What might have been. It's a phrase which epitomizes failure, regret, wasted opportunities and broken dreams--and, alas, the ill-fated and luckless history of the Montreal Expos, following Major League Baseball's decision last week to move the team to Washington, D.C. prior to the start of the 2005 season.
Granted, the Expos franchise had been in a decline for quite some time. For one, the team finished 2004 dead last in attendance for the seventh straight season, limping through six months of hell with a .414 winning percentage and a lineup consisting of Endy Chavez and Terrmel Sledge. The last--and only--time the Expos reached the postseason, 1981, right handed pitcher Chad Cordero hadn't even been born.
They had been sold to Major League Baseball. They had been targeted for contraction. They had been left for dead, time and time again.
And now, following years of speculation, the Expos, as we know them, are dead, reduced to nothing but 'what-ifs' and a bunch of discounted Brad Wilkerson jerseys--a sad plight indeed, especially when considering what might have been.
The year was 1994. Penn State's football team was lighting up the scoreboard. Michael Jackson was trying to clear his image. It was the 'International Year of the Family' and the heyday of Married...With Children, a year both comparable to and disconnected from the present.
It was the Expos' year.
Montreal entered the 1994 season with arguably the most complete team in baseball--they had batting with Larry Walker, Cliff Floyd and Moises Alou, starting pitching with Pedro Martinez, Ken Hill and Kirk Rueter and a relief staff consisting of Mel Rojas and John Wetteland.
Under the direction of manager Felipe Alou, the Expos jumped out in front in the National League East, entering the dog days of August with a 74-40 record, a six-game division lead and the best winning percentage in all of baseball.
The fans were abuzz. The players were the toast of the town. The unsightliness of Olympic Stadium became an unlikely stage for a talented tapestry of past, present and future, a team destined for World Series magic.
It was the Expos' year--until the August 12th players' strike ended the regular season and cancelled the playoffs, fatally injuring the franchise.
In the years following the strike, the Expos, strapped for cash, were forced to trade or release their most talented players: Walker went to Colorado, Floyd and Moises Alou went to Florida, Martinez went to Boston, Wetteland went to New York...Henry Rodriguez went to Chicago, Mark Grudzielanek went to Los Angeles, Ugueth Urbina went to Boston, Carl Pavano went to Florida...Vladimir Guerrero went to Anaheim, Javier Vazquez went to New York, Orlando Cabrera went to Boston.
Unable to retain its superstars, Montreal suffered in the standings and at the front gate, seeing its fan base shrink and financial resources plummet.
Montreal became a blemish on the face of Major League Baseball, with Commissioner Bud Selig targeting the team for retraction in November of 2001. Owner Jeffrey Loria sold the team to MLB soon after, and the Expos became a doormat, a carpet on which baseball wiped its dirty, mud-covered boots. Somewhere, Youppi! wept.
But it didn't have to end like this.
What if the 1994 strike had never occurred? What if the Expos had beaten the Yankees in the 1994 World Series? What if Montreal had been able to retain its biggest stars?
Obviously, these questions are nothing more than mere speculation at this point. But looking at 1994 attendance figures alone suggests that the Expos franchise would have survived had the strike not occurred. Through their 51 home games in 1994, the Expos drew 1.25 million fans, or an average of 24,500 per game. Taken over a full 81-game home schedule, Montreal's attendance figure would have come to just under two million, not including the playoffs.
The team's pending playoff berth would have ultimately resulted in increased fan interest, media exposure and revenue, which would have helped the Expos retain their players and lobby for a glitzier, friendlier stadium, quelling the same problems which eventually led to the team's demise.
But the franchise and its fan base, haunted by missed opportunities and cruel fate, would never be the same. Expos fans had been victimized and duped, wounded and jaded, and the team's attendance figures reflected just that--1.6 million fans in 1996, 1.48 million in 1997, 914,717 in 1998 and 773,277 in 1999, bottoming out with 642,748 fans in 2001.
And now, after thirty-five seasons of madness, sadness and frustration, we find ourselves talking about the Expos in the past tense, the ball club of Gary Carter and Tim Wallach, of Ivan Calderon and Rock Raines, of Bryn Smith and Oil Can Boyd, rendered obsolete, done in, exhausted.
And what a shame it is, especially when considering what might have been.
