Rebuilding Rob

Title of this documentary does not leave much to the imagination. For those who don’t already know, the Montreal expose or a major league baseball team from 1969 to 2004, when they moved to Washington DC to become the Nationals.

This doc is not so much a collective history of the the entire Expos franchise. Specifically, talks about the declining years from the teams; touching on the late 1980s and going all the way up to the teams departure from Montreal in 2004.

It’s always interesting for me to watch how documentary about something that I lived through, or at least most of. I always like to see if the documentary matches up to my recollection of events. I did follow the expos exploits, but I still learned a lot from the documentary, particularly the breakdown with ownership consortium and their thoughts on Jeffrey Loria.

As the movie was made by French-Canadian filmmaker Jean-Francois Poisson, many of the interviewees were French-Canadian themselves. As a result, most of them were dubbed over in English (at least as I had my Netflix account set). Natrurally, the Americans writers and former players spoke English. What was especially interesting was seeing 2 Dominican-born former Expos Vadimir Guererro and Pedro Martinez. Guerrerro speaks English and was dubbed in English for his interviews whereas Martinez spoke English. Even with Quebec being mostly French-speaking, the dubbing crews worked overtime for this film!

So…

So who killed the Expos? Its natural to want to discover one smoking gun, or point fingers in one direction, but the Expos died as a result of many contributing factors. The long and short of it is (in my opinion):

The economic inequalities baked into Major League Baseball – unlike other major sports leagues in North America, MLB does not have a salary cap. Teams can play any player, or any roster as much or as little as they want. This make it difficult for smaller-market teams like Pittsburgh to compete with team like the Los Angeles Dodgers.

the money problems that plagued the Expos from day one – the Expos never were considered a “have” team in MLB. Money problems seemed to be present since their inception in 1969. To make matters worse, the team made revenue in Canadian dollars, but paid player is US dollars. At a time when the value of the Canadian dollar was particularly low, this further hindered the team.

The 1994 players’ strike – While not a catastrophic death blow, the 1994 player strike took a lot of the collective wind out of the fan’s sails. the Expos were easily the best team in baseball that year. Fans were naturally disheartened to see that magical season never come to fruition.

The post-strike Fire Sale – There was no real compromise reached in the 94 Players Strike. Players returned to work under the same economic structure as before. The Expos, desperate to cut payroll traded away most of their young talent and got little in return. This fire sale sucked what life was left out of the casual fanbase.

The Jeffrey Loria Grift – Jeffrey Loria, who was initially seen as a potential savior of baseball in Montreal bought the Expos not to save the game in Montreal, but rather to get a seat at the ownership table. He didn’t give a crap about the Expos, as was evident in the Marlins-for Expose swap with MLB.

Dishonorable mention – I was a bit surprised that there was only brief mention of the Expos TV deal ending. Likewise, I was shocked that nothing was said about the team playing homes game in Puerto Rico during the 2003 and 2004 seasons. TV is probably the single biggest revenue source for a professional sports team. Plus its a great way to entice fans to come to the ballpark.

FINAL TAKE: As a baseball fan and someone who followed the Expos saga probably more than the average sports fan, I enjoyed this documentary. I don’t know how much it would appeal to the non-sports fan except that we can all relate to losing something that we love. Seeing grown men and women brought to tears twenty years later was heart-breaking. RECOMMENDED

Who Killed The Montreal Expos? is currently streaming on Netflix.

Thanks for stopping by Rebuilding Rob. Be sure to like, 👍 comment and subscribe to my blog below. It’s greatly appreciated! Also, feel free to follow me on social media as well! Check out my most recent posts as well as some earlier, related (and perhaps, not-so-related) posts:

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The article “Rob Reviews: Who Killed The Montreal Expos?’ first appeared on Rebuilding Rob.