Some good sounds from the Commissioner’s Office at last

New MLB commissioner, Rob Manfred, sees Montreal as a viable city for Major League baseball under the right circumstances.

Thanks to the Jeffrey Loria/ Bud Selig combo, the Expos disappeared from the baseball map and moved south of the border to become the Washington Nationals.

Last year the two game exhibition series between the Toronto Blue Jays and the Mets drew a large crowd; 46,121 fans passed the turnstiles for game one and 50,229 attended game two. This year the Blue Jays will play another series of exhibition games in Montreal’s Stade Olympique, this time vs Cincinnati.

But to get back on the statement of Rob Manfred, I and with me thousands of Montreal fans really hope that MLB will return to Montreal. But for that the future team will need a new stadium (errrr. I am sounding like someone I despice) and an owner with deep pockets. Several feasibility studies have shown that baseball in Montreal could work if the two aforementioned conditons can be met.

Since the Tampa Bay Rays have a hard time in getting a new stadium in the Saint Petersburg / Tampa Bay area, the team is a very likely candidate to move to Montreal. In December 2014 the city council of St. Petersburg voted against Mayor Rick Kriseman’s proposed deal that would allow the Tampa Bay Rays to explore new stadium sites in the Tampa Bay area. This doesn’t mean that the Rays are stuck at the Tropicana Dome until 2027. The Rays have arranged a deal that would make them pay a certain amount per year if they leave the Tropicana Dome before 2027.

Anyhow, even though the words of Manfred sound promising, the eventual move of an MLB team to Montreal will take a couple of years at least. Until that day, we can only hope that a very rich business man or a group of business men will buy a team and move to Montreal. And most of all, this/these owner(s) must realize that they will lose money in the first years. If future owners will realize this, a Montreal based team may work.