New Feasibility Study says MLB is Viable in Montreal

[rumpleforeskiin]

Nick Cafardo @nickcafardo
Major league baseball viable in Montreal again. An in depth feasibility study to be released tomorrow says so.

This tweet from Nick Cafardo of the Boston Globe. I'll report back here when I know more. The study was done by Montreal Baseball Project in collaboration with the Board of Trade of Metropolitan Montreal (BTMM), Ernst & Young and BCF LLP. We're getting closer.

FYI, Ernst and Young is the third largest professional services firm in the world by aggregated revenue in 2012 and is one of the "Big Four" accounting firms. They're headquartered in London, England.

BCF is a large business law firm based in Montreal.

 

[rumpleforeskiin]

Just my opinion...not much of a baseball fan...too slow and boring.

So why are you bothering to respond? Just your usual trolling?

 

[Doc Holliday]

Meh...bringing back Nascar and F1 would do more for the economy.
Just my opinion...not much of a baseball fan...too slow and boring.

What are you talking about? The F1 race is still on. In fact, the race is on June 8th, 2014.

As for not liking baseball because it's 'slow and boring', you sound like most girlfriends i've been out with who drove me nuts with their whining whenever i wanted to watch a baseball game.

A true baseball fan would rarely call it boring. Slower than many other sports, maybe. But boring? How could someone watching the Yankees vs. Red Sox call it boring?

p.s. I'm guessing you're also not a fan of curling, soccer or golf.

 

[wasisname]

Baseball boring as hell. Not as bad as soccer but still.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwGybS6TWEM

 

[lgna69xxx]

Womens curling is great especially when they are hot and yelling "hard, hard, HARD!" watching mens curling is up there with watching the pga, sleepy time.

 

[rumpleforeskiin]

Baseball boring as hell. Not as bad as soccer but still.

Some of us can handle nuance, and some of us cannot. Have you given football a try; it's much easier to comprehend.

 

[rumpleforeskiin]

From Twitter: Jon Morosi ‏@jonmorosi 13m
Scott Boras on Rays options for relocation: "Montreal, I think, would be a tremendous environment for baseball."
Jon Paul Morosi is a National MLB Writer for FOXSports.com.

Steve Berthiaume ‏@BertDbacks 5m
The idea of Montreal as a city ready for a @MLB renaissance seems to be building momentum. Steven Berthiaume is the television play-by-play announcer for the Arizona Diamondbacks and a former anchor on ESPN and a former sportscaster for SportsNet New York (SNY).

 

[simonpaul]

They will find the money where?Last time Mlb left it was because of lack of money and customers.We don't have in Mlt a stadium near the city center and i don't see someone with enought $$$ to built a new one.

 

[rumpleforeskiin]

They will find the money where?Last time Mlb left it was because of lack of money and customers.We don't have in Mlt a stadium near the city center and i don't see someone with enought $$$ to built a new one.

I would imagine the feasibility study will address all of your questions. The simple truth is that the Expos were very successful until the Bronfman family sold the team. From then through the end, they were mismanaged and ultimately sabotaged.

 

[Techman]

Without a downtown, centralized, open roof stadium, MLB will not work in Montreal. I used to go to well over 20 games a year back in the Jarry Park days and that dropped to maybe 5 at the Big Owe with the roof closed. In the last years, going to a game was a great way to fall into a depression. We'd be in a great mood heading down to the stadium on a nice sunny Sunday afternoon only to walk into the concrete toilet for the afternoon. The game couldn't end soon enough for us to get out. And once we left the stadium, there was nothing to do in the area. No restaurants, clubs or bars in the area to head over to. Nothing at all. So it was back to the car or back to the Metro and straight home. Montreal has a short summer and we don't want to spend it indoors watching baseball when we can be sitting on a terrace watching the lovely ladies of Montreal walk by!

Now...give us a nice stadium downtown and you're talking! It has to be within walking distance of the downtown core so that people can walk over after work for evening games after they finish work. It has to be close enough to the downtown core so that restaurants and bars and clubs can benefit from the crowds before and after the games. And obviously close enough to the Metro system for transportation. Meet those criteria and it has a damn good chance at success. Don't meet them and you might as well open a stadium in Shawinigan because it ain't gonna work. Move back to the Big Owe and they are just flushing their money away in the giant concrete toilet like they did before.

 

[rumpleforeskiin]

I've been to 33 major league stadiums. The Big Owe was handily the worst of the lot. I agree completely with Techman. A downtown ballpark, like the one designed and called Labatt Park, and the grand old game will thrive in Montreal. (http://ballparks.com/baseball/index.htm Click: National, Click: future to see what it would have looked like.)

