I might have worked also if the popular media had covered the team. But it was not the case. Sports journalists used to put more emphasis on the signing of obscure free agents by the Montreal Canadiens (NHL) than on anything concerning the Expos, even in the dead of summer.

When the team left, the thinking of most of those journalists was: "good riddance, we don't need a team of multi-millionnaire athletes who don't want to learn French and who play a boring American game nobody cares about anyway."

I think the Expos were eventually doomed no matter what they did, just because of the economics of baseball and how local t.v. cable revenue make up such a large portion of modern team's revenue. Plus, they were in a Hockey mecca in the French speaking part of Canada. But they were getting 2 million a year from 79-83 and there were so many little twists and turns that never seemed to got the Expos way. Heck, the team might still be in Montreal today if it weren't for Rodney Scott.

1-Rodney Scott: He had 1702 P.A. from 1979-81 with an ops+ of 67!!! Rob Neyer pointed out in his "Blunders" book that the Expos win the East in '79-'80 if they just bat Scott 8th.

2-Strike of '81, Who knows what would have happened if they played the full year. Maybe Dawson wins the MVP, Raines breaks the alltime stolen base record, They never play the Dodgers in the NLCS, Rick Monday never happens.

3-Le Stade Olympique. A dump of epic proportions, possibly the worst place ever to watch a major league game. Almost made the city go bankrupt and halted any chance for having a nice ballpark.

4-Singleton trade: Expos get a broken down McNally, Orioles get an MVP candidate. Imagine Singleton on those 79-81 Expos.

5-Strike of 94: final deathnail in the coffin.

The peroid of 79-84 was the crucial time period for this franchise and they easily could have gone to 2 or 3 World Series and may have won 2 which could have built the fan base and built a loyality to the team.

Montreal was a case of Murphy's Law in the extreme. From the big 2 strikes hitting at the worst possible time, to Atlanta being moved into their division (1996 they would've tied for the NL East lead if it was in the old alignment, if Atlanta was kept out of the east it could've been a clean win). You can see there was some fan support as they had over 30k per game for their final 3 game set with Atlanta when a sweep for the Expos would've put them into the playoffs (they lost 2 of 3).

The number of frustrating things for an Expos fan is amazing when you think about it. But I'd say a big early one was giving up English Canada in the late 70's to the Jays - a super-stupid move (Montreal's hockey team has a major fan base outside of Quebec so they could've held it). By the mid-80's when cable channels started appearing the Expos still had a fair amount of support but threw it away with poor marketing (I tried cheering them on but fewer and fewer games were on TV and pre-internet it was hard to follow otherwise as there were no radio stations covering the Expos by then outside of Quebec afaik).

A team that had an identity, a big potential fan base (Quebec plus east coast easily, mix in chunks of Ontario and with good marketing a chunk of Canada), and it just tossed away everything.

I forgot Raines was dealt, for some reason I thought he left after being granted free agent after the collusion ruling. They probably could have done better than Ivan Calderon.

Before that, they should have locked up players to long term deals, similar to Matt Ryan (of the Atlanta Falcons), and built the team around the future star player.

That just seems like a really weird comparison. Different sport altogether, and Ryan signed a six year deal, the same amount of time any MLB rookie is bound to a team.

Did the Expos try to sign any of their young players in the mid 90s to long-term deals? The Indians were doing that, but I don't think too many other small/mid sized market teams were.

1-Rodney Scott: He had 1702 P.A. from 1979-81 with an ops+ of 67!!! Rob Neyer pointed out in his "Blunders" book that the Expos win the East in '79-'80 if they just bat Scott 8th.

2-Strike of '81, Who knows what would have happened if they played the full year. Maybe Dawson wins the MVP, Raines breaks the alltime stolen base record, They never play the Dodgers in the NLCS, Rick Monday never happens.

3-Le Stade Olympique. A dump of epic proportions, possibly the worst place ever to watch a major league game. Almost made the city go bankrupt and halted any chance for having a nice ballpark.

4-Singleton trade: Expos get a broken down McNally, Orioles get an MVP candidate. Imagine Singleton on those 79-81 Expos.

5-Strike of 94: final deathnail in the coffin.

How bout don't trade Randy Johnson for two months of Mark Langston. Can you imagine the Unit and Pedro in the same rotation? Who would stop that team?

Can you imagine the Unit and Pedro in the same rotation? Who would stop that team?

I almost lost control of my bladder. Damn.

a big potential fan base (Quebec plus east coast easily, mix in chunks of Ontario and with good marketing a chunk of Canada)

Not to mention New England, especially Vermont, where the Expos had a farm club. There were a lot of "Soxpos" fans back in the day...

Dayton Moore,

Great point, my bad for not bringing up the Randy Johnson trade.

It seems like so many teams make late season trades for division titles that never work out and end up backfiring.

Like the Frank Viola trade with Mets.

Singleton trade - My understanding from a friend at a Montrea radio station was that it was not a baseball decision but because of Ken Singleton's marriage to a white girl.

The upper management of the Expos was pretty old school when it came to miscegenation back then...

Johnson trade - to be fair, I don't think they could have kept Johnson anyway..

Johnson trade - to be fair, I don't think they could have kept Johnson anyway..

Yea, but if they had him from 1990-1997, his reserve clause years, he would have been on some really good Expos teams. If he's on the '93 Expos, we could have had an all-Canada World Series.

The Langston deal was a turning point for the franchise in that it was the last attempt by Charles Bronfmann to win a championship. After 1989, Bronfmann realized he wasn't going to field a winner and he got out. Once he left the long slide downhill began.

I remember hearing a story about Larry Robinson being excited when hearing about the Langston deal and his emotion was surprising considering he was in the Habs dressing room and they had just lost the Stanley Cup to Calgary.

Johnson trade - to be fair, I don't think they could have kept Johnson anyway..

Yea, but if they had him from 1990-1997, his reserve clause years, he would have been on some really good Expos teams. If he's on the '93 Expos, we could have had an all-Canada World Series.

An all-Canada World Series would've garnered lousy Nielsen ratings in the States...

#Scientist Guy, I didn't know that about Singleton, interesting. Terrible move on the Expos part.

I know most of the reason the Mets picked Steve Chilcott over Reggie Jackson was because Reggie had a white girlfriend. But in retrospect it doesn't really make any sense because Reggie is of mixed race and I think the girl was half Mexican. It just shows some of the stupidity of the time period.

Realistically the Mets could have easily had an outfield of Jackson, Singleton and Otis (basically the A.L. all star outfield of the mid-late 70's) with a pitching staff of Seaver, Ryan, Koosman and Matlack, & McGraw in the pen with Whitey Herzog as their manager.

In some parallel universe The New York Mets are the dominate team from the 1970's winning 3 world series, 4 pennants, and 6 division titles and my parallel-counterpart has fond memories of his adolescent years.