If you've listened to Jeff Blair in the last couple of days, you should know that Loria is not demanding more money on top of the Money that the Quebec owners were supposed to commit. They way the media has put the spin on things and the owners have put suggest that they are demanding $30 million on top of the money that is already been committed. This is not the case. You know what the Quebec owners have put in total as of now? $5 million. What has Jeffery Loria put in? $18 million. So before Loria decides where he is going with this group, he wants the Quebec owners the cough up the $30 million they owe and they balk, wanting to see Loria's money first. If he was able to get this bid finalized by the MLB to purchase the team and was able to bid $170 million U.S. for the Orioles in 1991, then the problem lies completely within the Quebec consortium and their inability to get their cash in order when it matters most. I hope Loria goes ahead and buys the 70% stake in this team, then maybe we can move on and forget about all this crap, but for now, the Quebec owners hold the future of this franchise in their hands. Why don't you write some rants about them for a change?

As for this whole thing that Loria is the one causing the stadium impasse by wanted a retractable roof, I don't buy that for one minute. Loria has said from the beginning (along with David Samson) that he wants an open-air downtown ballpark. In fact, he went so much out as to saying that "I doubt the fans in Yankee stadium complain much about wearing parka's to the World Series". The one who brought this whole retractable roof thing up if you remember correctly was Jean Coutu in the middle of April when he was citing that most of the early season games would have not been played because of either rain, snow or extreme cold. My guess is when they did a survey and found out that Quebecers don't want a retractable roof stadium, the Quebec owners used this suggestion as creating means to say that they can't afford the new stadium and that Jeffery has gone off course and changed his mind. Until they get their house settled with people willing to put the cold hard cash down and can be trusted to be there when needed, then I see no point worrying when the shovel is going to be in the ground because it won't be in the ground until you get the house settled. Blair made two great points both tonight and the other night. The first is imagine how horrible it would be to start construction on the stadium and then have the Quebec owners balk at paying up? Loria and Samson know what they're doing here and they know they can't begin construction until they know the cash is there. If anything, they're saving us from corner cutting and flaws that would be there if we started building in April and had the owners not knowing whether to pay up or not. I'd rather wait a year and have a great stadium than start now and risk the stadium being abandon before it is completed.

The other point is this: You can blame the corporate community till the cows come home and realistically, they deserve a lot of blame for not being there, but what reasonable business would want to advertise, buy boxes or put money into a team with local owners who can't even decide whether they still want to be part of Baseball in Montreal or not?

Once again, Brochu era team politics is rearing it's ugly Quebecois head and always will as long as you still have some of the same bad apples as that of the Brochu era.


Previous Opinion

Next Opinion



Head back to Save the Expos Home Page