Baseball: Montreal Expos on the move - to Washington

1.00pm

WASHINGTON - Professional baseball appears ready to make a return to the US capital, as an announcement could come later this week that the Montreal Expos will be relocated to Washington DC for the 2005 season.

Washington has been without a Major League Baseball team since 1971, which was the final season for the expansion Washington Senators before they relocated to Texas and became the Rangers.

If the announcement is made on Thursday it would come exactly 33 years to the day the Senators played their last home game at RFK Stadium.

Baseball commissioner Bud Selig had hoped to make an announcement on where the Expos would be relocated to by the All-Star break. However, that never panned out and now time is running out to relocate a team that was bought by the other 29 clubs before the 2002 season.

Washington, Northern Virginia, Norfolk, Las Vegas, Portland, Oregon, and Monterrey, Mexico have been mentioned as possible locations for the Expos for next season. In the short term, rather than relocate the team, a chunk of Montreal's home schedule was played in San Juan, Puerto Rico during the last two years.

The Expos started play in the majors in 1969 at Jarry Park, but now the team is in the process of its final homestand at Olympic Stadium. Only 3,923 fans were on hand for Monday night's game against the Florida Marlins.

The Expos have experienced the playoffs just once in their history, in 1981 when the season was cut short due to a work stoppage. They lost to the Los Angeles Dodgers in the NLCS. The team experienced winning campaigns in 2002 and 2003, but this year has been a much different story. Montreal will finish with 90-plus losses for a fifth time in seven seasons.

Ironically, RFK Stadium is the likely location for the Expos for at least the first three seasons until they get a new stadium built.

A deal needs to be in place soon, as renovations to RFK Stadium are expected to take at least three months. The Washington Post reported approximately $440 million of public money will be needed to fix up RFK Stadium and build a new one near the Anacostia River, and that Washington city council still needs time to consider legislation on the issues.

Major League Baseball's eight-man executive council met last week and reportedly one of the final pieces to the puzzle is working out an agreement with Baltimore Orioles owner Pete Angelos.

He has resisted baseball's plans to move the Expos to Washington for fear of the impact it would have on the Orioles since they are only 35 miles apart.

The Washington Post reported that Angelos was scheduled to meet with MLB president Bob DuPuy on Tuesday to discuss financial compensation guarantees for the Orioles. At the center of the discussion with DuPuy, who is also a member of the relocation committee, was to be a regional sports television network that would broadcast games for both the Orioles and the Washington team.