Toronto Blue Jays to return to Montreal for two preseason games
By Andrew Padyk
The Toronto Blue Jays will be heading back to Montreal for a pair of exhibition games against the Cincinnati Reds on April 3rd and 4th. The team announced the news earlier this week, noting that the games will be played at Olympic Stadium – the former home of the Montreal Expos – and where the team closed their exhibition schedule before this past season to a smashing success.
The Blue Jays played a pair of exhibition games against the New York Mets in front of a frenzied and baseball-hungry crowd before the 2014 season. The series also included a pregame ceremony honoring the 1994 Expos – a team that, at 74-40, held the best record in baseball at the time of the ’94 strike.
In all, a grand total of 96,350 fans showed up for both games, results that Major League Baseball and the Blue Jays hope to duplicate once more this April. MLB will once again be paying close attention to these games. Last year not only were the crowds significant for both games but the atmosphere made things feel more like a playoff game than an exhibition.
From 1969 through 2004, when the team left for Washington D.C., the city of Montreal was home to the Expos and players such as Tim Raines, Gary Carter, Larry Walker, and Moises Alou. While hockey is the dominant sport with the city’s population living and breathing for the Montreal Canadians, it is also a city with a proud baseball history between the Expos and minor league Montreal Royals (1896-1960).
The only problem, however, is if Major League Baseball is ready for another expansion or if in the coming years a franchise will be looking for greener fields elsewhere. There have been rumblings of the owners of the Tampa Bay Rays expressing some interest in a move to Montreal, those reports have largely been shot down. For the time being, MLB will just have to see how this round exhibition games fair in the city. Baseball could one day be back, but there is no timeline in place. But if Washington can go through two franchises before landing a third, what’s to say that Montreal won’t get another shot?