Keri on the past, future of Montreal baseball

The 1994 labour stoppage in Major League Baseball didn’t kill the Montreal Expos. They were already dead.

So says Jonah Keri, the author of Up, Up, and Away: The Kid, the Hawk, Rock, Vladi, Pedro, le Grand Orange, Youppi!, the Crazy Business of Baseball, and the Ill-fated but Unforgettable Montreal Expos.

“The death of the Montreal Expos was 1989 when Charles Bronfman made the decision to sell the Expos,” Keri, now a staff writer for Grantland, told TSN.ca ahead of baseball’s return to Montreal this weekend when the Toronto Blue Jays host the Cincinnati Reds in a pair of exhibition games.

“They never had reasonable ownership after that and, even if they win a World Series in 1994, I’m not sure they survive because local owners wanted nothing to do with anything. They were not willing to put money into the team, they were not willing to invest in the team. They paid some lip service to building a stadium, but there was no evidence that they were competent or anything other than royally cheap.”

Bronfman would go on to sell the franchise in 1991 to a consortium led by Claude Brochu. After two seasons of good baseball (seasons that ended with the Jays winning back-to-back World Series), 1994 appeared to be the Expos’ year. Led by Larry Walker, Moises Alou and Cliff Floyd, along with a pitching staff anchored by young ace Pedro Martinez, the Expos were seven games up in the NL East with baseball’s best record before the season was rendered all for naught by the August strike that wiped out the remainder of the year. The Expos would never come closer to competing for a World Series.

Brochu’s group stuck around long enough to sell off most of its assets, trading the likes of Walker, Martinez and Marquis Grissom, before selling the team to current Miami Marlins owner, Jeffrey Loria, whose tenure as owner isn’t exactly remembered fondly by Expos fans. It was Loria who sold the franchise to Major League Baseball in 2002, what effectively marked the team’s death throes in Montreal. A year after splitting part of their home schedule in San Juan, Puerto Rico, the Expos played their final game in Montreal on October 3, 2004, with the league moving the franchise to Washington, DC.

While prevailing public sentiment is that Loria didn’t do enough to keep the team in Montreal or that he didn’t even want to, Keri believes that the much maligned Loria, though not the best of owners, is unfairly demonized as the man who took baseball away from Montreal.

Keri recalled the type of adversity that was common for Loria in his early days of owning the team after purchasing it in December of 1999.

“Here’s a perfect example of what happened with him,” said Keri. “He goes to the local radio station right after he buys the team and says, ‘Let’s negotiate a deal.’ They say, ‘No problem. You pay us $1,000 a game and we’ll air your game.’ Okay, well that’s not a thing that exists in real life and that’s not how sports works, so he says he can’t do that and there was no radio that year (2000 season) in English. And that was typical of the community. The local business community and local media [support] was nonexistent and/or contemptuous of the Expos and there just wasn’t any drive to do anything. So if you think Loria came with malice in his heart, I guess that’s possible, but it was just a totally untenable situation. I don’t think anybody could have resurrected it at that point.”

It’s been over a decade since the Expos ceased to exist and it’s easy to look back on the team through rose-coloured glasses and gloss over the failings of the team, both on the field and off. In writing his book, Keri says he tried to be as impartial as possible in his assessment of the team he watched growing up in Montreal.

I think I was pretty even-handed about the whole thing – even to the point of almost nerditry [sic],” said Keri. “My goal was specifically to try to find out why it failed, so I could talk about on-field stuff, things like the labour stoppage in ’94, the whole thing about ownership – I mean, I went after Claude Brochu and the consortium, so that wasn’t a problem, but you try to tell both stories. I do think that it’s necessary to be an advocate for the positive stuff just because the common narrative with the Expos is ‘What a loser franchise, how’d they even last that long?’”

Yes, by the end of the Expos, the atmosphere in the Big O was moribund and the team would leave Montreal with 1981’s trip to the NLCS as its furthest (and sole) journey into the postseason, but Keri believes that painting the team strictly in terms of a team that never won anything in front of an empty stadium wouldn’t do justice to what did work in Montreal – because there was a lot that did.

