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The Montreal Expos were the best team in the National League back in 1994. Their roster was the perfect mix of up-and-coming youngsters and experienced veterans.
Cliff Floyd, Mike Lansing, Marquis Grissom, Moises Alou, Larry Walker, Rondell White, Pedro Martinez, Ken Hill, John Wetteland, and Darrin Fletcher were just some of the names dotting the Expos' major league roster.
The Expos got off to a fast start and when the player's strike began on Aug. 12th, the Expos had the best record in all of baseball at 74-40 and were on pace to win 106 games.
They averaged almost 24,000 fans per game and things looked bright for both the franchise and the city.
A year later, the Expos were slowly going the way of the dinosaur.
The majority of their star players were gone in a cost-cutting tsunami that slashed more than a quarter of the team's payroll. They won 31 games less (based on full seasons in 1994 and 1995) and failed to make the playoffs.
And their fans noticed. Attendance dropped a full 10,000 per game.
Baseball in Montreal was over. Oh sure, they played on for another decade, but neither the owners, or the fans, took it very seriously.
In the team's 35 year history in Montreal, the Expos failed to draw one million fans nine times.
Seven of those nine seasons occurred after 1994.
So who's to blame? Several people; some greedy, some stupid, and some both.
Baseball had a rich and storied history in Montreal. Except for a few years after World War I, Montreal had a professional baseball team from 1897 through 1960, when the Dodgers' move from Brooklyn to Los Angeles made the traveling distance between the cities unworkable.
Montreal was chosen as one of the National League's two new baseball cities in late 1967. Though many owners were uncomfortable with Montreal's ability to support a major league franchise, the Dodgers' Walter O'Malley, a friend of the city, supported their bid and ultimately Montreal was awarded their franchise.
Charles Bronfman, majority owner of the Seagram's empire, was named as the franchise's first owner. Bronfman, Canada's fifth richest man, was easily able to absorb the losses that came with fielding a very bad team over a very long period of time.
The Expos played their first eight seasons at Jarry Park, a 28,000 seat bare-bones stadium that was a converted tennis facility. The team averaged almost 14,000 fans per game during their time at Jarry Park, right at the National League average for that era.
The move into Olympic Stadium, though it didn't significantly increase attendance, was a turning point for the team. Prior to the move, the Expos never had a winning record, but from 1979 through 1994, the Expos had just three losing seasons.
In their last 10 years in Montreal, the Expos had a winning record just three times.
Charles Bronfman hated Olympic Stadium. The facility, built for the 1976 Olympics, was cold and cavernous and most of the new technologies created for the stadium never worked properly.
Bronfman lobbied the city for a new, baseball only facility but to no avail. Citing the failed economics of professional baseball at the time (the Expos total revenue was less than what the Yankees received just for their broadcast rights) Bronfman put the team up for sale.
The Expos were sold to a group of 14 investors in 1991.
After the lost season of 1994, and with the writing on the wall, the owners instructed general manager Kevin Malone to strip the team of its well salaried stars.
The team didn't offer salary arbitration to any of them, which meant that while the players would not return (and the team was rid of their salaries), neither would the team receive draft picks as compensation for losing the players.
Larry Walker, perhaps the team's biggest star, told ESPN.com that he would have been happy to take a pay cut to stay in Montreal, but the Expos never contacted him after the season ended.
Not only was the major league roster being decimated, but the minor league system was not being replenished either.
Disaster was just around the corner.
Jeffrey Loria had wanted to own a baseball team for quite some time. In his early 50's, the native New Yorker had made his fortune in the art world.
In 1989, he bought the Oklahoma City 89'ers, a "AAA" minor league team, but sold them four years later to pursue a major league franchise. He tried, but failed, to buy the Baltimore Orioles in 1994, losing out to current owner Peter Angelos.
Five years later, in 1999, Loria was able to buy a minority interest in the Expos for $50 million and became the team's managing general partner.
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