TORONTO – Those who witnessed the demise of the Montreal Expos might have trouble imagining the franchise as anything but a cash-strapped afterthought. Longtime fans, on the other hand, will recall a different era, one where the Expos envisioned themselves as a franchise capable of spending big.
Charles Bronfman, the majority owner of the Expos from 1968 to 1990, remembers the days when Montreal would sometimes go up against the likes of the New York Yankees for top free agents, and he details those pursuits in the recently-published memoir Distilled: A Memoir Of Family, Seagram, Baseball, And Philanthropy.
When Reggie Jackson hit free agency following the 1976 season, Bronfman made his best pitch, including a dinner party in Montreal, only to see the slugger show up late then spurn the Expos for the Yankees.
Four off-seasons later, the Expos were a team on the rise, and Bronfman was again intrigued by free agency. With a core including Andre Dawson, Gary Carter and Ellis Valentine, they had just completed a second consecutive season of 90-plus wins and two-plus million fans. Don Sutton, the reigning NL ERA leader, was in their sights. Intent on adding the future Hall of Famer to a rotation featuring Steve Rogers, Bronfman flew Sutton up to Montreal. As it turned out, though, the answer the Expos were hoping for wasn’t the one they got.
“No,” Sutton said. “It’s a foreign country, they speak French and the taxes are much higher.”
It was during those years that Bronfman realized the Expos were going to have trouble attracting or even retaining top free agents.
“That would become more and more significant as time went on and the business case worsened for the Expos,” Bronfman wrote.
From the beginning the Expos faced a variety of obstacles unique to the Montreal market, few greater than their home park. Even as Bronfman secured the rights to an expansion franchise, the search for a stadium continued.
“We had no place to play,” he recalled. Eventually National League president Warren Giles approved Jarry Park, an outdoor stadium so modest in scale that left-handed sluggers such as Willie Stargell would often deposit home runs into ‘La piscine de Willie,’ a pool beyond the right field fence. “Everyone out of the pool,” fans would warn when Stargell stepped in.
In other words, it was a blast—just not an ideal baseball environment.
“Fun. Until it got serious,” Bronfman told Sportsnet in a recent interview. “Once it got serious it was the wrong place to play, but of course the big O was the wrong place to play, too.”
Though Olympic Stadium had a roof, “it worked, it didn’t work, it half-worked.” Ultimately, it pushed a pastoral game indoors, preventing Montrealers from enjoying the summer weekends and evenings they spend much of the year anticipating.
“Those of us who hide indoors from November, maybe the middle of October, until April, enjoy the summer very much,” Bronfman said.
“Then of course when we didn’t win, people fell out of love and we couldn’t get free agents even though we had these terrific young ballplayers.”
In recent years baseball in Montreal has regained momentum, with a push from mayor Denis Coderre, exhibition games featuring the Toronto Blue Jays and continued interest from MLB commissioner Rob Manfred. There’s reason for optimism, yet there’s no concrete timeline for a stadium or a return to Montreal. Perhaps that’s why Bronfman takes a pragmatic view when asked about the possibility.
“I really don’t want to speculate one way or the other, but I think people have to look at it realistically. You do have a stadium to build. If it’s an expansion team, the price would be very high,” Bronfman noted. “So I don’t know. I don’t know the answer.”
