December 5, 200520 yr Post got erased. To be short... The Expos' ON field success at the time was not a true reflection of the team's off field success or the market. There were many problems. This romanticized view you purport is one out of Hollywood, and has been used by those upset about the 1994-5 strike for reasons not always directly related to the problems the Expos were dealing with before and after the strike. We'll have to agree to disagree. That view isn't out of Hollywood. It's from the fans in Montreal, the Montreal press, and the national press. Source after source from media outlets to Expos' fan sites are unequivocal that the strike was catastrophic to the Expos. Unless you worked for the Expos, you can't possibly know more about their business practices than the people who lived there and were involved day to day. There are a number of good posts on baseball-fever.com among Montreal fans discussing the potential financial viability of the franchise had they made a deep playoff run (let alone won it all) that year. Montreal must have been a great place to play before it went south because Walker, Pedro, and other players from that team have said they'd have taken less money to stay together. It's eerie reading the Expos' message boards that are still around and hearing a lot of the same things being said here about the Marlins.
December 5, 200520 yr It may be a powerful drug, but what's really powerful is searching the old Expos' posts about Loria and Samson. Granted, they're going to be biased to some extent against them because of the general ill-will from how the whole thing ended, but they really hated Samson up there. And they weren't to keen on how Loria ran things. At least he isn't cutting costs to give himself a million dollar bonus like Brochu did with the Expos. I tend to think Loria has been a good owner for Florida. I think they've mishandled media relations, and they've gone a bit far in getting rid of almost all the starters. I can't continue to look at them the same way after reading more about how they ran the Expos from people who were there. There's more to it than personal animosity, and that's what gives me a nagging doubt about the way this will play out in Miami.
December 5, 200520 yr It may be a powerful drug, but what's really powerful is searching the old Expos' posts about Loria and Samson. Granted, they're going to be biased to some extent against them because of the general ill-will from how the whole thing ended, but they really hated Samson up there. And they weren't to keen on how Loria ran things. At least he isn't cutting costs to give himself a million dollar bonus like Brochu did with the Expos. I tend to think Loria has been a good owner for Florida. I think they've mishandled media relations, and they've gone a bit far in getting rid of almost all the starters. I can't continue to look at them the same way after reading more about how they ran the Expos from people who were there. There's more to it than personal animosity, and that's what gives me a nagging doubt about the way this will play out in Miami. Could you post some links to some of these old Expos message boards you have visited? Thanks.
December 5, 200520 yr This one is on the lawsuit of his Montreal partners: http://www.baseball-fever.com/showthread.php?t=13155 This has a nice summation of 1994: http://www.baseball-fever.com/showthread.php?t=20890 A little more on 1994: http://www.baseball-fever.com/showthread.php?t=19425 This on why their stadium was such a problem: http://www.baseball-fever.com/showthread.php?t=20218 There's lots more there, but you have to sort through a lot of other posts about best Expos ever, the Nationals, etc.
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