques shirts. Quebec City lost the Nordiques franchise in 1995 when the province could not come up with a financial package to build a new arena for the hockey team. Quebec was closing hospitals at the time.
The waiter continued to talk about Montreal and said that Saturday night is fireworks night over at La Ronde, the amusement park that was opened as part of Expo 67. The waiter said you could see the fireworks from all over the city and that the fireworks display was part of an international competition throughout the summer. La Ronde used to be owned by the city of Montreal but that changed in 2001 when the city sold the park’s assets and granted a long term lease to the American company Six Flags. Six Flags filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on June 13, 2009. Six Flags is operated by Red Zone, whose Chairman of the Board is Washington Redskins owner Daniel Snyder.
The fireworks display was great. Montreal may no longer be a “Major League” city in the sense that Major League Baseball could no longer do business at the level required for a franchise. Montreal and Quebec have more important issues anyway. There are too many a louer or for rent signs around as there are empty stores but that could be said in a good many cities as well. The separatist issue has never been resolved and Montreal has fallen far behind Toronto as Canada’s financial capital. The economics of baseball no longer works in Montreal because there is no government support to build a stadium, the media dollars available from cable and over-the-air TV go to the Canadiens and what is left over doesn’t make sense for baseball and the now more limited corporate loonies are available for hockey not baseball.
Sportswriters, National Hockey League Players Association figures and others are openly talking about Toronto’s need for a second NHL team but no one talks about Montreal as a potential home for a second NHL team or as a place that needs Major League Baseball. Montreal has survived though without the Expos.
Stevie Wonder is in town performing, the comedians are coming to town, NASCAR will be in town in August and the Montreal Canadiens hockey team is a global brand name, maybe not on the scale of Manchester United, but the Habs’ rouge, bleu and blanc with the CH logo is well known. Baseball is entertainment, nothing more and nothing less. There is more to life for a city than a sports team. Montreal is no longer on Major League Baseball’s map but there are other forms of entertainment available and there are restaurants, interesting sites around, Mont Royal has a great view of the cause of so many of Montreal’s problems, the Olympic Stadium, and life goes on with or without baseball. Baseball does not determine whether a city is major league or not, sports is just a part of life.
evanjweiner@yahoo.com
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Life Without Major League Baseball
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