Sully Baseball Honors... The 1978 Tony Perez Topps Card

Doesn't Tony look a little ticked off here? Maybe a little unhappy with his situation?
He's not playing, has an expression of indifference and annoyance intertwined.

Maybe that was apt. This picture was taken during the 1977 season.
The year before he was clinching his second straight World Series title with the Big Red Machine. Sure his stats dipped a little bit in 1976, but they won the World Series crushing the Yankees.

They looked unstoppable.
And a year later he was sitting in Montreal.

At the time the Expos had never had a .500 season, let alone be the consensus pick to win the Division. And that season they moved into the behemoth that was Olympic Stadium.

He was a Spanish speaking Cuban learning English shipped from the best American team to a Canadian team in a city that speaks French.

No wonder he looks out of sorts.
He's not even wearing his cap.

Probably he didn't want to wear it.
Instead he's looking out thinking "Really? I was traded for Dale Murray and Woodie Fryman?"

Not exactly an action shot, is it?

The Montreal Rays or the Montreal A's? Why not?

In my last piece for The Hardball Times, I wrote about how Tampa Bay used to be an ideal spot for THREATENING to move your team. There was a baseball stadium just sitting there and the good folks of Minnesota, Texas, Chicago, Seattle and San Francisco all built new ball parks to keep their teams from the Sun Coast.

Now that the Rays are playing in Tampa Bay, they can't wait to get out of the very stadium that so many other owners were coveting.

Now most teams have either new stadiums or recently renovated ones. Once the Marlins move into their new digs in 2012, the Rays and the A's will be the only ones left playing it a dud of a ballpark.

There is talk about building a place in Fremont or San Jose for the A's, but California barely has enough money to pay their policemen, firefighters and teachers. Where is the dough to build a ballpark in the expensive Silicon Valley?

And the Rays proposed new ballpark (or Jabba's Sail Barge) will go up against a proposed railroad extension in Florida. Good luck having a ballpark beat improved transportation.

But as I wrote in a post from 2009, it is harder for a baseball team to relocate than any other sports team. If you want to move the 49ers to Fayetteville, Arkansas, there's a place for them to play tomorrow.

A baseball team would have a hard time finding a place where they can play a major league game that is just sitting there.

Or would they have a hard time?

What is the biggest American or Canadian city to NOT have a Major League team?

That would be Montreal!
And guess what they have?

A BASEBALL STADIUM THAT IS JUST SITTING THERE!

OK, it's not exactly Wrigley Field. It's Stade Olympique... the Olympic Stadium from the 1976 Games.
It's the big ugly eye sore sitting on the outskirts of one of the most beautiful cities in North America.

It's the money pit that sits empty and reminds everyone in Quebec that the Olympic Games were a financial disaster there and that the Expos couldn't stay.

It is the travesty in architecture that had the crane that was supposed to lower a roof on the stadium not work and an ugly canvas roof put on instead... all the while their neighbors in Toronto had figured out how to make a retractable roof.

The giant behemouth of a ballpark that looks less like a place to see a baseball game and more like the Starship Enterprise from The Next Generation after they did the saucer separation!

I've been to a game in that park.

It was awful and ugly and empty.

So why the hell am I suggesting to put a team back in there?

Well it is hard to make the case that the A's and the Rays would be hurt if they played in an empty ugly eye sore of a stadium.

Guess what? They both are playing in empty ugly eye sore stadiums already!

The A's play in what used to be the Oakland Coliseum. I used to go to games there a lot. It was a nice place to watch baseball. Now, after the Raiders parked an aircraft carrier into center field, it is a dump. And I went to a playoff game in that dump in 2003. There were at least 20,000 empty seats. During the 2006 playoffs when the A's made it all the way to the ALCS, they had an embarrassing tarp covering the entire upper deck to create the illusion of a bigger crowd.

The Rays play in the park that, as I covered in my Hardball Times piece, was obsolete before the Devil Rays played their first game. It took a month of playing there before people began to suggest "maybe they need a new place."

So how could playing in ANOTHER dump hurt the team.

There are some advantages to Montreal... besides its size.

Of course they love the Canadiens (probably more than they love being Canadians). But remember there was a point in the early 1980s that the Expos drew some of the biggest crowds in the National League.

