Will Montreal Get a Baseball Team Again
Jack Todd: Major League Baseball gives Montreal some other kick in the teeth
With the mooted team-share with Tampa Bay rejected, it's hard to come across how baseball returns to Montreal.
The news broke on a frigid January afternoon, with spring training withal fiddling more than than a delusion on the horizon.
Major League Baseball, in its infinite wisdom, had pulled the plug on the Tampa Bay Rays-Montreal Expos split-team concept. There will be no ExRays, no shared franchise, no summertime baseball in Montreal while Tampa gets the spring and fall.
It was a stunning about-face for baseball, given that it was commissioner Rob Manfred, later all, who first gave the dissever-team concept his approving in June of 2019, and for baseball fans in Montreal, who have been kicked in the teeth by MLB then many times they've lost count.
For Stephen Bronfman, who has poured years of passion, effort and money into the attempt to revive the Expos, it was a sucker punch to the solar plexus. Bronfman was clearly gobsmacked, as was Tampa possessor Stuart Sternberg.
In a video conference Thursday afternoon, Bronfman chosen information technology a "encarmine eulogy" and said "we all got slapped in the face. … I'thousand just tired and a niggling upset. We had something and then good. I call up a lot of people in sports would have been listening to usa."
The decision, handed to Sternberg past baseball's 8-person executive committee, came out of left field. Ane moment, nosotros were waiting for more than details from Bronfman on his ballpark program, the next moment the dissever-team concept was dead and the dream of bringing the Expos dorsum to town may well have died with it.
No one knows quite what was behind the decision but baseball, once more, is mired in acrimonious negotiations with the actor's union and it's possible the split-team proposal was collateral harm — a bone the owners could throw to the players. It's also been suggested that the Blueish Jays, having played a key role in killing the Expos and bilked Montreal fans with their almanac full-price exhibitions at the Big O, were now prepared to demand compensation if the Expos return.
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In the aftermath, information technology'due south now clear that Sternberg and Bronfman were securely invested in the sis city concept, no thing what the skeptics thought. It'due south too articulate why they idea it would piece of work.
The economics of 21st century baseball are daunting. Without a hard bacon cap, the upkeep discrepancy between the big spenders and the pocket-size market teams is awe-inspiring. In 2021, the Dodgers had a payroll pegged at $286 million, the Yankees $205 million, the Mets $201 million, the Astros $194 million, the Phillies and Red Sox $189 one thousand thousand.
At the bottom of the spectrum were the Rays at $70 million, the Marlins at $58 million, the Pirates at $54 million, Cleveland at $l 1000000 and the Orioles at a mere $42 million — meaning the v clubs with the lowest payrolls were shelling out less combined than the Dodgers alone.
Amazingly, the Rays and the Oakland Athletics (2021 payroll: $91 1000000) have been able to keep stride on the field, while the Mets and Angels take struggled to compete despite whopping payrolls.
In that context, Sternberg and Bronfman were visionaries, pointing the way to sister-metropolis plans which could meet small-market cities squad up to field competitive teams that could expect healthy crowds for 40 or 41 abode games a yr instead of 81. Withal feasible the plan, it won't exist here and it won't be at present.
Forget expansion. In April of last yr, Manfred estimated the cost of an expansion franchise at a staggering $ii.2 billion – the current average value of a franchise. In 1998, Tampa Bay and Arizona paid expansion fees of $130 meg each.
Experts take questioned the $2.2 billion figure, pointing out that only smaller markets are at present available and pegging the likely expansion fee closer to $1.5 billion. Nevertheless, it's a deal-billow.
If there is any remaining hope, it'due south that Sternberg will be unable to get a new stadium congenital in Tampa Bay and will be given permission to relocate, perhaps to Montreal.
It's hard to run into anything happening without Bronfman equally the driving force — and he may not have the stomach to begin anew. "This chapter'south closed," he said. "At this point, I kind of put my hands in the air."
A new affiliate begins
Meanwhile, the Canadiens accept turned the page on the carnival ride that was the Marc Bergevin era. No more wild-haired GM in a red adapt smooching his star goalie after a game.
Kent Hughes has the experience, the high intelligence and tranquillity passion you demand to succeed in an immensely difficult job, just Bergevin has left him with a pungent mess: weighty contracts, disaffected veterans with niggling or no involvement in playing for coach Dominique Ducharme and young players who haven't developed as expected.
He will have to terminate the phantom captaincy of Shea Weber and to bargain with Carey Toll — at once the team's biggest star and its biggest headache. Nosotros wish him luck.
Heroes:Félix Auger-Aliassime, Denis Shapovalov, Stephanie Labbé, Sam Montembeault,Cayden Primeau,Michael Pezzetta, Jeff Gorton, Kent Hughes &&&& last merely not to the lowest degree, Stephen Bronfman — for trying.
Zeros: Aaron Rodgers, Novak Djokovic, Joe Rogan, Lise Ravary, Rob Manfred, Major League Baseball game, François Legault, Claude Brochu, David Samson &&&& last merely not least, Jeffrey Loria. Now and forever.
jacktodd46@yahoo.com
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Source: https://montrealgazette.com/sports/baseball/jack-todd-major-league-baseball-gives-montreal-another-kick-in-the-teeth
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