>I find it interesting that most of the posts in this newsgroup relate
>to bad-mouthing prospective homes for the team instead of emphasizing
>the reasons why the team should stay in Montreal (if there are any).
>Isn't this a somewhat defeatist attitude?
Not at all. It is because besides being Expos fans we care about baseball as a
whole. Any idiot can root for the Yankees. It takes a real fan of the game of
baseball to root for the Expos. Many of the reasons we are so harsh towards
some of the prospective homes for the Expos (particularly Washington which has
a long, well established history of not supporting baseball) is that moving the
Expos just for the sake of moving them is not healthy for the league as a whole
and that moving them into a city which is demonstrably a bad baseball town is
potentially much, much worse for the league than leaving them in place.
We've seen it happen recently when, for the 1993 expansion, the National League
threw out their own qualifications for expansion and gave the franchises to the
two cities they wanted to in the first place, even though other cities better
met their qualifications. Now one of cities can't draw diddly, even when
they've won two World Series, while the city which has led the minors in
attendance for the last two decades and had a major-league caliber
baseball-only downtown facility on the ground at the time got the shaft because
they weren't allowed to count population less than two miles from the ballpark
while the city which can't draw diddly got consideration for an entire region
consisting of a couple of dozen independent nations hundreds of miles away. We
know from experience that baseball can make horrific decisions in this regard
because we've seen them do it. The decision to plant a franchise in Miami where
no one cared about them ranks as one of the great bonehead moves of the last
half-century in sports. We do not want to see that happen again, particularly
regarding the team we support, and we greatly fear that if the Expos are placed
in Washington, a city which has a considerably worse attendance record than the
Expos over twice the period of time, that that is exactly what will happen.
There are many reasons why the team should stay in Montreal, however all of
them are trumped by a commissioner who has worked tirelessly for a decade to
deliberately destroy baseball in this city for reasons no sane and sensible
person can begin to imagine. This is why he's in court facing racketeering
charges. When the commissioner, who's job it is to protect baseball, works
overtime to destroy baseball in your city, can you blame any fan for staying
away?
The best thing that could happen for baseball, not just in Montreal but
everywhere, is that Selig and Loria are found guilty of racketeering and that
the civil charges against them are followed up by criminal charges and they
spend a nice long period of time in orange jumpsuits, after being fined their
100 million $US times 3.
Rich Goranson
Amherst, NY, USA
>> Stay informed about: Expos to be renamed Senators 
FAQ
Profile
Private Messages
Log in