Somewhere there is a fanbase that could get excited about baseball. And they could get excited about a team that wants to STAY in Montreal.

Yes, the 1994 strike forever scarred the fanbase and made it irreparable. But guess what? That was 16 years ago! There are 20 somethings in Quebec with no memory of Moises Alou, Larry Walker et al being robbed of a chance to bring a pennant to a French speaking people.

They don't remember the team being dismantled. They don't remember the Brochu ownership and the Loria group buying the team and the travesty of the contraction threat and MLB owning the team and bleeding them dry until Peter Angelos allowed a team to play in Washington.

Those aren't even blurry memories. For the young fans a new ball club in Montreal would be a fun novelty at first, and if they can play well, perhaps they would regain the popularity of the early 1980s.

As for older fans who do remember the wealth spring of great talent that played in Montreal.

Read my Home Grown vs Acquired post for the Expos. They had a HELL of a lot of great players.

Gary Carter and Andre Dawson wear the Expos cap on their Hall of Fame plaques. Tim Raines might be joining them.

Older fans with a new team might be reminded of the fun of following such a talented group instead of grinding their teeth over the strike related fiascos.

I've seen dormant Cleveland, Seattle and San Francisco fan bases, bitter over management, bad baseball and bad ballparks, become rejuvenated with a turn around, new management and a new direction.

Those fans not only were happy to have a winner, but thrilled to either be excited about baseball again or for the first time in their lives. Imagine a place like Montreal being awakened.

And, with the Blue Jays good but not exactly a powerhouse (and no longer the 4 million fans a season franchise), Montreal could once again be Canada's team.

How can that be worse than the other team in the Bay Area? Or the team that needs to give tickets away in Florida?

And who knows? If baseball can catch on in Montreal without the specter of moving, maybe that once rumored to be built downtown ballpark could become a reality.

Now of the two teams, the A's make the most sense.

As bad a stadium situation that the Rays have, they have decent television ratings and might be able to develop a base. And who knows? They might just build that stadium with a sail.

The A's? Many of their games aren't televised, their fan base is dwindling, the Giants own the Bay Area and if there is going to be a new stadium built in the South Bay, it will be to keep the 49ers from moving.

So why not head North of the border?
I wrote earlier about why I miss the Expos. Well, the A's can reap the benefits of all that the Expos left behind.

They can move from a 400,000 person city that shares its fanbase with the current World Series Champion to a city of 1.6 million that could have a true sports renaissance.

And the name could be altered to "Les Athletiques de Montreal."

Il semble belle pour moi!

THE RANGERS DID IT! Mariners and Nationals... you are on the clock

The Texas Rangers are going to the World Series.
Those words look strange being typed out.

I honestly thought they would never make it in their history. But here they are.

And I am thinking about Washington for several reasons.

The Rangers WERE the second version of the Washington Senators before they moved to Arlington.

The team currently in Washington, the Nationals, are one of only two franchises to never had made the World Series.

The other also plays in Washington... Washington State. The Mariners.

The Nationals got to within one game of the 1981 World Series when they were the Montreal Expos.

The Mariners made it to three ALCS berths and getting to Game 6 in 1995 and 2000.

But alas no pennants.

So you are on notice, Mariners and Nationals.
Everyone else has made it in BUT you. All of the original franchises have won at least one World Series.

The Nationals franchise has been around since 1969. The Mariners showed up in 1977.

The Expansion of 1961 and 1962 gave baseball the Mets (who won the 1969 and 1986 World Series and the 1973 and 2000 pennants) the Astros franchise (who won the 2005 pennant), the Angels franchise (who won the 2002 World Series) and now the Texas Rangers.

The expansion of 1969 gave us the Nationals franchise, the Padres (winners of the 1984 and 1998 pennants), the Royals (winner of the 1985 World Series and the 1980 pennant) and the Brewers franchise (winner of the 1982 pennant.)

The 1977 expansion introduced the Blue Jays (winner of the 1992 and 1993 World Series) and the Mariners.

The 1993 expansions brought the Marlins (winner of the 1997 and 2003 World Series) and the Rockies (winner of the 2007 pennant) to the show.

