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OT: MLB Thread

Sal_Butera said:
That's not entirely accurate. There's a reason Bronfman threw up his hands & decided to dump the franchise, post Gary Carter trade, there were always excuses, April & May were poor attendances because of the Habs playoffs, July/Aug no one wanted to be indoors after a Mtl winter, Sept...well no one wants to see a team that's not in the pennant race.

Lookit I loved the Expos, to levels the Habs will never reach, but the reality is my friends at elementary school just disassociated themselves from the team after 1983, and never really were back into it throughout high school onwards. Mtl's become an even tougher market for an 81-game home schedule, with the immigration demographic over the past 30-yrs - those locales (primarily North African & Middle Eastern) have no association with the game.
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For all the good that Bronfman did he was a cheapskate at times. He wasn't prepared to play with the big boys and the game outgrew him. When you think back to all the handwringing the Expos did over paying Carter the ungodly sum of $2 million a year for 8 years (Carter was traded before that contract even expired) and it almost seems quaint. Humps like Desharnais make more than that now. And back then, the owners were in collusion trying to keep salaries down. Bronfman was one of that gang. At the end of the day he just didn't want to pay what it costs to be in business. If he were willing, he could have built his own damn stadium instead of bitching about the publicly-funded one he was given and turning his own customers away from his product. It wasn't until after Bronfman sold the club that anyone even tried to make the Big O more baseball and fan friendly by moving home plate back a few feet and installing club seats. For the entire time that Bronfman owned the team I never heard him try to champion a move into a baseball only stadium. Only subsequent ownership groups with less money to play with than him ever tried to get that done.
 
Sal_Butera said:
That's not entirely accurate. There's a reason Bronfman threw up his hands & decided to dump the franchise, post Gary Carter trade, there were always excuses, April & May were poor attendances because of the Habs playoffs, July/Aug no one wanted to be indoors after a Mtl winter, Sept...well no one wants to see a team that's not in the pennant race.
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Those aren't excuses if they're true and they all are (or were) and would be again at the Big O. In April and May people are fixated on hockey. In the heart of the summer months nobody wants to be sitting in a dome. The BC Lions had the same problem with BC Place. It was too hot inside the dome and no one wanted to be inside in July, August and September to watch any sporting event.

Many teams have trouble with attendance late in the season if they aren't in a pennant race. But today with the expanded playoff format, more teams stay in the pennant race longer. Also, if you have a park that people actually want to go to in the downtown area, you'll get fans who don't care about the standings and just want to watch a game outdoors while quaffing a few cold beers. Going to baseball games is about the experience itself more than the game. But you don't get any of that in a sterile place like Olympic Stadium.
 
XPOFAN said:
Paul Hollingsworth
28,000+ at Olympic Stadium in Montreal today for Brazil Spain. Very good crowd, very fun day
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It sure didn't look like 28,000. They had the whole upper deck closed and there was a scattering of people in the lower deck.

They really need to to something with the Big O. Either tear it down or renovate it so it is brought up to today's standards. Those old blue and yellow seats are brutal and an eyesore when the cameras are on them. Here in Vancouver as part of the major overhaul on BC Place where they added a working roof they also replaced all the seats with a mixture of red and grey seats that blend it with the stadium's backround colors. Even when the stadium is half full it looks more full than the Big O where those yellow seats amplify how shitty that stadium is in today's world. Let's not even talk about a stupid blue color roof that is closed in the middle of June in Montreal... yes I know it is a permanent roof.

We know they keep the Big O for those big events that come by every so often like the Pope visit, concerts, Blue Jays exhibition games, etc but it needs work. Forget about the cosmetic work for a minute... that roof was supposed to be replaced years ago for safety reasons... why it keeps getting delayed is beyond me. It's just a matter of time before another chunk of concrete falls off that place and gets wide press coverage. Just hope it doesn't come at a time when people are in it.
 
They need to blow up the Big O. The day they implode that building there should be a parade in Montreal.

Bonus points if Selig or Loria happens to be inside it when that happens.
 
Makes me wonder about the NHL.... If I had to pick an organization that I thought might be guilty of this in the NHL, my money goes down on the Wings. How the hell they keep finding these players is bananas.
 
Sportsnet Stats ‏
This is the first time a perfect game was broken up with 2 outs in the 9th via a hit by pitch since July 4, 1908
 
Warren Cromartie ‏
Saw my boys RUSH tonight in Montreal .. They put on the video screen before the show started .. Bring the Expos Back to Montreal!.. I cried!
 
Louis-Pascal Cyr ‏
Dennis Martinez: "And for the return of the Expos, I'm behind mayor @DenisCoderre 100%!"
 
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