By Donald Laible
Charles Frederick “Boots” Day takes great pride in having played for the Montreal Expos.
Retired from professional baseball since the end of the 2021 season, Day packed away his cleats and glove after 55 years on the job. He had been serving as the bench coach on manager Andy McCauley’s staff for the Evansville Otters of the Frontier League.
Scouting, playing, coaching, managing, advising, you name the assignment, Day more than likely was called to service. Now 77, Day is enjoying retirement after a baseball career that began in 1965 when he signed as a free-agent with the St. Louis Cardinals, living in the shadows of Busch Stadium.
Logging a half dozen MLB seasons to his playing resume, and schlepping his way through more minor league stops than he can remember, Day’s voice lights up when his thoughts shift to the 449 games in which he wore an Expos uniform.
With the franchise’s relocation 20 seasons ago to Washington, D.C., Day isn’t alone in missing what was MLB’s first team outside of the lower 48 states.
“It was a punch in the gut,” Day told The Epoch Times. “I lived there for about 10 years. I loved the city. The fans were great, and we had a quaint ballpark [Jarry Park].”
Two decades after the last Expos game was played, the City of Montreal is no closer to having a new stadium deal in place. Prospects of landing an ownership group with the necessary deep financial pockets to fund an expansion club are just not there.
The season prior to the Expos landing in Washington, the club’s 2004 player payroll was just shy of $43.2 million. There are individual players today earning more than that. The Expos’ financial woes became so dire that MLB took over ownership. In 2004, Montreal also played “home games” at Hiram Bithorn Stadium in Puerto Rico.
Washington seemed to be the darling of landing spots as the Expos’ new home city. Ironically, Washington also has a history in having lost their MLB franchise—twice. Currently, with the Nationals operating since the 2005 season, a third time bringing baseball to the District is a charm.
From 1901–1960, the Griffith family controlled the American League Washington Senators. Come the 1961 season, Griffith called in the movers, trucks were loaded for Minneapolis. The birth of the Minnesota Twins was celebrated, particularly by Midwestern baseball fans.
The following season, 1961, the next version of the Senators joined the American League, again. After a decade back in “America’s Capital,” in 1972 the Senators called in the moving vans once again, with Arlington, Texas, as their next new home.
The Texas Rangers have been operating uninterrupted since.
So, when the Expos had difficulties coming to terms with French and English broadcast deals, coupled with dwindling attendance to just under 750,000 fans at home games (Montreal and Puerto Rico combined) during 2004 while the National League average was over 2,500,000 per club, the Expos’ obituary was being written.
With less than 10,000 fans coming through the home turnstiles each game, the club was writing its own obituary.
As much as former players like Day recite happy memories of playing north of the border, and Montreal was a closer drive from his Ilion, New York, hometown than it was for friends and family to make a trip south to New York City, support all around for the Expos waned.
“I didn’t speak French, but Montreal was fun to play in. Among my teammates, Ron Fairly and Bob Bailey were who I was closest with. And, I had some good times with Rusty Staub; ‘le Grand Orange,’ as the fans called him, due to his red hair,” recalls Day, who says he didn’t save any memorabilia from his days with the Expos—not even a jersey.
Although it’s still tough for the Expos’ faithful of not having a club of their own to root for, the third try of baseball in Washington has turned out to have been the correct call. In 2019, the Nationals won the World Series. In 20 seasons, the Nationals have drawn an average 2 million-plus fans for a dozen seasons, and never lower than 1.4 million in the 2021 season.
Thus far in 2025, the Nationals are drawing an average of 25,128 fans to home games. The club’s payroll is north of $100 million. Accounting numbers like this only reinforce that the Expos were doomed economically, regardless of the product that could be fielded on the diamond.
Shifting franchises aren’t moves that any professional sports league likes to execute. Changing cities for clubs can decrease the confidence fans of the game have in the overall stability of the leagues. In 1958, the Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants both left after their 1957 seasons for California.
The Braves, have moved three times in their organization’s history—from Boston to Milwaukee, and finally to Atlanta, where it has been since 1966. The Baltimore Orioles used to be the St. Louis Browns, and after being in business for the 1969 season only, the Seattle Pilots bolted for Wisconsin, and became the Milwaukee Brewers. Unfortunate but not uncommon of franchises in motion.
Perhaps what can be best said of the contributions of the Montreal Expos to MLB’s history—gone by not forgotten.
