Let it be noted that another significant step toward the return of baseball to Montreal was taken in a hot, packed and airless room on the eighth floor of the Windsor on Peel St., home to the Claridge offices of Stephen Bronfman.
Baseball weather indoors and out, except that Bronfman’s goal of an open-air, downtown ballpark seemed especially tempting to reporters pining for the slightest evening breeze, just enough to carry a long fly ball over the left-field fence.
The occasion was Bronfman’s response to the news that Major League Baseball has given the green light to study the proposal for the Tampa Bay Rays to split their home games between Tampa and Montreal with new ballparks envisioned for both cities. Rays owner Stuart Sternberg had his say Tuesday in Florida, Bronfman weighed in Wednesday.
While making it clear that it’s very early in the process with the green light to study the proposal just given from commissioner Rob Manfred, Bronfman also emphasized this is a key step in the move to bring baseball back to Montreal.
“We’ve got the approval from baseball to do the exploration, now Tampa has to get their approvals from the city,” Bronfman said. “Once they get that done, then we really start to share information and do our due diligence to work together and to prove it all out.”
“Stuart mentioned some timing yesterday. It’s not for me to be getting into timing or split numbers of games or whatever. There are so many questions and there’s a lot of fun we can have with it. I’m really hoping that people embrace this notion of bringing baseball back to Montreal.”
And what would this reborn split team be called? “We’ve got to figure it all out. One of the questions I asked Stuart was ‘what about names?’ He said, ‘if that’s the only question we have, then we don’t have too many questions.’”
A key element of the split-team plan is that both cities would build more modest, open-air ballparks at a cost of about $600 million rather than a covered stadium or a building with a retractable roof at a cost north of $900 million.
I asked Bronfman whether a new ballpark would have to be built with the eventual conversion to a covered stadium or a semi-retractable roof. I thought that would be a necessary component of the long game for Montreal, but Bronfman’s answer surprised me.
“When it comes to preparing the (construction) footings for something different, we’ll have to see. We had Jarry Park and that worked out pretty well. We can put on an extra pair of pants and some thick socks. The economics of building today — if you’re putting in those footings and you’re putting in the structure for a domed stadium, think about all the steel, all the wiring, all the costs that go in to add your cheapest seats in the upper sections where you’re deriving the lowest value in dollars for your seats, it doesn’t make much sense. … Everyone loses out four or five games a year, and then we have fantastic doubleheaders.”
On the touchy point of public funding, Bronfman said, “we’ve kind of just kept back instead of spending dollars because we didn’t have a viable project yet. Now it’s time to start investing in the real diligence, time to see how things are going to work out. It’s a team effort and we have to work out exactly what that team mix is going to be.”
Pressed to clarify, Bronfman said, “We’re not looking for an investment from the city.” What his group might want, Bronfman said, might be more in the order of help with the infrastructure necessary to bring any large project into being.
There are so many moving parts to this thing that any speculation is fraught with pitfalls. Major League Baseball, the MLBPA, the agents, the taxpayers in Florida and Quebec, the ironclad lease in Tampa that pins the Rays where they are until 2027. Whatever happens, I don’t believe Sternberg is going to get his new ballpark in Florida. He’s been trying for 11 years and, unless he builds it himself, it isn’t going to happen.
So the most likely scenario is that Tampa does not get a new ballpark, the team plays half its home games at the Trop and half in Montreal until the lease expires in 2027 and then moves, lock, stock and sunshine, to Montreal for 81 games a year — with Sternberg selling most or all of his share in the club to the Montreal partners and eventually purchasing the New York Mets.
While Bronfman and right-hand man Pierre Boivin shied away from timetables, they did say that it will take one year of planning and two years to build a new stadium. If you’re looking for a hint, Bronfman offered a nod to his father, Charles, the original owner of the Montreal Expos. “My dad is 88,” he said, “and I want him to be at the first Expos game.”
Copyright Postmedia Network Inc., 2019
