Could Baseball Ever Return to the City of Saints?

It became official on September 29, 2004 - Major League Baseball's run in Montreal was coming to an end after 36 seasons. On that day, the announcement was made that the Montreal Expos were moving to Washington, D.C., beginning with the 2005 season. This came as no surprise to anyone who follows baseball, as this inevitable move had been in the making for at least 10 years.

Let's take a look back at the history of baseball's fall from grace in Montreal. The decline began after the 1994 season. That was the season in which Montreal had the best record in baseball and was headed for only their second postseason appearance in the club's history. Then, in early August, disaster struck. It came in the form of a season-ending players' strike. The hopes of fans in Montreal for the Expos' first World Series title were dashed. The Expos deserved better. Their accomplishments during the 1994 season had gone for naught.

Following that 1994 debacle, The Expos' ownership group began to trade away and sell off the franchise's star players. As result, the Expos began to drop in the standings and never regained their 1994 level of glory. In response, disappointed fans in Montreal began to stay away from Olympic Stadium in droves. Attendance at Expos games dropped precipitously. By 1998, things had really started on go south (no pun intended). That season, the vultures had begun to circle the Expos. Correlating with the drop in attendance since the 1994 strike, the team was bleeding red ink, according to its owners.

Its ownership group, led by Canadian businessman Claude Brochu, wanted out of Olympic Stadium and had given Montreal and the province of Quebec one last chance to agree to build the Expos a new, publicly financed downtown stadium. Brochu said the team would have to be sold and possibly moved if he couldn