As kids, the
best memories my good friend Jesse Feret and I had, was going to the ‘Big O’
with our families to watch our Boys of Summer, the Montreal Expos. But when, in
2004, Major League Baseball announced that Nos Amours would be moving to
Washington, D.C., it felt as if a piece of our souls were leaving as well. Now,
after almost 10 years since that dreadful day, I have heard whispers that there
may be a possibility that our team may return! Being the fan I am, I decided to
do some digging. The facts I found out from former Expo Warren Cromartie,
founder of the Montreal Baseball Project, and the fan feeling from Montreal’s
singer/songwriter Annakin Slayd, has left me with high hopes that I might be able to one day take my kids to a
game in Montreal .
The hype to
bring baseball back to Montreal has picked up momentum. Talks about the Oakland
A’s or the Tampa Bay Rays relocating, have lifted the hopes to all those who
crave the return of baseball. It’s no secret how much Montrealers love their
sports. It has been made loud and clear they want their team back.
There
is a rich history of baseball in Montreal. Going all the way back to 1946,
when, after being signed by the Brooklyn Dodgers, Jackie Robinson was assigned
to their minor affiliate, the Montreal Royals. It was here that he first broke
baseball’s color barrier. Then, in 1969, the city got their very first Major
League Baseball team, the Montreal Expos, named after the Expo 67 World Fair
held in Montreal. The Expos became the very first Major League Baseball team
outside the United States. Though the Expos never won a World Series, they came
close in 1994, before a labour dispute caused a players strike, cancelling the
rest of the season. After Jeffrey Loria took over the team in 1999, and failed
to close on a plan to build a new downtown ballpark, and did not reach an
agreement on television and English radio broadcast contracts for the 2000
season, reducing the team's media coverage. Then, in 2004, it was announced
that the team will be moving to Washington, D.C. But now, there has been a
major push to bring back baseball to Montreal. Leading that charge is former
Expo Warren Cromartie.
Warren
Cromartie founded the Montreal Baseball Project, a profit organization, back in
2012. His idea to start this organization came when, coming in from the airport
one day, someone recognized him.
” They asked me if here was
something somewhere downtown to go see for the Expos,” explains Cromartie. “It
caught me by surprise, because there is nothing in Montreal for the Expos,
nothing with the Expos’ name on it. So, I pretty much thought it was a
travesty. My whole thing, a year and a half ago, my whole object was to get Montreal
talking baseball again.”
On February 16, 2012, former Expos
catcher, Gary “Kid” Carter, passed away from brain cancer.
“Montreal felt left out, Montreal felt
embarrassed,” exclaimed Cromartie. “They were almost to the point of being
ashamed because they didn’t do anything for their first player to go into the
Hall of Fame with an Expo hat on.”
Eventually, local politicians got
involved and Faillon Street W. in Montreal, near the former Jarry Park stadium,
was renamed Gary-Carter Street in his honour.
At
the start of the year, The Montreal Baseball Project started a feasibility
study to prove Montreal could support a team again. The results, released
December 12th, were nothing but positive.
“The corporate sector has stepped
up, we are getting local businesses stepping up,” Cromartie explained. “We got
the first round of the survey study done well.”
Cromartie also
explained that if Montreal is to get a team, it would not be through expansion,
but of an existing team’s relocation. When I asked why, out of all the other
cities who would like a team, would Montreal be the lucky pick. Cromartie’s
answer was simple, “Why not?” He stated how we are one of the largest cities in
North America without a professional baseball team.
“We were Canada’s first team! Not
Toronto, Montreal! It was Canada’s team.”
It
came as a shock to Montreal when it was announced that on March 28th
and 29th of 2014, the New York Mets and the Toronto Blue Jays will
be playing exhibition games at the Olympic Stadium. Cromartie believes this is
our chance to show we still love our baseball and a big boost to getting our
team back.
“I can’t tell you how critical it is for the fans
to show up at these to game,” said Cromartie. “Because it is the first thing
the reporters from across the border will be looking at to see the people in
the stands and we have to come loud and prepared to show the world, because the
whole world will be watching.”
As
for fan support, Cromartie believes if 25 to 35 thousand people could turn up
for games, we shouldn’t have a problem.
The
biggest concern the fans have about bringing a team back is money, or more
specifically, where will it come from. It’s a fact that if a team returns, they
will not be at the Olympic Stadium. But Cromartie strongly believes there is no
need for worry.
“The money will come from private sectors,
corporate sectors, fans, government, like they do everything else.” Cromartie
explains.
Not
everyone in Montreal shares the passion of bringing back baseball. Some believe
it won’t ever work or don’t want the team back. Then there are some who stay
cautious, not too sure how they would feel. But, there is a large group who
still show their support and will never let their hopes die.
