There is a delicate balance in the pursuit of a Montreal Expos rebirth for Stephen Bronfman to manage, one he and his recently revealed partners have thus far handled deftly in positioning themselves as a strong option for Major League Baseball should opportunity arise.
In playing a long game, the executive chairman of Claridge Inc., is simultaneously following the rules set by the lords of the realm and pushing aggressively, working in the shadows and emerging from them to give the endeavour a needed public face. Meticulously, he and his group of local business leaders continue to carefully lay groundwork, working an unofficial process toward an opportunity that officially doesn’t yet exist.
“Flexibility is important because we’ve been at it for so many years,” Bronfman, the son of former Expos owner Charles, says in an interview with Sportsnet this week. “One thing that’s been really interesting is that we’ve really not had setbacks, or steps backwards. Sometimes things take time. I don’t do too much press because I don’t like to get people’s hopes up too high. But at the same time, it’s important to make sure the market stays active and that the corporate and political landscape stays open, so you have to work those angles.
“As we may or may not be approaching something significant, we just keep going steady, baby steps, try to instil confidence in all the various levels and layers – people, corporate, politics, Major League Baseball, politics down south,” he adds. “Keep all those levels warm and somewhat excited.”
Toward that end, the past week certainly seemed to move the entire project forward with word the Tampa Bay Rays’ stadium plan in Ybor City had fallen through, followed by the Montreal group’s announcement of key findings from a marketing and feasibility study. While the study concluded the city “has the market characteristics to support an MLB team effectively over the long term,” the more significant takeaway may be that for the first time, Bronfman and his group were publicly identified in full.
That’s important as some bigger-picture fault lines appear to be developing that could open up a path for aspiring team owners. Late last month, the Oakland Athletics unveiled their latest set of plans for a new stadium, while a day later, the Portland Diamond Project, which is also pursuing a team, did the same thing.
While MLB commissioner Rob Manfred has made eventual expansion a stated goal, he’s repeatedly noted it won’t be considered until the stadium situations are resolved in Oakland and Tampa Bay. He declined a request for an interview this week.
As things stand now, Montreal and Portland appear to have laid the most groundwork toward landing a team, the former ready as a potential destination for the Rays, the latter for the Athletics if relocation becomes necessary. Both are positioned well for expansion if not.
“Being very respectful of the process, respectful of the league, we were always told to be prepared and I respect also the fact that one of the businesses of Major League Baseball is to keep many options open,” says Bronfman. “I know we’re one of those options and we’re working diligently and focused on hopefully, in the not too distant future, being able to start the process.”
Craig Cheek, the Portland Diamond Project’s president, recently expressed a similar sentiment to Elliot Njus of The Oregonian: “There’s going to be a window of opportunity and we don’t know when it will open and close. I’d hate for us not to have a sense of urgency.”
Bronfman’s involvement with Montreal’s pursuit of a team didn’t come on a whim, and didn’t happen with a single a-ha moment. He credits the work of ExposNation, originally a Facebook fan page that grew into an organization that promotes the city as a viable baseball market, for helping reignite local interest, along with the initial research conducted by the Montreal Baseball Project, the passion of people like local rapper Annakin Slayd and ongoing efforts of longtime Expos star Warren Cromartie for pulling him in.
“They never stopped waving the flag and that really got local citizens engaged,” he says.
Eventually, Cromartie reached out to him and Bronfman “started to feel it a little bit.” Montreal had changed dramatically since the Expos left for Washington after the 2004 season – “the crane has become the national bird here,” he noted of the city’s business growth – the Canadian dollar is much stronger than it was back then, and the economics of the game and value of the content have also shifted in major ways.
“I said, ‘With all that’s going on, the timing felt right,’” says Bronfman. “It felt like if I got involved, maybe it becomes a little bit more than a pipe dream.”
Bronfman still had plenty of connections in baseball and his dad, during his tenure as Expos owner, had always been close with former commissioner Bud Selig. But the younger Bronfman himself had some history with Selig to overcome stemming from his part in a 2002 racketeering lawsuit personally naming the commissioner and others tied to the Expos’ transfer from the ownership of Jeffery Loria to Major League Baseball.
So in 2014, towards the end of Selig’s run as commissioner, Bronfman visited him in New York “and basically tried to apologize for the way things ended up in Montreal. I think he was very hurt by the suit. It was ugly and I think it also soured the relationship between dad and Bud. The whole thing was unpleasant.”
Selig was receptive and, in the wake of the first pair of Blue Jays exhibition games in Montreal that drew more than 96,000 fans, encouraged Bronfman to meet with Manfred, who was set to take over as commissioner.
“It was handed off that way and I’ve been meeting off and on with Rob and in contact with the league over the years and playing by the rules,” says Bronfman. “Hopefully we’re shedding a positive light on Major League Baseball and showing them that we’ve got what it takes to get back into the game.”
To accomplish that goal, Bronfman and his group are working diligently to make sure that if the Expos are given a second chance – remember that Washington is in its third try with a big-league club – they’re set up properly. Their research has focused on everything from stadium design and concessions to corporate support and media market size. And while “we haven’t come close to putting down parameters on what we would like from various levels of municipal and provincial governments here,” Bronfman says, he’s kept politicians engaged, as Quebec Premier Francois Legault showed last week.
Bonne rencontre avec Stephen Bronfman pour discuter du retour possible du baseball majeur à Montréal.#PolQc pic.twitter.com/n2ZuMFxqOZ
— François Legault (@francoislegault) December 13, 2018
And though a path to a franchise appears a bit more clear now than it did before, Bronfman is careful to keep expectations in check, knowing the work is very far from being over.
“I try not to get too emotionally involved because anything can happen,” he says. “We’re just looking forward to having that first pitch. There will be a lot of tears in a lot of eyes, and that’s what gets me excited. With these studies we’re doing, we’re already planning what type of stadium we can build, input from locals, going to other ballparks, taking stuff in, the luxury of time. We’re doing things properly and studying everything with the time on hand and I think our next steps are to secure a site, which will just prove one more step toward this potentially becoming a reality.
“One of the reasons I like to do some press from time-to-time is to show people that we’re really working hard and if it doesn’t happen, we will have tried our hardest to get it done and I guess then it wasn’t meant to be. Hopefully we’ll have a first pitch one of these days.”