“You do have to rebut [the negativity] a little bit, but I didn’t stretch the truth in any way, Keri said. “It’s a fact that they have two Hall of Famers (in Andre Dawson and Gary Carter). It’s a fact that [Tim] Raines played there and Pedro [Martinez] and all these guys, that they were very good in the early ‘80s, they were very good in the mid-90s and they had a lot of crummy years around those years. That’s just the narrative that came out of the book. I don’t think it was excessively Pollyanna-ish, I guess.”

In recounting the history of the Expos, delving into the political climate of Quebec at the time and the cultural significance of the club’s appearance was inevitable. Here was “America’s pastime” venturing north across the 49^th, smack dab into the middle of the Two Solitudes.

Keri recalls that the Anglophone/Francophone divide wasn’t evident for those packing in Olympic Stadium.

On a fan level, it was certainly bilingually consumed,” said Keri. “Francophones absolutely went to the games, too – it was just a question of who controlled the wealth and the power and the political strife just made that a more obvious split…I never got the sense going to games as a fan and talking to fans, or even talking to management, that the crowd was one way or the other. That, to me, always seemed split.”

Political strife came in spades during that period. Entering the league in 1969, the Expos came of age in a tumultuous period of the province’s history. In the team’s first decade, Quebec would experience the October Crisis, Robert Bourassa’s Liberals enact the province’s first Official Language Act and the creation and rise to government of Rene Levesque’s Parti-Quebecois.

The club’s original owner, Seagrams heir Charles Bronfman, found himself embroiled in controversy more often than not in that era.

“Charles Bronfman ruffled a lot of feathers,” said Keri. “When the [1980 Quebec sovereignty] referendum was coming in the ‘70s, he basically said, ‘Vote [for separation] and I’ll move the team’ or [before that] ‘If the Parti-Quebecois gets elected, I’m moving the team’ and they did get elected [in 1976]. He got taken to task for it, and rightfully so. He adjusted and dealt with it for 13 more years and ultimately decided to sell.”

Still, the political and cultural aspects of the epoch didn’t pervade Keri’s chronicle of the Expos to the extent he thought it might.

“There was tension, but I came into the book expecting it to be a major theme – let’s talk all about this stuff – and there is stuff about the FLQ and the PQ and the referenda, but to a man, I didn’t find it to be as big a thing as I expected,” Keri recalled of his experience writing the book.

And any lingering discord between the French and English worlds certainly didn’t lead to the club’s demise.

“There was just a general lack of money and support,” Keri said. “If a billionaire Francophone – if (Quebecor heir and current PQ MNA) Pierre Karl Peledeau wanted to support the team, that would have been great. If (Charles’s son) Stephen Bronfman had a billion dollars and wanted to support the team, that would have been great. I think it was just a general institutional failure more than anything else.”

In the end, what it means is that the city that Keri grew up in no longer has a baseball team. A young Montrealer can’t spend his summers the way that the 40-year-old Keri did. Keri looks at the absence from both a personal level and what it means for baseball on the whole.

“Montreal’s a very vibrant city and there’s a zillion things to do,” Keri explains. “I don’t think there’s some sort of hole in their hearts because it’s a great place to be in the summer, but yeah, there’s something missing from the environment, I would say. I think it’s almost a bigger absence on the MLB scale. The Expos were very unique culturally. The Jays present more like an American team. For one thing, you only have one language. You go to a game at Olympic Stadium, or wherever they’d build a new stadium, and it’s unique. You have the bilingual announcements, the food is different, the vibe is different, the fans are different. I think that’s almost the bigger gap. On a personal level, the thing that really strikes me when I think about it why I’m sad isn’t because I miss (longtime Expos third baseman) Tim Wallach - Tim Wallach would have retired if he played for the Cleveland Indians, too – it’s that that was my upbringing and I can’t pass that on to my own kids. That’s the big deal and I don’t live in Montreal, but I would fly back once a year and take them to the game and that I can’t do.”

Expos fans are not alone in having watched their team head to a different city to become something different – a team that once was familiar, but just isn’t the same anymore.

Marcel Aubut sold the Quebec Nordiques in 1995 to a grouped based in Denver and, cruelly, the newly christened Colorado Avalanche won the franchise’s first Stanley Cup the following season.

