An Expos (now Nationals) fan sends this article about a possible return of Major League Baseball to Montreal:
A small groundswell of support for baseball has been building in Montreal since last July, with the Hall of Fame induction of former Expo Andre Dawson, which attracted a busload of Montreal fans to Cooperstown, N.Y. Local hip-hop artist and fervent Expos fan Annakin Slayd’s 2010 Expos YouTube tribute, Remember, is approaching 100,000 views, and members of the 1994 Expos attracted a sellout crowd of more than 650 to the annual Montreal Sports Celebrity Breakfast in March.
According to the article, the Oakland Athletics would be the most likely team to move. Eastward moves are rare, but the Braves moved east to Atlanta after going west to Milwaukee, the Pilots moved east to Milwaukee after Bud Selig stole them from Seattle, and the St. Louis Browns moved east to Baltimore when every one else was moving west in the 1950s.
Unless MLB can get assurances that the Expos won’t be playing at Stade Olympique, I’d file that in the wishful thinking bin.
I think the Atlanta move, while technically to the east, was much more in the spirit of the western moves. At the time, no other MLB team was south of Cincinnati and east of the Mississippi. America was still in the early stages of its huge move south and west.
Fool me once. . .
What a poorly marketed team it was. Expos should have been put in the American League with other Original Six hockey rivals. They had the worst fire sale since the 1919 Red Sox. It was MLB’s fault the fans stopped coming. Demographics dictate the A’s should move there.