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Originally Posted by GirlySports
Will be interesting.
I think the Expos get fantasized about the 94 season but if it has played out, they probably would have had to get past the Braves in the NLCS (the Braves going to their 4th straight NLCS) and then the Yankees in the World Series. The Yankees were starting their dynasty and also had 70 wins at the time of the strike.
So people blame the strike but there just wasn't the fanbase in Montreal. Jonah Keri's book Up, Up, and Away talks about this in detail.
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The Expos where 5-9 against the Braves that season and 6 games up in the NL East. Braves likely would have played CIN or HOU but those two teams were within striking distance of the Wildcard when the season ended so they might not have even made it. Had they, it could have been the 4th time to the NLCS but this is the first year of the Division series and the Braves not coming out of the NL West.
There was and is a fanbase. Just not a fanbase that lives in and around the West Island, works downtown and are willing to take the Metro all the way out to Pie IX to sit inside during summer evenings. The strike was the tipping point for the Expos as a small market team where contrcaction was talked about since 1990 and with an ownership not willing to spend that had an unsuitable building in an unsuitable area in a political climate were separatism was a constant threat after 2 failed constitutional reforms and a looming referendum. A slow economy and high unemployment left no appetite for public money for a new downtown stadium. Baseball was for les maudites anglais.
And then there's the fact that players have to want to come to a place like that.
I was at almost every home game once school ended. I worked at the Big O from 92-96. The Expos were a special team that year and the crowd and feeling inside the stadium was different. It was well known that this was the year and we would lose Walker, Grissom, and Wettleand. The new CBA did nothing to address small market team issues and the Expos put together a real stinker of a season in 1995. This was there time to do something.