If it’s true that a sport is only as strong as its weakest link, then baseball is troubled. But you knew that, even before the commissioner’s office annexed the Montreal Expos. This is a franchise that couldn’t handle the game’s twisted economics with a single owner, so now the Expos belong to 29 other owners who helped create the mess. The only surprise is that they didn’t also cut Enron in on the deal.
Baseball likes to allege that the Expos have always been doomed because people in Montreal care only about hockey. False. When the Expos were fighting for a pennant not that long ago, it was officials of Les Canadiens fretting about whether they had a lost a grip on the city.
Montreal has a rich baseball heritage. Jackie Robinson prepped there for his landmark breakthrough in Brooklyn. Also, given a level playing field, the Expos could have been a dynasty had they retained such stars as Randy Johnson and Pedro Martinez, just for starters.
Instead, Commissioner Bud Selig designated the Expos for contraction, a cockamamie notion bought by a surprising number of intelligent observers. Selig floated the idea, from his heart if not his head, which is fine. He’s allowed to posture. However, all Selig did is anger the union, again. While the courts squashed his pipe dream like a grape, labor monitored off-season free-agent movement and detected a curious restraint in bidding. For every Jason Giambi who hit the lottery with the Yankees, several other players waited by telephones that never rang.
So while contraction has been shelved–only temporarily, Selig promises–a more familiar term is now heard. Collusion. Baseball has been there before, and baseball might be headed there again. Instead of dumping headaches, management might be adding to its list of problems. Beware the powerful baseball union and its unbeaten string against owners.
It is possible, of course, that instead of being dissolved, the Expos will be moved–perhaps to Washington, where a few politicians are renewing their crusade to remove baseball of its antitrust exemption. Funny how, minutes after a terrific World Series, contraction was pegged as the cure-all because there are no more places to put franchises and no available buyers to take them there.
Suddenly, Washington is discovered. If Washington will let Mike Tyson fight there, surely the Expos can relocate there. And this just in: The Minnesota Twins, who were also supposedly doomed, are officially for sale, and there might be a taker in Donald Watkins, a money man from Alabama.
Meanwhile, back in spring training, the Expos are filling uniforms with players to be named later. Jose Canseco is among the latest to join manager Frank Robinson, who won’t be lying when he tells his guys to play hard because there’s no sense waiting for next year.
Suffice it to say that Selig’s Expos invite a variety of accidents waiting to happen. Suppose the Expos by some miracle are a game out of first place at the trading deadline. Does general manager Omar Minaya ask Selig to get one more player to put the Expos over the hump, or do their 29 other owners save money for the next round of lawsuits?
Some insiders think the owners were geared to impose another lockout for 2002, and then came Sept. 11. Nobody will confirm that, but the brief cold war interlude between management and labor seems strained, and with the Yankees and Mets loading up for an all-New York World Series, consider it your community service to root for the Expos to win this season, while all their owners squirm, wondering whether to laugh or cry.
