Montreal Expos president Tony Tavares said yesterday he expects to learn the team’s fate for 2004 by Sept.1.
The timetable is in keeping with previous indications from Major League Baseball sources that a decision will arrive between mid-August and the end of the season. But industry sources also say baseball’s immediate focus is settling the team’s near-term future and not making a permanent move of the Expos.
MLB president Bob DuPuy said last month the Expos would be moved permanently when “the moon, the stars, the sun and the dollars are all aligned.” Nothing since then has appeared to change that mindset, and expectations are heavy around baseball that the Expos will not find a permanent new home until at least the 2005 season.
In the meantime, the Expos’ leading choices are remaining in Montreal or playing in San Juan, Puerto Rico, or Monterrey, Mexico. San Juan stands as the most likely option given its experience this year with 22 games there, the likelihood of further guaranteed money to baseball from local promoters and the lack of currency exchange issues. Puerto Rico uses American dollars, while the weak Canadian dollar has contributed heavily to placing the MLB-owned Expos in their current beleaguered state.
The candidates for permanent relocation are the District, Northern Virginia and Portland, Ore. The players’ union said, regardless of the team’s venue, it is not interested in having its members play another split-venue schedule.
Baseball owners and executives are meeting today and tomorrow in Boston, and further meetings by, and an update from, the relocation committee are expected.
“We don’t have a latest version of reality. I don’t think baseball does either,” Tavares said. “But I do think we need to move forward soon and will do so. A schedule needs to get out. Other teams are being affected.”
MLB executives owe the players’ union a draft of the 2004 schedule by Friday, as the union retains the right to review and pre-approve the slate. The original deadline of July1 for a schedule draft has been extended twice, but both sides are loath to wait again until November, when the 2003 schedule was finalized.
Tavares originally made his comments about expecting an answer on the 2004 season by Sept.1 during the Expos’ English-language radio broadcast Monday night.
Meanwhile, a report on a Montreal radio station by former Expos and Boston Red Sox pitcher Bill Lee that the Expos were definitively moving to the District next season has been widely debunked. Quoting union chief Donald Fehr, Lee said Monday that MLB has decided on Washington, and he reiterated that claim yesterday.
Both Tavares, who quickly contacted MLB executive vice president Rob Manfred, and union sources disputed the report. Baseball sources said Fehr merely told Lee the Expos did not have a future in Montreal, which is hardly news, and Washington was a potentially strong candidate for relocation, also a sentiment previously stated by Fehr.
“It was very hard for me to believe that baseball would inform the union before informing us what was happening, and thankfully that wasn’t the case,” Tavares said.
Lee was not available for comment yesterday.
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