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"DROPS AGAIN"?

Season tickets and total attendance went up this season.

 

Where did again come from?

 

Save the Marlins... I agree, and for that its necessary for Loria to

Sell the Marlins

 

 

Exactly. Attendance was up 100,000 during the 2005 season from the 2004 season and a up over one million from the 2002 season. What they are saying is when the inevitable drop in attendance happens.

 

Samson said the Marlins were not interested in relocating to Mexico when he visited San Antonio this week, so I don't know why that bit about Monterrey was included.

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you did not mention this part:

 

"Marlins in Puerto Rico? Marlins Vice President P.J. Loyello said the team has "zero interest" in playing any future home games away from Dolphins Stadium"

 

 

Yeah, they also toured San Antonio this week as a possible future home for the team. What is your point?

There is interest to move to San Antonio...there is zero interest in splitting home games between cities

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you did not mention this part:

 

"Marlins in Puerto Rico? Marlins Vice President P.J. Loyello said the team has "zero interest" in playing any future home games away from Dolphins Stadium"

 

 

Yeah, they also toured San Antonio this week as a possible future home for the team. What is your point?

There is interest to move to San Antonio...there is zero interest in splitting home games between cities

 

The original point was that if the Marlins did take this step, which will apparently become an option once attendance drops next year, they'll have a foot out the door. Of course the FO will say that they have no interest in taking this step right now while they are still in negotiations with various parties in South Florida.

 

By the way, I think a look at a past article on the Expos may be interesting to some of you.

 

12/12/2003 3:09 PM ET

Expos to return to San Juan in 2004

By Barry M. Bloom / MLB.com

 

The Expos will play 22 games at San Juan's 20,000-seat Hiram Bithorn Stadium in 2004. (Kent Schacht/MLB.com)

 

The Montreal Expos are returning to Puerto Rico to play 22 games again next season, all of them taking place in San Juan's Hiram Bithorn Stadium before the All-Star break.

The deal hasn't been officially signed and won't be announced by Major League Baseball until next week, but the Expos have released their 2004 schedule with 59 home games in Montreal and the other 22 in San Juan.

 

Bob DuPuy, MLB's president and chief operating officer, said that San Juan had barely won out over Monterrey, Mexico, which also bid for the split-home schedule.

 

"It was a great push by Monterrey and we had to make a tough decision," DuPuy said. "But San Juan got the edge in the end because it was the incumbent."

 

The 2004 schedule has the Expos playing in San Juan six times in April, six times in May and 10 times in July. The Expos sold out five of the 22 games played in San Juan this past season, averaging 14,222 a game and totaling 312,882.

 

Several weeks ago, the Expos players and the union came to an agreement with MLB for the team to again play in Puerto Rico with the proviso that all the games there are played before the All-Star break.

 

To that end, the Expos will play the New York Mets and defending World Series champion Florida Marlins in San Juan from April 9 to April 15 and won't make their first appearance in Montreal's Olympic Stadium until April 23 against Philadelphia.

 

Similarly this past season, the Expos played 10 games in Puerto Rico before opening in Montreal with a victory over Arizona on April 22. Before the opener in Montreal, the Expos were 10-8 in their first 18 games.

 

But differently from last season, there are no September games scheduled in Puerto Rico, an issue that concerned the Expos' players. The 10-game stand in Puerto Rico in July opens on July 2 and brings in Toronto, Atlanta and Pittsburgh.

 

The May schedule in Puerto Rico was undecided until late last week. From May 18 to May 23 the Expos will play Milwaukee and San Francisco. That was one of the last issues to be hurdled before MLB made its formal announcement.

 

This past September, the Expos voted not to split their home schedule for the 2004 season. The players said they felt that having 103 of 162 games away from Montreal was one of the main reasons why they faded in the National League's Wild Card race by the last week of August.

 

San Juan subsequently agreed to play host to all the 2004 games in Puerto Rico during the first half of the season, said Antonio Munoz Sr., whose company promoted the games this year in San Juan and will do so again next year.

 

Munoz said that a $2 million to $3 million reconfiguration of 18,000-seat Hiram Bithorn Stadium had already begun in anticipation of the Expos' return next season.

 

The renovations include moving the fences and bleachers back 20 to 25 feet, the addition of new seats, refurbished clubhouses and a new artificial turf surface.

 

MLB officials have already informed representatives from Monterrey that San Juan will be getting the games, but the Mexican industrial city of about a million people in the northern state of Nuevo Leon may be one of the options MLB will consider as a permanent home for the Expos beginning with the 2005 season.

 

MLB is also exploring the possibility that other Major League teams could play some Spring Training or regular season games in Monterrey this season. Monterrey industrialist Carlos Bremer would be the driving force behind hosting those games and perhaps making a bid to purchase the team.

 

"We expected the Expos to go to Puerto Rico, but Monterrey has gotten the league's attention and we're excited about longer term prospects," said Eric Stern, who is the representative for the Monterrey group in the U.S.

 

Stern said a group from MLB's relocation committee would probably visit Monterrey, perhaps by the end of the year. Tony Tavares, the Expos president, toured the city late this past season and came back with a stellar report.

 

Mexico promoters also promised to upgrade to 30,000-seat Estadio Monterrey if MLB plays some games there this coming season. A more extensive modification of the stadium would have to be done if the Expos moved to Monterrey permanently, Stern acknowledged, but he declined to put any price tag on that refurbishment.

 

Two weeks ago, after an owners' meeting in Chicago, DuPuy said baseball was now beginning to turn its attention to finding a permanent solution to the Expos situation by the 2005 season.

 

MLB purchased the Expos from Jeffery Loria for $120 million before the 2002 season and has owned and operated the team ever since.

 

MLB's relocation committee, which includes DuPuy, now intends to make contact with cities interested in permanently attaining the Expos by the end of the year, perhaps even sending out members to visit each community.

 

Washington, D.C., Northern Virginia and Portland, Ore., all suitors in the past and still in the mix, have made bids for the team, but none of those communities have concluded site selection and financing for a new ballpark -- MLB's top criteria. There have been no formal meetings between members of the committee and each community since before the July 15 All-Star Game in Chicago.

 

The committee recently has had inquiries from Las Vegas and the Norfolk/Hampton Roads area in Virginia. Like Monterrey, a group from San Juan could make a similar offer to permanently acquire the team. There also has been some interest from Mexico City, where Spring Training games were played this past March.

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They won't take any step that does not lead in establishing the Marlins' long term future somewhere. They've taken the necessary steps to keeping costs low for the next few years, thus not needing to seek out additional revenue from Puerto Rico games.

 

 

If they decide negotiations have broken down here in South Florida, find a city willing to put up the monies to build a stadium, get the thumbs up from MLB and start drawing an average attendance of around 10k at DS, I am not so sure.

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Or that source is mentioning this to put the idea out there to suit his/her interest in promoting MLB in San Juan and latin America.

 

 

This isn't the case, in my opinion. If they wanted this to reach those markets they wouldn't have mentioned it to a reporter (nice catch, by the way, Capozzi) from a local paper. The message would have been spread farther to bigger media outlets. I have not seen the San Juan/Monterrey option mentioned in other media outlets, but maybe I am mistaken.

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"DROPS AGAIN"?

Season tickets and total attendance went up this season.

 

 

That's only because the Marlins suckered everyone into renewing before the season was even over.

 

Why not move to Orlando?

 

Because that is Devil Rays territory, we don't need two major league teams within an hours driving distance of each other in what is already a very fickle sports market.

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