Quote:
Originally Posted by telyou
It's funny how that game 5 in 1981 only attracted 36K fans.
15K fans below capacity.
It's also funny how the Expos were attracting 24K fans/game in '94, their best year ever.
Bottom line is simple, there is no long term support for the Expos. Montrealers couldn't care less about baseball. It is what it is.
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Unfair and untrue. There was a time in the late-70s and early-80s where the Expos were every bit as popular as les Canadiens - ask anyone who was there.
And you're cherry-picking your attendance figures -
Game 5 was played on a Monday afternoon.
NLCS attendance figures at MTL (Baseball-reference):
Game 3 -
54,372
Game 4 -
54,499
Game 5 -
36,491 (Monday afternoon)
The situation got really dire in the mid-90s as we know. Year in and year out it was the same bloody thing:
*A constant threat of relocation/ contraction
*Great young players sold off to the highest (or sometimes the lowest) bidders
*Incompetent ownership/ management/ leadership (post-Bronfman)
No fan base could have withstood that sort of negativity.
In terms of fan interest, we can make similar statements about Toronto or have you forgotten all those seasons of perpetual losing with few bums in seats?
As recently as 2010, the Jays drew only 1.5 million fans to the park. Why? No hope. No leadership. No money. The GM even proclaimed the Jays couldn't compete with the Yanks and Red Sox. I thought it was over, honestly.
No market currently outside MLB is an absolute '
coup de circuit.' A franchise in MTL would need strong, very deep-pocketed ownership to ensure success. Same goes for any team. And that's something Montreal didn't have at the end.