Baseball returns to Montreal this weekend with a bang – USA TODAY

MONTREAL — It’s more than a decade since baseball turned its back on Montreal … or was it the other way around?

It no longer matters, judging by the city’s love-fest for the game, a time-warp weekend that was a wistful combination of nostalgia and hope.

“We’re in phase two of our journey,” says Warren Cromartie, the former Expos player who founded the Montreal Baseball Project with an ambitious and formidable goal of bringing back the major league game played there for 36 seasons.

“It was surreal for me,” says Jason Marquis, the Cincinnati Reds pitcher who started one of two exhibition games against the Toronto Blue Jays this weekend, his first appearance in Olympic Stadium since 2004, the Montreal Expos’ final year there.

“It brings back good memories playing here,” Marquis says. “These fans are great. I remember they were great back in the day. It would be nice to see a team get back up here, get a new stadium. It’s always a fun city to come to.”

The total of four games this year and last year drew an average of 48,224 fans, including 50,231 on Saturday, to the stadium, which but for a new video board looked remarkably as it did when the Expos became the Washington Nationals after the ’04 season – except for the people in the seats. Each of this weekend’s crowds was larger than any single-game attendance for the final 404 home games of the Expos’ existence.

USA TODAY

Nightengale: Josh Hamilton wins appeal, loses in reality

When Marquis last pitched in Montreal, the announced attendance was 5,611 in a season that bottomed out with a crowd of 3,609. Two years earlier, amid annual expectations any season could be the team’s last, the Expos four times drew under 4,000 with a low of 2,134.

That’s the stigma and city has been trying to erase with this second consecutive year of bringing in the Blue Jays, who were Canada’s second big league team after the Expos but now can add to the attraction with Russell Martin, who grew up in Montreal, as their catcher.

Martin took the same subway ride this weekend that he used to make with his dad, who this time played the pregame national anthems Friday on his saxophone.

“I still remember when I was 12 years old, being a fan,” Martin says. “Here I am wearing a big league uniform, going to play in front of family and friends. I think when I go to sleep tonight I’m going to have a lot of good things to think about.”

They’re trying to market good things in Montreal.

USA TODAY FANTASY SPORTS

Meet your best friend for your fantasy baseball draft

A sign with the Expos logo on the left field wall says, “On me souvient (I remember) edition 1994.”

That’s the 1994 team that had the best record in baseball before a work stoppage ended the season in August, one of the events blamed for the game’s eventual downward spiral in Montreal.

They honored former Expos Vladimir Guerrero, Orlando Cabrera and Tony Perez during the weekend. Fans chanted “Let’s go Expos.”

Everything but the bright orange mascot Youppi, now the property of hockey’s Montreal Canadiens.

“It feels like a regular season game,” says Blue Jays manager John Gibbons. “The fans love it. I know we enjoy coming here and doing this. Everybody’s making a little money, too.”

Making enough to at least get Major League Baseball’s attention, though it’s not easy to come up with a scenario that could put a team in Montreal anytime soon.

“The games like those are important as an initial test of the level of interest that the market has in the game,” says commissioner Rob Manfred. “When you have the kind of success you’ve had in Montreal, you kind of pass the first initial test of whether it’s a market that could support baseball.”

USA TODAY

Twins’ Ervin Santana suspended 80 games for steroids

Hence Cromartie’s advance to Phase Two, whether that be a place to play or a team to play there. Both are much more imposing than selling tickets twice a year.

MLB has given no indication of any expansion plans in the foreseeable future, leaving relocation as the option. The Tampa Bay Rays have made clear their dissatisfaction with their stadium situation but have a lease that runs through 2027. The Oakland Athletics are in an ongoing dispute that involves the San Francisco Giants and MLB in their attempt to get a new ballpark, but Manfred says he expects a resolution there.

If nothing else, Montreal gives MLB the stalking horse – a place where teams angling for a new ballpark can threaten to move – it hasn’t had since the Expos filled the void in Washington.

A stadium is the potential deal-maker in Montreal, too.

“The key thing in Montreal would be to have a plan for an adequate facility that could support baseball over the long haul,” Manfred says. “I don’t expect people to go into the ground and build a facility without some sort of commitment that they are going to get a team, but I do think that you need a plan and a commitment to how that plan is going to be executed.”

Which brings us back to the chain of events that doomed the Expos.

The 1994 experience soured the city and its fans but, in reality, there was plenty more, from changing ownership with declining allegiance to the city to a government reluctant to part with money it doesn’t have in the first place to a business community no more inclined to get behind the necessary downtown stadium.

Plug all of that into the time warp, too.

PHOTOS: Highlights from spring training

Post to Facebook

Posted!

A link has been posted to your Facebook feed.

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

Last SlideNext Slide

Montreal Mayor Denis Coderre says, “I’m a bit of an ambassador for baseball in Montreal. People miss baseball. It is clearly in our DNA. We want to redo the story.”

But he also says it’s clearly up to the private sector to work with ownership of a potential team to make a new stadium happen. His city and its province are in debt.

So far, there’s been no visible movement in the business community.

As for Olympic Stadium, the cavernous facility that became a civic economic nightmare even before it opened for the 1976 Olympics, the Quebec government estimates it needs $220 million worth of repairs, including the roof.

And it’s nowhere near downtown, where a 2013 feasibility study commissioned by Montreal’s Chamber of Commerce recommended a 36,000-seat open-air facility using Minneapolis’ Target Field as a comparison.

For now, Montreal fans can scream and dream for two days and provide a hint of what those 1994 playoffs would have felt like and Martin can offer that, “It’s pretty special just to be in Montreal this time of the year.”

As for the future.

“I don’t know if I’m qualified to make an assessment,” Martin says. “My passion tells me I’d love it. I think there are a lot of fans who share the same passion I have for the game. If you have a good team anywhere, people will come out. People show up to watch people win.”