Just one month ago the Montreal Baseball Project, in collaboration with Ernst & Young and the Board of Trade of Metropolitan Montreal, produced a feasibility study of the return of baseball to Montreal. The study concluded that the city could financially support a team and mapped out exactly what would be required to land one. It estimated that a total sum of $1.025 billion would be needed with roughly $350 million of it coming from government funding and the rest from a private investor. Half of that total would be put toward purchasing the team, and the other half would go to building a new stadium in downtown Montreal.

According to the study, the construction of a new stadium would be a necessity if baseball were to return. The Olympic Stadium was not an ideal location. It was too far from downtown, featured poor facilities, and lacked an authentic baseball atmosphere. Many believe that the lack of a passable stadium – leading to low attendance figures – was the primary reason why the team left in the first place.

Shortly following the release of the feasibility study, The Sports Network (TSN) 690 Radio released a speculative design for a new stadium. Their imagined stadium is located just outside the downtown core, bordering the St. Lawrence. It’s an open ballpark with no more than 36,000 seats, and the home plate faces out toward the river, meaning a long home run could conceivably land in the river (San Francisco-style) and that games could potentially be played in an April, or even hopefully October, snowfall. Pictures of the proposed stadium evoke a strong similarity to the beautiful PNC Park in Pittsburgh.

At first sight, the large amount of public money may appear problematic as many public stadium deals have not returned their investments, but the study estimates that the government would recover the amount spent after eight years, mostly through sales and income tax paid by players. The study also adds that over 22 years the government would stand to gross another $1 billion in tax revenue from the team. Not to mention the overall boost that the economy would receive from hosting 81 baseball games a year. This would go a long way toward justifying the initial sum that would be required from the taxpayer.

The biggest hurdle to jump in the project is a private firm stepping up with the remaining $675 million. No firm has committed to getting the process rolling, despite a reported 81 per cent of companies in the Montreal area supporting the idea of the team’s return.

One possibility however, and this is purely hypothetical, could be Montreal-based communications giant Bell Media. They are the largest communications firm in the country, and were ranked as Canada’s eighth most profitable publically traded company by The Globe and Mail last June. But, as the owner of TSN, Bell has seen its prospects for competitiveness in sports media substantially challenged since losing the Canadian broadcast rights to most National Hockey League (NHL) games. TSN is now left with the majority of National Basketball Association (NBA) games and the Canadian Football League (CFL), which are much less popular in Canada. Rogers’ Sportsnet also owns all the rights to the Blue Jays and the majority of other MLB games, but if Bell purchased a new baseball franchise for Montreal, it would give them exclusive rights to 162 games a year, a move that makes sense because it might become a necessary one to save TSN, and could keep them competitive with Rogers in the sports media field.

In a press release, president and founder of the Montreal Baseball Project Warren Cromartie said, “Baseball’s return to Montreal is definitely feasible […] keep in mind that Montreal is currently the largest market in North America without a Major League Baseball team.”

Despite forgetting that Mexico is part of North America, which has two cities substantially larger than Montreal, Cromartie’s point about size should be considered. Montreal is the largest market between the U.S. and Canada that does not have a baseball team, and this is in the day and age of the Tampa Bay Rays. The Rays have been a perennial playoff contender since 2008, even with a tiny payroll, thanks in large part to their brilliant General Manager Andrew Friedman, but the team still sees incredibly low attendance figures year after year. In 2013, the Rays finished with a record of 92-71, made it to the American League Divisional Series, and still finished dead last in the majors in attendance. They averaged 1,000 fewer fans per game than the next lowest team. When a team is winning and the market isn’t responding, there appears to be a clear problem.

If the Rays were moved to Montreal it would not only replace a poor market with a larger, albeit still uncertain, one, but would also mean the creation of a new Toronto-Montreal rivalry by putting the Expos in the American League East with the Blue Jays. This rivalry was minimal before the Expos moved. The two teams were in different leagues and played only 43 total regular season games against one another over seven seasons, each one of those generally providing a strong boost to attendance.

As some of the pieces to the puzzle seemingly come together, the question of fan support remains prevalent. Would fans come out and support a new baseball team in Montreal? Early signs thus far have been positive. In a poll taken by Leger Marketing, 69 per cent of Quebecers said they were in favour of the Expos returning, and in September, just ten days after going on sale, 45,000 tickets to the spring training games in Montreal had been sold.

Attendance at the two Blue Jays games here will be a major factor for whether a return of the Expos takes the step from ‘theoretically practical’ to ‘in progress.’ If the majority of fans attending are just travelling Blue Jays fans eager for spring ball, it will not look good. But if a boisterous crowd of local Montrealers cram the seats for two meaningless March games played by two visiting teams in an old and run-down stadium, who knows. A great deal of things still have to happen, but many can be comforted in the realization that the return of the Expos may no longer be just a pipe dream.