AtandT Park (San Francisco)
Busch Stadium 2 (St. Louis)
Busch Stadium 3 (St. Louis)
Candlestick Park (San Francisco)
Colts Stadium (Houston)
Comerica Park (Detroit)
Comiskey Park (Chicago)
Connie Mack Stadium/Shibe Park (Philadelphia)
County Stadium (Milwaukee)
Dodger Stadium (Los Angeles)
Ebbets Field (Brooklyn)
Fenway Park (Boston)
Great American Ballpark (Cincinnati)
Jack Murphy Stadium ( San Diego)
Jacobs Field (Cleveland)
Miller Park (Milwaukee)
Municipal Stadium (Cleveland)
Oakland Coliseum (Oakland)
Olympic Stadium (Montreal)
Oriole Park (Baltimore)
Polo Grounds (New York)
Rangers Ballpark (Texas)
Riverfront Stadium (Cincinnati)
Rogers Center (Toronto)
Shea Stadium (New York)
Target (Minnesota)
Three Rivers Stadium (Pittsburgh)
Tiger Stadium (Detroit)
US Cellular Field (Chicago)
Wrigley Field (Chicago)
Yankee Stadium - (renovated 1974)
Yankee Stadium (New York)
Yankee Stadium - New

 

[simonpaul]

The downtown stadium is a must, but the big problem is that i can see where they can go and built one,no land is empty close to downtown.

 

[lgna69xxx]

http://www.stadiumpage.com/concepts/Labatt00_R.html

 

[amazona]

it will never happens in Montreal.not enough business to support the team.Montreal is a one sport city.plus there is no place to build the stadium.

 

[rumpleforeskiin]

Apparently, the Montreal Baseball Project in collaboration with the Board of Trade of Metropolitan Montreal (BTMM), Ernst & Young and BCF LLP don't agree with you, SimonPaul and Amazona. I'm quite curious to read their findings. I'm guessing they'll also suggest places to build the park and, yes, there are several.

 

[Special K]

I'm guessing they would have to have a retractable roof if they were to build a new ballpark.

 

[Techman]

it will never happens in Montreal.not enough business to support the team.Montreal is a one sport city.plus there is no place to build the stadium.

There's plenty of business to support a baseball team as long as the conditions are right with the stadium and the team is in the American League East. The main problem is where to build a stadium.

This is what could have, and should have, been.

 

[Doc Holliday]

it will never happens in Montreal.not enough business to support the team.Montreal is a one sport city.plus there is no place to build the stadium.

I agree that Montreal is a one-sport city, but there was a time when the Expos were the talk-of-the-town and thrived.

The only reason they went down was because of the 1994 lock-out, they got screwed by MLB, poor ownership once Bronfman sold the team, and the poor Canadian $$. Many fans left after the first three reasons i mentionned, and others stayed away and never came back once it was nearly guaranteed they'd relocate. I mean, why support a team that won't be there either next year or the next?

I'm a huge baseball fan, was once a huge Expos fan (which is why and how i discovered Montreal), but to be honest, i gave up attending games in the last couple of years....it was a depressing atmosphere and i absolutely hated watching a game indoors in the Big 'O' when it was nice, sunny and warm outside. I had bought tickets and planned to attend games, but once i arrived in Mtl and thought about it, i stayed way from that crappy stadium, which i found too far anyway and didn't feel like spending 20 minutes on the stupid subway just to get to the ballpark.

Even though the team lost many fans, there were still more fans than there currently is in Tampa.

 

[rumpleforeskiin]

...while I'm in this shit-hole...

Which shit hole? I can only imagine you mean the one between your ears?

Besides...aren't you American?

Actually, I live in Montreal and plan to own season tickets once baseball returns.

...and don't contaminate ours.

I needn't bother. You're doing a fine job of it by yourself.

And now, why don't you return to your regularly scheduled program of making obscene, tasteless jokes about the recently deceased? You are one sick dude.

 

[rumpleforeskiin]

This comes from today's Chicago Tribune:

Boras suggests Rays should relocate to Montreal

By Paul Sullivan, Tribune reporter
2:44 p.m. CST, December 11, 2013

LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. -- Agent Scott Boras reiterated Wednesday that baseball should consider relocating the Tampa Bay Rays to another city, suggesting Montreal would be a perfect place.

“The hope in baseball is you’d have a consistent product annually, you have a group of people in ownership that are putting winning baseball on the field, and you’d certainly have to say Tampa Bay has done that,” Boras said.

“My point was that baseball, collectively, to protect the game, to protect the market, and you have a product that is so successful and the market is not responding to it, what is the reason? The reason is not the performance of the franchise or the players. The reason has to be there’s a dynamic operating here that is not consistent with what other markets do in baseball.

“Clearly if you win and you’re successful, your fan base rewards. So my suggestion of New Jersey or Montreal or somewhere ... The idea is for the betterment of the game. I think we have to look at markets that aren’t rewarding playing the game at a high level.”

Boras said Montreal, which lost the expansion Expos in 2005 when MLB moved the team to Washington, would be a “tremendous environment” for baseball.

“I remember in ’94, when you go back and look at their attendance rates and the market, the people and the Canadian rivalry, I really thought baseball was in a good place,” he said. “The players enjoyed playing there. It’s a beautiful city.”

Boras said New Jersey may be more problematic with television rights, a potential problem with the Mets and Yankees already there.