Attendance Tells Story in Montreal

Buck Rodgers spent seven of the best summers of his life in Montreal, managing the local baseball team and enjoying the city, the people, the French accent on the culture. He speaks with conviction, but with a tone of sadness too. He reads about crowds better suited to a high school football game than a major league baseball game. The time has come, he says, for the Expos to go.

“They’ve got to get out of Montreal,” he said.

Nowhere would midweek games in September between teams a combined 28 games out of first place be considered a prime attraction. Still, in a city of 3.4 million, the Expos drew 8,817 for this week’s three-game series against the Florida Marlins, including 2,887 Wednesday.

“It was so quiet you could hear the air-conditioning running through the vents,” Florida outfielder Kevin Millar said.

Two decades ago, the San Francisco Giants drew four-digit crowds to watch Johnnie LeMaster and Co. lose 100 games at miserable Candlestick Park. Today, Barry Bonds and Co. sell out Pacific Bell Park nightly.

In Montreal, however, the fans and the owner appear weary of each other. The fans that once poured through the turnstiles to cheer on Gary Carter and Andre Dawson stay away today, turned off by bad baseball in a bad stadium and owner Jeffrey Loria’s withdrawal of plans for a new downtown ballpark. Loria, fearing a new ballpark without a new labor agreement will not solve the riddle of how to win and make money in Montreal, refuses to commit to staying in Quebec even one more season.

Loria, a New Yorker with no ties to Montreal, wants to own a major league team and dismisses any talk of folding--”Jeffrey will not be contracted,” says Expo executive vice president David Samson, Loria’s stepson. It would be logistically difficult, but not impossible, for the Expos to move this fall--perhaps to a temporary home at RFK Stadium in Washington--which would mean Thursday’s game against the New York Mets would be the last home game in the Expos’ 33-year history.

In the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the United States, Colorado owner Jerry McMorris proposed moving this weekend’s Expo-Rocky series from Montreal to Denver, compensating the Expos for expenses, then donating the remaining proceeds to disaster relief funds.

The Expos declined. McMorris’ offer came at a time the Rockies are concerned about their falling attendance. On Wednesday, the Rockies drew 30,031, the smallest crowd in franchise history. The Expos drew 2,887.

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Milwaukee shortstop Jose Hernandez leads the major leagues with 170 strikeouts, easily surpassing the most recent example of misses by a shortstop, the 147 strikeouts by the Angels’ Benji Gil as a rookie with the Texas Rangers in 1995.

Hernandez, a nine-year veteran, is batting .254 with 23 home runs.

“I don’t care about strikeouts,” Hernandez said. “I can tell my son and grandsons that I led the league in strikeouts. I’m supposed to play offense and defense. Strikeouts happen. It’s no big deal.

“If we don’t strike out, we can’t play baseball. Somebody’s got to strike out. The pitcher’s got a family too to take care of.”

The Brewers have 1,249 hits and a record 1,272 strikeouts, putting them on course to become the first team in major league history to finish a season with more strikeouts than hits.

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Mark McGwire’s 70-homer season topped the list of performances from 1976-2000 in Gillette’s balloting to pick the greatest sports event of the 20th century.

In voting by a panel of writers, McGwire’s 1998 home run record finished ahead of Lance Amstrong’s recovery from cancer to win the 1999 Tour de France and Cal Ripken’s streak of 2,131 consecutive games played.

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The Dodgers’ Shawn Green will not play Wednesday night, choosing to observe Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish year. Jason Marquis, the scheduled starting pitcher for the Atlanta Braves Wednesday, also is Jewish. The Braves told Marquis he did not have to pitch, but he said he would.

“I don’t know if I’m in a position to have the whole rotation switched,” he said. “I think it should be fine. My parents agreed with it also.”

Marquis said he would observe the traditional fast, which extends from sundown Wednesday to sundown Thursday.