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Much ado has been made in the last decade, and rightly so, about player safety. The goal of both the league and the players’ union has been to make the game safer, in order to preserve players’ futures. But what hasn’t been talked about enough is education, specifically the fact that education is often forgone in order to take a shot at the pros. This leaves former players with few meaningful options following their careers and potential financial hardships. This situation results from the majority of pro-caliber prospects playing in major junior leagues (such as the Ontario Hockey League or Western Hockey League) instead of at colleges or universities en route to the National Hockey League (NHL). Although there is an educational program in place in all the major junior leagues, recent reports have shown that only about 20 per cent of players get a college-level degree from this program, as compared to 88 per cent for college hockey athletes.

This is not an issue pertinent to the stars, who make millions over lengthy careers, but rather to the multitude of players who either don’t last long in the league or who don’t make it at all. Of all the players at the highest amateur level, junior or college, only 4.7 per cent of them will make it to the pros. But for the lucky ones that do make it, chances are they won’t be playing there for long. The average NHL career lasts only 239 games, and more than 50 per cent of player’s careers are finished before they turn 30. One player who stands as the model counterexample to this problem is McGill graduate and former Montreal Canadien Mathieu Darche.

Darche played four years for the McGill Redmen, amassing 130 points in 90 total games. His senior season he scored 27 goals and had 35 assists in only 26 games. He graduated in 2000 with a degree in international business. In an interview with The Daily, Darche discussed his time at McGill and the issue of education in hockey.

“For sure I enjoyed [my time with the Redmen],” Darche said. “I spent four years with the same group of guys, we all started in first year together. It wasn’t a competition; people weren’t pushing for a contract or fighting for their careers.” Darche is thankful for his time at McGill, saying, “Most of my closest friends are guys who went to McGill and it’s where I met my wife. I worked hard, but definitely had fun.”
Following the completion of his degree, Darche was signed by the Columbus Blue Jackets as an undrafted free agent. He spent twelve years between the American Hockey League (AHL, the professional league directly below the NHL) and the NHL, including three years with the Montreal Canadiens from 2009 to 2012. Darche retired from pro hockey last February.

“I have no regrets about my career. Through it all, it was great,” Darche explained. “Coming from the CIS (Canadian Interuniversity Sport league), which is not a common route, I had to work my way up. I always dreamed [of] play[ing] pro, but never thought it would actually happen. I idolized the Canadiens growing up, so it was great to be able to play for them. The highlight of my career was playing for the Canadiens in those final three years.”

Darche was correct in his assertion that coming from the CIS is not a common route. This past year in the NHL, less than 30 per cent of all players had come from college hockey programs. The majority came straight from the junior leagues with nothing more than a high school diploma.
When asked if he would advise kids today to take the university/college route instead of playing major junior, Darche said: “Without a doubt. Of those who do [make it], what percentage will actually make enough for the rest of their lives?”
“After high school [major] junior hockey was never an option for me. I never considered not getting a university degree,” said Darche. “The way I saw it was that you go through school because you probably will end up using your degree more than your hockey skills. I was one of the few who made it to the pros, played 12 years and I’ll still end up using my education more than I will my hockey skills.”
Having spent more than 500 career games in the AHL and only half that amount in the NHL, Darche even attributes part of his eventual success in hockey to his education.

“I spent a long time in the minors, too long in my opinion,” he joked. “I felt more secure [having earned a degree]. It was the way I was able to grind it in the minors all those years,” Darche added. “I knew I had options after. I could pursue my dream and ha[ve] something to fall back on. It gave me the opportunity to push longer, and hang on, and eventually make it.”

Hockey is isolated, to an extent, in its lack of college-educated players. The National Football League almost exclusively drafts players out of college. The National Basketball Association (NBA) primarily draws its talent from college as well. Only 19.3 per cent of current NBA players did not come from a college team, with many of these players coming from non-American leagues. In baseball, players are either drafted from college or straight from high school; they have the choice to pursue higher education in their road to the pros. Aspiring pro-hockey players often don’t have that same choice, as it is far more likely to make it out of junior leagues than from the college level.

“It would be much better if the NHL could be more like basketball and football, where education is the route to the pros,” Darche argued. “But I don’t know how we get there. It’s going to take a long time to change.”

This past summer, just months after his retirement, Darche began putting his McGill degree in international business to use. He was hired by Delmar International Inc., a large firm involved in freight shipping and customs brokerage, as director of business development and public relations.

“Business was always something I looked at [for after my career], how and when I didn’t know.” Darche said. “You prepare for your post-career [life] but live in denial almost. You decide you should plan, but don’t end up really doing it, ‘cause you never want it to be over. But I’m really enjoying where I am now.”

Few others can match Darche’s achievements. He had a long and successful pro-hockey career despite coming from CIS hockey and now has a promising business career because of his university degree. But why does this story have to be a rarity? If education were intertwined with the path to the pros, it could be different. The likelihood of making it to the NHL wouldn’t be changed and career length would still be short. But there could be fewer players who leave the game with limited options, fewer players whose lives are only centred on that brief moment of fame and more players like Mathieu Darche.

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