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HATO REY, Puerto Rico — At Hiram Bithorn Stadium, a gate festooned with sample press badges is one of the few reminders of the Montreal Expos’ 44-game island stay for parts of the 2003 and 2004 seasons.

Just five months since the last of the Expos’ “home” games here, the ballpark stands as a poignant symbol of baseball’s decline in the homeland of Roberto Clemente.

On a Wednesday night in mid-December, the home team Santurce Cangrejeros (Crabbers) are playing the rival Carolina Gigantes (Giants) before a crowd announced as 1,000 but actually much smaller.

When the Expos migrated from Montreal to Washington in late September, they left behind a legacy of losing seasons and dwindling fan interest in a region that never really embraced major league baseball. Their departure from San Juan, however, has a much different flavor.

Puerto Rico has long been known as a baseball-mad country with an enduring legacy that runs from Orlando Cepeda and Clemente — an icon on the island — through Roberto Alomar and Bernie Williams and on to Carlos Beltran and Nationals second baseman Jose Vidro. That legacy, however, has languished in recent years, with other sports growing in popularity and the overall level of baseball declining.

Bringing the Expos to San Juan seemed the perfect remedy for that lagging interest, as well as an opportunity for Major League Baseball to showcase its Latin fan base. But rather than resuscitating the sport there, the Expos left a baseball vacuum in their wake.

“It has had a devastating effect,” Puerto Rican Winter League president Joaquin Monserrate said of the Expos’ two-year stay. “Major League Baseball deflated this market without any kind of warning or cooperation with the Winter League.”

Bithorn Stadium, just 10 minutes south of San Juan, has struggled to draw even nominal attendance despite a renovated stadium and the presence of Crabbers infielders Alomar and Carlos Baerga (who doubles as team president). A recent injury to Alomar has helped curtail interest, but ardent fans say the team’s problems — as well as the league’s and, by extension, Puerto Rico’s — run much deeper.

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Monserrate’s chief complaint is marketing. He said the sponsorship that used to pour into the Winter League, determining ticket prices and attracting fans to the games, largely has dried up.

While he is hopeful of a brighter future, Monserrate conceded the current economic climate is not good. As evidence, the league trimmed two weeks from this year’s season because of financial concerns, and in Carolina three of the eight billboards above picturesque Roberto Clemente Municipal Stadium remain empty.

“Without sponsors you don’t have the proper advertisements,” Monserrate said. “And after watching major league baseball in the city, it’s hard for people to go back to watching us.”

Edwin Rodriguez, however, places the blame at the feet of Winter League officials. Rodriguez, a former Carolina general manager, runs www.hitboricua.com, the league’s unofficial Web site. He said the problem is not with the Expos’ departure but with a league that operates only five months a year and has not done enough to showcase players.

“Saying the Expos are the reason for the poor attendance — that’s not true,” Rodriguez said. “People who say that are looking for an excuse.”

For years, any notion baseball could lose its foothold on the island was unthinkable. Puerto Rico dominated the Caribbean World Series — played among the top teams from Puerto Rico, Mexico, Venezuela and the Dominican Republic — in the 1950s, won four titles in the 1970s and took three of four from 1992 through 1995. The World Series was not played in the 1960s.

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