The Montreal Baseball Group would not be very interested in the idea of investing a lot of money for a permanent team in Montreal, either to relocate or to expand the team.
Garber attributed this lack of interest to the astronomical costs associated with a team that plays the season from April to October.
“Playing 162 games is a lot in today’s culture and attention span. I believe baseball is dead for us and I don’t want to keep it going,” Garber admitted in an email exchange reported by Danny Gallagher of the Canadian Baseball Network.
A proposed sister cities project with the city of Tampa to share the presentation of home games was rejected by MLB in January, and it was a blow to baseball fans.
To make matters worse, when the news broke, we also learned that the group had no plan B in case of failure.
Discussions about the sister cities project began in 2019 and have rekindled hopes that Montreal could once again have a professional baseball team. Montreal would host about 40 games, while Tampa Bay would host the other half of the team’s home games.
In addition to Montreal, the main candidates to host Major League teams are Charlotte, Portland, Nashville and Las Vegas.