Who Killed the Montreal Expos? (2025) * * *

 

Directed by:  Jean-Francois Poisson

Featuring interviews with:  Felipe Alou, David Samson, Larry Walker, Pedro Martinez, Vladimir Guerrero, Claude Brochu

The Montreal Expos last played in Montreal in September 2004 before moving to Washington DC and becoming the Washington Nationals.  Like the Brooklyn Dodgers moving west to Los Angeles in the late 1950's, the Expos' move created a civic pain which lingers to this day.  Walter O'Malley, the Dodgers owner who packed up and moved west, was so hated in Brooklyn that the following joke became prevalent:  If you have Hitler, Stalin, and Walter O'Malley in a room and you have a gun with two bullets, who do you shoot?  Answer: Walter O'Malley twice.  Only, I'm not sure how much jocularity is involved in that hypothetical. 

The closest thing to a Walter O'Malley in Expos lore is Jeffrey Loria, who bought the team in 1999, sold the team in 2002 to Major League Baseball, and went on to own the Florida Marlins.  His stepson David Samson was brought in to be the general manager, and the gregarious, vociferous Samson is by far the most entertaining interview subject.  Expos fans blame Loria and Samson for purposely running the team into the ground and selling, while previous Expos executives like Claude Brochu say that one person did not kill the Expos, but the economy, the inability to raise money for a new ballpark, and the 1994 season ending in a players' strike.  

The 1994 Expos were well on their way to the playoffs and the belief they could win a World Series.  The dream ended when the players struck in September, cancelling the remainder of the season including the playoffs.  Could they have gone all the way to a championship?  We'll never know, but that doesn't stop the living players from reuniting at events and declaring themselves the 1994 World Champions.  Maybe that's in jest, but it also may be a lament.  However, once the players returned from strike in 1995, baseball suffered and the Expos in particular sustained a loss of fan interest.  The fact that they played in Olympic Stadium which was crumbling and leaking like a sieve didn't help matters.  It was the only roofed ballpark where rainouts occurred because the roof had so many holes in it.  

Brochu is correct that there is no one person or event which caused the Expos to relocate to Washington DC in 2005.  As badly as Montreal's baseball fans would like to blame someone, and Loria and Samson are the biggest targets on the fans' dartboards, the truth is the Toronto Blue Jays have thrived and were involved in a seven-game classic World Series last month.  The Expos did not, and what frustrates fans most of all is how most of the reasons why the Expos are gone didn't involve anything that occurred on the field.