In 1996, Art Modell took his Cleveland Browns to Baltimore where they became the Ravens. Within five seasons, they’d win a Super Bowl. In total, 12 franchises in the Big Four sports leagues have relocated in the past 20 years.

When a team leaves a city, it leaves its fan base behind. You won’t find too many people in Houston hoping to buy a Marcus Mariota Tennessee Titans jersey this year. Few in Atlanta are following the Winnipeg Jets’ life-and-death struggle for a return to the postseason.

Keri speculated on why this phenomenon seems to exist – that once a team leaves a fan’s city, it leaves his heart.

“I think it really has to do with your own formative experiences,” said Keri. “You go to the games with your dad or your mom or your brother or your friends or whatever and, when you don’t have that available, you cut it off.”

Still, it’s the personal connection with the players on the field or the ice or the court that wins over fans. Rarely, it’s any sort of attachment to a team’s ownership. When those players go, so does the attachment, even though the players and teams still exist elsewhere. It’s a fascinating contrast to the relative impermanence of a player’s tenure with the club. Rare in 2015 is the likes of a Tim Duncan or Derek Jeter who spend his entire career with the same team. We almost expect a player to leave, but not a team.

“Ultimately, Tim Raines is my favourite player and I liked Larry Walker and Pedro and whatever, but it’s almost impossible to not appreciate intellectually that everybody is transient when it comes to players,” said Keri. “Franchises are one thing that should not be transient. There’s only been one baseball team that’s moved in 40 years. Even in the NFL, which has had a couple teams move, it isn’t that common. Free agency happens all the time. It’s a normal economic fact of life. [Teams moving] is a traumatic thing because it’s rare and because it takes away your sense of place. Let’s say you’re a Sonics fan and you decide to root for the Thunder, you cannot go to a Thunder game unless you’re in Oklahoma City and that’s pretty far away. I think it’s something of geography and I think we can use the ‘nostalgia’ word because it’s something of your own feelings towards the team and how you developed them. That environment has changed. You can’t represent fandom in the same way once you’re only watching on TV.”

In the case of Expos (and to a lesser extent, Vancouver Grizzlies) fans, a national alternative to fill the void exists with the country’s other team in the Toronto Blue Jays. The concept of a national team, one adopted because strictly because it’s Canadian is an intriguing one for Keri.

“I wonder if that’s a thing of personal taste,” Keri said. “Personally, if any other team than the Leafs made the Cup, a Canadian team, the Flames or whomever, I’d root for them. I have no interest in rooting for the Leafs ever, but the other teams? Sure, no problem and I’m a Habs fan, but that might be the minority. I know for a fact if you’re a Flames fan, you’re certainly not rooting for the Oilers, for instance. The national team thing is interesting. Hockey has so many teams that you don’t really need to [adopt one], but in baseball, you only have one choice and basketball, you only have one choice.”

The Toronto Raptors have shaped much of their current identity as Canada’s lone NBA representative with their “We the North” branding. With their annual ‘Winter Tour,’ the Jays, too, have of late attempted to reemphasize their standing as the only team in Canada, a strategy that Keri believes will resonate, even more so than for the Raptors.

“The Jays have been around longer,” Keri explained. “They have the established coast-to-coast TV. I mean, it might be a question of specifics. If a whole generation of Newfoundlanders has had access to the Blue Jays and then the next generation does, then sure.”

While the fact that the Jays have chosen to play what at least appears to be an annual exhibition set in Montreal means big league baseball is back in Olympic Stadium, it’s still a bit jarring to see a franchise that voted for the Expos’ (and Minnesota Twins’) contraction in 2002 playing in front of crowds in Montreal. Keri doesn’t take umbrage, though.

“No, they’re doing what they’ve gotta do,” Keri explained. “I felt a little weird about going to a Blue Jays game at Olympic Stadium because the Jays voted for contraction when the Expos were on the block and there was a big TV dispute in the ‘80s that ended with the Jays getting everything and the Expos getting nothing. This is what they should be doing, ultimately… Such as it is, it’s fine. I mean, I get it. It doesn’t strike me as offensive, but it’s a personal taste issue. If you live in Trois-Rivieres or downtown Montreal and you don’t want the Jays, then you don’t have to root for the Jays, but they’re going to get some segment of the population and they should. They’re running a business.”