Montreal
singer/songwriter Annakin Slayd, and Ambassador to the Expos Nation fan group,
is among those who still have the passion for a Montreal baseball team burning
in their souls. His relationship with the Expos started like most. He played
the game at an early age thanks to his father’s enthusiasm for the sport. It
only got better with the fact that his mother worked for Charles Bronfman's
company ‘Seagrams’. She used to get tickets occasionally along the first base
dugout.
“I got to see some of the greatest players in
franchise history very close up at an early age. Carter, Dawson, Raines,
Rogers, Gallarraga,” Slayd explains. “When I entered into my teens, and could
buy tickets and travel to the stadium on my own, it was timed perfectly with
the resurgence of team in the nineties.”
This
was about the same time one of the most memorable events in Slayd’s life he
will never forget. During Gary ‘Kid”
Carter’s last game in 1992, a young Slayd went to the dugout to try to get his
attention with a sign he had sketched and coloured himself.
“He took time to give me a thumbs up during
the intros,” Slayd recounts. “During the National Anthem, he stood right in
front of me. Photographers began to take pictures of Kid with myself and my
sign in the backdrop. The Next morning, one of these photos was on the cover of
the Gazette.”
Years later,
Slayd met up with Carter again at a rally and brought up the sign. Carter remembered
very clearly and told him that he had that gazette cover hanging in a frame in
his office. “When I made the song (‘Kid’) after his passing, I knew the theme
would revolve around those moments,” Slayd explains. “For me it highlighted the
best aspects of being a sports fan. Developing a personal and, inevitably, a
spiritual relationship with an athlete who inspires in the best ways possible. Gary
was the epitome of great role models as far as pro sports stars go.”
In 2010, Slayd released a new rap song and
video dedicated to the Expos.
“I revolved that around the idea of family. My brother,
Father and I went to the last game in 2004 and it was difficult experience for
us,” Slayd explains about his song. “Although by that time the franchise felt
it had been already dead for years, it was still very hard not to want to burst
out in tears with my arms around my brother, Jay, and my Dad, Gary, as we
watched the last out and the players race off the field.”
To Slayd, this seemed to be a logical
theme for a song. He expresses the emotion that not only is it about the shared
history and tragic demise of the team but also about family and how sports can
unite us with the people we love in the most intimate ways.
Slayd
has no doubt in the fact a team can return here. He believes that the fans can
do a lot, and have already done so much. With rallies at the Rogers Centre in
Toronto and the overwhelming reaction of love and nostalgia to the passing of
Carter, as well as resurgence of the Expos logo in fashion, we've made the rest
of the baseball world take notice
“The fans want to
right a wrong and deserve a second chance and a better fate,” explains Slayd. “We
must continue to support Cromartie's Montreal Baseball Project and the group
I'm part of, Expos Nation. Whenever there is an event, we need to come out and
support. When the Blue Jays come to town next spring, we need to fill that
place with fans wearing the red, white and blue of the Expos to let the
Baseball world know that although we're stoked to see major league ball back in
our city, we will not be satisfied and until we see a Montreal team take the
field.”
My buddy,
Jesse Feret, is a hardcore baseball fan. He has no trouble expressing his
strong feelings. Feret explains that he strongly believes that from ’94 and on,
the Expos became the best team in the league.
“The only problem after the strike in ’94, was that the Expos
could not afford to keep the contracts of a lot of the players and it kind of
went downhill from there. Then, 10 years later, the team's gone!” Feret
explains the hurt he started to feel, when the talk that his team, the team he
grew up loving, might be leaving Montreal. “The Expos were part of Montreal’s
culture,” Feret expresses.
Feret remembers that day in 2004, as
he watched the Expos run off the field for the last time.
“I know for a fact, I
cried,” said Feret. “I could not believe my team was gone.”
The ‘Boys of Summer’ in Montreal, were
gone. Much like many baseball fans, Feret set out to find a new team. For him,
that team was the Boston Red Sox.
“The Red Sox basically took over my
life,” Feret explains. “I went to Boston, and felt the same passion there, that
once was for the Expos; it was like a re-birth.”
Feret became a die-hard Red Sox fan,
and even has a brick in the Fan Wall at Fenway Park with his name on it.
When asked
what he would do if the Expos returned, Feret admitted it would be hard. “You
know, even if the team came back, I’d still be watching every Red Sox game.”
But then, he said something that
truly shows the fan he is.
“But if they returned, I’d have season tickets to see the
Expos.”
Feret confirms he already has the
most expensive tickets to go see the Mets VS Jays game here in Montreal, and
will wear his Expos colors with pride.
“I’m going there not as a Jays fan, or a Mets fan. I’m going
there as an Expos fan, and I’m going to make a statement. I will be the one
chanting ‘Let’s Go Expos!’ ”
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