43 Facts About Montreal Expos

Montreal Expos were a Canadian professional baseball team based in Montreal, Quebec.

The Montreal Expos were the first Major League Baseball franchise located outside the United States.

The Montreal Expos failed to post a winning record in any of their first ten seasons.

Montreal Expos led the team to four winning seasons, including 1994, where the Expos had the best record in baseball before a players' strike ended the season.

The Expos retired four numbers in Montreal, and nine former members have been elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame, with Gary Carter, Andre Dawson and Tim Raines' plaques depicting them with Expos caps.

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The Autostade, home of the Canadian Football League's Montreal Expos Alouettes, was ruled out due to the prohibitive cost of expanding it and adding a dome, as well as doubts that the city even had the right to make the needed renovations to the federally-owned facility.

Negotiations dragged out through the winter, leading the Montreal Expos to begin selling 1977 season tickets under the assumption they would have to play at Jarry.

In 1979, Montreal had its first winning season in franchise history; in mid-July, the Expos led the NL East by 6.

The fans responded: Montreal Expos drew two million fans for the first time in franchise history and it was the first of five consecutive seasons that the team was in the top-four of National League attendance.

In both seasons, the Montreal Expos were in the hunt for the division title into the last weekend of the season before losing to the ultimate World Series champion.

Montreal Expos won game three, but failed in their first attempt to close out the series by losing game four and set up a deciding fifth game.

The Montreal Expos replaced Fanning with Bill Virdon in 1983, and under their new manager, led the division in mid-July.

The Montreal Expos won more games between 1979 and 1983 than any other team in the NL East, but had only one postseason appearance to show for it.

Montreal Expos's failed 1984 season resulted in a 31 percent decrease in attendance at the same time salaries were escalating throughout baseball.

In trading Carter, the Montreal Expos gave up a team icon who, like Rusty Staub before him, endeared himself to the fans by learning French and being one of the most accessible players on the team.

Dawson, who should have been one of the most valuable free agents on the market that year, discovered that not only was there little interest in signing him, but that the Montreal Expos were publicly commenting about his knee problems in an effort to further drive interest down.

Montreal Expos had one of the best seasons of his career in 1987, leading the NL with 123 runs, stealing 50 bases, batting.

Montreal Expos was named the most valuable player of the 1987 Major League Baseball All-Star Game, as he drove in the game's only two runs with a triple in the 13th inning.

Montreal Expos hoped to take one more chance at winning a title and in 1989, the Expos made a push for a division title by acquiring starting pitcher and pending free agent Mark Langston from the Seattle Mariners.

The price would ultimately prove to be a high one as the Montreal Expos gave up future Hall of Famer Randy Johnson and two other pitchers.

The Montreal Expos hinted that they would have to open the 1992 season elsewhere unless Olympic Stadium was certified safe.

However, the foundation of the Montreal Expos' future was establishing their places in MLB: Larry Walker, Marquis Grissom and Delino DeShields had made their debuts the season prior, and the team acquired Moises Alou in a trade with Pittsburgh.

Moises' father Felipe, who had been a long time employee of the Montreal Expos, was promoted to manager during the 1992 season and became the first native of the Dominican Republic to manage a Major League Baseball team.

Montreal Expos were recognized as having a strong team entering the 1994 season, but their hopes of winning the division were significantly impacted by realignment, as the three-time defending West Division champion Atlanta Braves were shifted to the East.

Montreal Expos won two out of three games in the series, including a late-game victory in the opener over future-Hall-of-Fame pitcher Greg Maddux that the players viewed as the turning point of their season.

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Montreal Expos then embarked on a west coast road trip in which they won the final five games and entered the All-Star break in first place.

Brochu estimated that had he tried to keep the 1994 team together, the Montreal Expos would have lost $25 million in 1995, which would have pushed the franchise to the edge of bankruptcy.

Montreal Expos claimed that he would have certainly kept Hill, Wetteland, Grissom and Walker had the partners been willing to put up the money necessary to keep them in Montreal.

Montreal Expos was ultimately replaced as managing general partner by American art dealer Jeffrey Loria, who was initially hailed as the franchise's saviour.

Montreal Expos promised to rebuild the Expos with "a winning attitude and winning players" in an effort to bring the team back to where it had been only six years earlier.

Montreal Expos sought support from Major League Baseball, the Quebec government, and architectural firm HOK Sport for a cheaper and re-designed version of Labatt Park that eschewed the retro-classic concept in favour of a more modern design with curved contours and glass.

Montreal Expos's departure marked the final end of the proposed Labatt Park, though any realistic chance of the park being built ended when the Bouchard government repeated its previous refusal to commit any public money to the project.

Montreal Expos was hired only 72 hours before the start of spring training, and there were only six other employees in baseball operations; most of the others had either followed Loria to the Marlins or taken jobs with other clubs.

Remembering how the Seattle Mariners had revived a stalled bid for what became Safeco Field with a playoff run in 1995, Minaya believed that if the Expos made the playoffs, the renewed public and private sector support would lead to a viable owner stepping forward who would keep the team in Montreal.

Montreal Expos franchise was saved by a new collective bargaining agreement between the owners and players that forbade contraction until at least 2006.

Jamey Carroll scored the last Montreal Expos run and Endy Chavez became the final Montreal Expos batter in history when he grounded out in the top of the ninth to end the game.

John McHale, then president of the Montreal Expos, was a strong proponent of adding a second Canadian Major League team, in Toronto.

The Montreal Expos remained Canada's most popular team until their mid-1980s downturn coincided with the Blue Jays' rise, culminating in the Jays' first American League East division championship, in 1985.

Ten years after the Montreal Expos relocated to Washington, a two-game exhibition series between the Toronto Blue Jays and New York Mets was held at the Olympic Stadium to conclude the spring training schedule prior to the 2014 season.

For others, the goal was to demonstrate that Montreal Expos had an interest in returning to Major League Baseball.

Nine people who represented the Montreal Expos organization have subsequently gone on to gain election to the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum.

Guerrero played eight of his 16 seasons with the Montreal Expos, being named to the MLB All-Star Game three times and winning the Silver Slugger Award three times while with the team.

Tony Perez played three years with the Montreal Expos but was primarily known for being a member of Cincinnati's "Big Red Machine" teams of the 1970s.