And what of a permanent return of the MLB to Montreal? It’s a question that is posed to Keri more often than not.

The Tampa Bay Rays won’t be Montreal’s salvation.

The relocation of the Rays to Montreal seems to be too perfect. They’re the furthest south of any AL East team, a geographical outlier. Travel to Montreal over St. Petersburg would be more palatable for teams in Toronto, New York, Boston and Baltimore. And games are sparsely attended. Average attendance hasn’t hit 20,000 in five seasons and the Rays have been dead last in attendance in the AL in nine of their 17 seasons.

But don’t look for them to leave the Trop any time soon, says Keri.

“I reject this notion of ‘Oh, the downtrodden Rays,’” said Keri. “The Expos were Chernobyl and the Rays are having some minor issues. It’s not that big a deal. They’re profitable and, until last year, they made the playoffs in four of six years, including going to the World Series in ’08. So I just think that it’s people looking for…there’s a question on the table, so they’re just trying to find an answer somewhere. If a team were to move, what would it be? But that’s just a hypothetical that doesn’t exist. I don’t think relocation is imminent. They’re stuck in that building until 2027, anyway.”

Even struggling, what the Rays have at their disposal that the Expos didn’t was vast TV money.

“The line that I give is that, if the Rays are number 30 in revenue,” said Keri, “then the Expos are number 10,030. It was so dire, it was so terrible [in Montreal at the time] and the way that baseball works right now, TV revenue drives it – local and national. National is obviously very healthy and local, the Rays aren’t great, but they have great ratings. When the deal comes up, they’ll probably be able to get a big bump in the money that they’ll get. The Expos didn’t have access to that.”

On Monday, MLB commissioner Rob Manfred spoke of Montreal as still being a viable market for the league, but stressed the importance of a new facility.

"The key thing in Montreal would be to have a plan for an adequate facility that could support baseball over the long haul," Manfred told the Canadian Press.

Seemingly an easy answer, just as Roger Goodell routinely discusses international expansion with nothing imminent, Keri doesn’t take the commissioner’s tact as simply lip service. Keri believes that Manfred could have simply dismissed the idea of a return to Montreal altogether when approached about it.

“I think he could [say no],” said Keri. “[Bud] Selig more or less did. No one asked him point blank if they were coming back and he said no chance in hell, but that was kinda the inference and Selig was a stick-to-his-guns kind of guy. He was gonna go to the mat. He was 80 years old. People get stuck in their ways and he’s gotta look good in his legacy, but Manfred has carte blanche and can do whatever he wants, like Adam Silver in the NBA. Adam Silver, one of his first moves was to depose a guy (Donald Sterling) who’d been an owner for 30 years. There were good reasons for that, but still. So I think it creates an opportunity to do something and to be generally supportive [of the idea]. Both the stadium and the ownership need to happen, ultimately, and one can’t happen without the other.”

The question then becomes if Montreal baseball’s white knight will come riding in at all, never mind the near future.

Keri still believes a return to Montreal can happen and the path is pretty clear.

“Ultimately, it has to come down to a billionaire with a plan and that’s the bottom line,” Keri said. “The company that would probably have to make it happen is Bell (Editor's note: Bell Media, a part of Bell Canada Enterprises, owns TSN and RDS). It’s something I’ve talked about a million times and other people have, too, but Rogers taking hockey away from Bell presents an opportunity for programming. There’s a lot of money sitting on the table, you could start an MLB Network equivalent, you could put a team in Montreal – you own the stadium, you own everything and it becomes Rogers, part two, except it’s a Montreal team – maybe not called the Expos. It’s either that or something like – name your avatar – maybe it’s Stephen Bronfman as the face of the franchise, but then there’s a billion dollars coming from somewhere else, which could be Bell…So it’s either a consortium run by one person who’s charismatic or it’s something else, but you still need the money and it has to come from a corporate entity because there’s no Mark Cuban that I know of floating around who’s just going to say, ‘Let’s do it.’”