Canadian business executive Mitch Garber was quick to clarify a story from Wednesday reporting that a group of Montreal investors had met the conditions laid out by Major League Baseball to bring a team back to the city.

A source told The Canadian Press that investors had a solid financial setup, support from two levels of government, various locations and designs for a stadium and were simply waiting on a call from MLB commissioner Robert Manfred to get things moving.

Garber: Baseball return isn't well advanced

Canadian business executive Mitch Garber talks about about the possibility of baseball coming back to Montreal.

“[The article by The Canadian Press] is not true, but it’s not false,” Garber explained on Montreal's TSN Radio 690. “Yes, there’s a group of wealthy Montrealers who have met and expressed a real interest in owning a Major League Baseball franchise in Montreal. And yes, the mayor of Montreal and [fellow businessman] Stephen Bronfman have publicly come out and said that they have talked to Major League Baseball about wanting to qualify to have a Major League Baseball team in Montreal.

“....But there is no agreement among government branches about how to finance a baseball team. There’s no five sites I’ve heard of for a Major League Baseball park. There’s no group of owners that wouldn’t welcome other owners into the group.”

Garber, Bronfman and Montreal Mayor Denis Coderre first publicly expressed their commitment to bringing a Major League team back to the city last year. Bronfman and Mayor Coderre also co-signed a letter in 2015 that was sent to all 30 teams and Manfred. The letter spoke of Montreal’s strong interest to rejoin the league since the Expos left for Washington to become the Nationals after the 2004 season.

“Denis Coderre has not been shy at all about how much he wants Major League Baseball and how much work he’s doing to try to make that happen and Stephen Bronfman is a great face and leader of a potential return of baseball to Montreal,” Garber explained. “But then there’s the other side of the coin: Major League Baseball is run in a very discrete way, I think very well and very professionally, and what Major League Baseball doesn’t like is loose lips and loud mouths and lots of chatter and this article is not helpful, but it’s also not accurate.

 “If you’re going to suggest in an article that the ownership group is closed and committed it makes no sense because nobody knows how much it costs to bring a team to Montreal If it’s an expansion team, how much does it cost? If it’s a team that’s being relocated, how does that cost? There’s no such thing as a firm, committed group when they don’t even know what they’re buying or if there’s something available to buy.”

Manfred said last year that he would like to add two more teams to make scheduling easier, but added that such a scenario would have to wait until after another collective bargaining agreement was signed with the players’ union and Oakland and Tampa Bay’s stadium issues were settled.

A new agreement was signed in December, but the Athletics and Rays’ future ballparks are still not clear.

With Bronfman and Coderre, Montreal has a positive foundation in place to work towards a return to Major League Baseball, but Garber wanted to set the record straight that there is nothing concrete.

“For sure it took a proactive approach for Montreal because Major League Baseball’s not knocking on anyone’s door [to take a Major League Franchise], so from that point of view, I think we’ve made a lot of headway,” he explained. “I don’t want to be negative about [Wednesday’s] article; I just want to be realistic about it.”