A permanent home needs to be found for the ailing Montreal Expos, and Major League Baseball has vowed to find them one for the 2005 season. But Connecticut should not be that home.
Real-estate developer John Alevizos wants to buy the Expos and move the troubled franchise to a new, 34,000-seat stadium in the state, renaming the team the Colonials, according to The Boston Globe. Major League Baseball currently owns the Expos, and Alevizos has reportedly offered more than the $125 million that brought the franchise under the league’s guidance.
It is not practical to bring a franchise that currently lacks a fan base to a region that is home to two groups of the most passionate fans in baseball. Connecticut, halfway between New York and Boston, is known as a battleground between fans of the Red Sox and the Yankees, two of the oldest, most storied franchises in the game. While fans are no doubt passionate and would more than likely fill seats, at least at first, it would be impossible to tamper with the loyalty fans have to each of the old rivals.
There have been other cities (Washington D.C., Portland, Ore., San Juan, Puerto Rico) mentioned as possible destinations for the Expos – cities that are not only bigger, but that would provide a larger potential base of support for the future. Most fans in each of those places are not members of anything like Red Sox Nation or worshippers of anything like the Yankee mystique. The best option is Washington D.C., a large metropolitan area which has lacked professional baseball since the Washington Senators became the Minnesota Twins after the 1960 season.
Connecticut – a state that has lacked one of the big four professional sports since the National Hockey League’s Hartford Whalers dashed for North Carolina in 1997 – has a large, dense population and the ability to support a franchise, but baseball is not the right sport. The Constitution State also has a high crime rate and could use the financial support sports would bring, and while a baseball team would bring that support temporarily, the citizens of Connecticut are not primed to embrace a new baseball team.
The Expos, who consistently draw crowds in Montreal that are not enough to support a competitive franchise with today’s ludicrous players’ salaries, played 20 “home” games in San Juan last year as a source of revenue and experimentation. Clearly a home needs to be found for the lost franchise, and the league needs to find a reliable owner and a permanent solution. But Connecticut will not be that permanent solution. It will only leave the franchise lost – this time not in isolation, but helpless amidst the most frenzied rivalry in sports.
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