Going out of business? Expos face permanent elimination

MONTREAL -- This is where Jackie Robinson began his climb to the big leagues and history, where Pete Rose stroked his 4,000th hit, where the major leagues first put down roots outside the United States.

Now the rich baseball history of Montreal may become only that -- history.

Major league owners meet today near Chicago to discuss the possibility of folding the Expos, a team known more for the stars it has sent away than the championships it has brought to town.

Commissioner Bud Selig cites the circumstances -- annual losses, no local television contract, and average attendance last season of 7,648 per game -- as reasons for considering eliminating the franchise that produced stars such as Andre Dawson, Tim Raines and Pedro Martinez.

"As the problems have exacerbated, it has become clearer to me that everything should be on the table," Selig said last week.

Majority owner Jeff Loria, a New York art dealer who bought the Expos in 1999, says he plans on another season in Montreal. But Loria also makes clear that huge losses of recent years cannot continue.

He blames the lack of a local TV contract in media-saturated Montreal, where hockey is king, for putting the Expos at a disadvantage compared to other clubs.

"Most teams have what we don't have, which is local television revenue," Loria said in a Montreal Gazette interview published Oct. 12. "Ours is nil, practically nil. It doesn't work. How do you run a team?"

The $34 million payroll is not much more than some players on other teams make in a season, showing the Expos' inability to sign major stars and compete on the field. Forbes magazine estimated in March that the Expos franchise was worth $92 million, last in the majors, compared to $635 million for the New York Yankees.

Loria says a $20 million loss is expected from this season. Failure to gain support for a new ballpark to replace the vast Olympic Stadium built for the 1976 Games has hurt, along with the lack of ticket and TV revenue.

"It's hard to have an appetite to spend more money when two successive years you do that, and there isn't a great deal of enthusiasm for the sport," he said. "I'm not interested in losing a lot of money again next year. I'm just not going to do it."

Fans say they started losing interest after the 1994 season, when the strike shut down baseball as the Expos were having their best season.

Star players such as Martinez, Larry Walker, David Segui and Moises Alou were traded or allowed to leave in cost-cutting measures in the years following the strike, and winning ways went with them.

"That really did it for me," said Diane Emery, 46, who used to attend 20 games or more a season. "Montreal has really become sort of a farm-team with time. They develop new talents, they become good players producing exciting baseball and suddenly we don't have the money to keep them and they have to be dealt away."

A similar lament is heard from NHL franchises in Canada that pay their players in U.S. dollars while taking in Canadian dollars worth about two-thirds as much. Escalating salaries in both sports compound the problem, but it is felt more by the Expos.

"Montreal will pay the price for the lessons major league baseball is going to learn," said Tom Valcke, president of the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame, who used to work in the commissioner's office. "For 100 years baseball players used to make seven times what the average Joe makes. Now it's 40 times."

Valcke said losing the Expos would be "significant."

"We would be deeply saddened," he said. "The city set so many standards and firsts, from the first games in Canada to Pete Rose's 4,000th hit. The country has its baseball roots in Montreal."

So why the endless empty seats in Olympic Stadium? Valcke blames several factors, including World Series games played at night, too late for young kids to watch the greatest moments.

"Not a lot of them saw the time Joe Carter hit the home run (that won the 1993 World Series for Toronto) because it was too late in the evening," he said. "This would have gripped their heart, they would have become fans forever."

The problem is not a lack of baseball fans, Valcke insists, citing the warm farewell given Robinson after his last game with the Royals of the International League before joining the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947 to break the major league racial barrier.

"Not only did he get two standing ovations, he was mobbed in the streets when he left the place," Valcke said. "Who at the time could have imagined a huge crowd of white people turning out to thank a black baseball player like that?"

That season, Montreal drew 412,744 spectators for minor-league ball. Last season, the National League Expos drew 619,451.

Carl McCoomb, the Hall of Fame curator, said the decline of the Expos has harmed baseball throughout Quebec. Last spring, the 49-year-old Lennoxville-Ascot Little League shut down.

"The lack of interest filters down to the youth," McCoomb said. "They don't see their friends and parents play baseball or wear a baseball cap and that has an impact."

Francis Briere, assistant editor of an online baseball magazine, said fans were too fickle, demanding victories without showing support in the tough times.

"If Montreal supported the team and its ownership, (major league baseball) would have no choice but to respect public opinion and back the team," he said. "It's not only a matter of money, it's a matter of the heart."

For Mario Pelletier, a 26-year-old fan, it all comes down to performance.

"They've got to win," he said. "Quebecers are a passionate people. They'll all hop aboard the bandwagon if it comes through town."