This year, 2025, marks the 20th anniversary of the Montreal Expos coming to the United States and landing in the District of Columbia. Over this past weekend, I had the opportunity to visit Montreal for the F1 Grand Prix.
During my time, I was interested to see what the energy was like and if there was any possibility that a team could survive there again. What I learned about Montreal was a very interesting lesson, and one that I am excited to share. But first, we have to get into the history of the Expos.
Before the Toronto Blue Jays, Canada had the Expos. As the first MLB team in Canada, they had almost a 10-year head start on Canadian baseball fandom. For a long time, they were doing well with legends like Gary Carter, Andre Dawson, and Tim Raines on the roster.
However, everything changed for them in 1994. In what was the best season in franchise history yet, going 74-40, there was a strike as the MLBPA and Owners could not come to terms for a proper agreement, which caused the entire rest of the season to be cancelled. Unfortunately for the Expos, this was going to be the only year in their team's history that they really had a chance to win it all.
Following that season, issues with ownership coupled with a mediocre product and poor conditions caused fan attendance to continue to dwindle. In an effort to stay in Montreal, there was a proposal put together build a new stadium using public funding, which is something that many cities have done due to the influx on income stadiums bring for a city.
However, the Expos forgot one thing: Baseball is America's pastime, not Canada's. Most people were indifferent about the team and baseball as a whole, and preferred other sports. Therefore, spending taxpayer dollars on a baseball stadium was not in the cards for them and the vote got shut down.
This was the last straw and MLB took over the team in 2004 to prevent it from going under as a whole. Once relocation was decided the only question was where they would end up moving. Most of the big markets already had at least one team, except for one.
That brings us here 20 years later, as the Nationals are a staple of Washington DC, and from what I saw in Montreal, the Expos are all but forgotten. I didn't even see a jersey, and I spoke to locals who said they had never went to a game when the Expos were there. All in all, I think the league made the right choice as baseball is not a sport that can survive that city. Toronto will be the only Canadian team for the foreseeable future.
As the present-day Nationals get to enjoy the fruits of the labors of guys like James Wood, CJ Abrams, MacKenzie Gore, and others, Canadian baseball fans up north can only watch and wonder what it would be like if the Expos had never left.