And finally the 1998 expansion sparked the Diamondbacks (winner of the 2001 World Series) and the Rays franchise (winner of the 2008 pennant.)


Put together a pennant winner and get off this board.
If the Rangers can do it in the sweltering heat, then your team can do it.

Your road to the pennant starts...... now!

Cliff Lee's Trade is the Sequel to the Mark Langston trade

The Mariners went into the season with some optimism and some solid talent... but a slow start took them out of the race early and not even the presence of Ken Griffey Jr. could turn things around.

So Seattle took their left handed ace who was in his walk year and traded him off. It seemed like New York, looking for another October run, was the likely landing spot, but instead sent him to a team that had never won a pennant before and despite financial troubles was going all in.

The Mariners fell apart after the trade but some good solid talent came back giving them some optimism for the future.

Meanwhile the ace flourished at first, but then came back down to earth.

Which Mariners team am I talking about?
This year's team? Or the 1989 team?

Which left handed ace am I talking about?
Cliff Lee? Mark Langston?

In 1989 there was some optimism with the arrival of manager Jim Lefebvre and rookie Ken Griffey Jr. And a quick glance sees there was some talent on that team.

An infield of Jim Presley at third, Harold Reynolds at second and Alvin Davis at first is nothing to sneeze at. And oh yeah, they had a young shortstop named Omar Vizquel.

Griffey anchored the outfield that had Hac Man Leonard and a young Jay Buhner.

Plus pitchers who had some success in their careers like Billy Swift, Erik Hanson, Scott Bankhead and Mike Jackson were all on the staff.

But they fell into 5th place well behind the A's when it was clear that Mark Langston, their best pitcher and a legit #1 starter, wasn't coming back.

The Mets looked like the likely landing spot as they had tons of young pitching talent they seemed ready to move. (They ultimately would trade Rick Aguilera, Kevin Tapani and David West that summer to the Twins for Frank Viola... a move that helped clinch a World Series for Minnesota, not New York.)

Instead they found a partner with the Expos who were jammed packed with talent and had their eyes set on unseating the Mets.

Langston dominated the Padres in his first start, striking out 13 and giving up 1 earned run over 8 innings.

He began his Expos career with a 10-3 record and people declaring him the second coming of Steve Carlton. The Expos were in first by the All Star break and at the height of Langston's winning ways, the Expos built up a 3 1/2 game lead and remained in first place by themselves as late as August 4.

When Langston threw a complete game shutout on July 25th against Philadelphia, the Expos were riding a 6 game winning streak and matched their 3 1/2 game lead for the widest margin of the year.

Then the roof caved in.

The Expos lost 40 of their last 62 games. Langston lost 6 of his last 8 decisions and the Expos, who seemed to have everything in line to win the National League East for the first time in a non Strike Shortened season, finished the year at .500, 4th place and 12 games behind the Cubs.

Langston left Montreal for the Angels.
Meanwhile one of the players in the haul from Montreal became a more fearsome pitcher than Langston ever was... future Hall of Famer Randy Johnson who did indeed lead the Mariners to their first ever post season berths.

Which brings us to 2010.

The bookends of Ken Griffey's career has him see aces dealt from the Mariners.
Cliff Lee is sent not to the Yankees but to the Rangers, who like the Expos, are pushing their chips to the center of the table.

Like Langston, Lee came out smoking but has slowed down considerably.

Now with an 8 1/2 game lead heading into the last day of August, it is safe to say the Rangers aren't going away. But can Lee turn things around to help deliver a pennant?

And there seems to be little doubt that, like Langston in Quebec, his stay there is temporary.

I wonder who in the haul back be the future Hall of Famer? I've got my eye on you, Justin Smoak.

By the way... there's another part to this analogy of the Mariners dealing ace left handed starters.

Remember when the Mariners had to deal Randy Johnson when HE was facing free agency?

Once again they found an unlikely trading partner looking to finally win a pennant (The Astros)... the ace pitched well but fell short of a pennant (Johnson lost to the Padres twice in the Division Series)... and left town (to the Diamondbacks)... and the Mariners got back a nice haul (Freddy Garcia and Carlos Guillen were big parts of the 2000 and 2001 playoff teams.)

What I am saying is... the Mariners are good at this whole "trading a left handed ace away" thing.