Arjun Nimmala, a promising shortstop in the Toronto Blue Jays' pipeline, plays for the High-A Vancouver Canadians, the top baseball team in the city. Vancouver is simply not equipped to support a big-league club, writes Gary Mason.ETHAN CAIRNS/The Canadian Press
Vancouver Magazine once asked me to write a fictional story based on the premise that the city had been awarded a Major League Baseball franchise.
The idea was inspired by efforts being made in the early 1980s by Canadian Senator Ray Perrault to get Vancouver into the big leagues. Mr. Perrault had made forays down to Washington, D.C., to lobby senators and members of Congress, which created some excitement in B.C.
Consequently, the magazine’s editors asked me to imagine this idea becoming a reality, with the team getting ready to play its first game in BC Place Stadium. I was to chronicle how the city arrived in the big-league spotlight.
Well, there is fiction and then there is complete fiction. The idea of Vancouver getting an MLB franchise back then was complete fiction. And the myriad factors underlying that reality are as relevant today as they were back then.
Vancouver mayor moves to launch bid for MLB expansion team
Which brings me to the plan being floated by Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim to land the city an MLB franchise. The Mayor is scheduled to bring forward a motion to council Wednesday directing staff to launch an “expression-of-interest process” to identify a potential ownership group with pockets deep enough to advance a serious bid.
Sounds straightforward: Get motion passed, find owners, get a team.
Right.
The genesis of the Mayor’s brainstorm can likely be traced to an appearance that MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred made on a local sports talk show last October in which he suggested that adding another team in Canada would be wonderful for the league. It’s been known for some time that Montreal would love to get a team to replace its one-time Expos.
Vancouver has never been seriously considered for a franchise. It couldn’t even keep its Triple-A team, which fled south to warmer climes years ago.
Mayor Ken Sim would need to find a generous benefactor to own his proposed expansion team.DARRYL DYCK/The Canadian Press
That’s not to say a Vancouver bid couldn’t happen, I suppose. All Mr. Sim needs to do is find someone with a wallet thick enough to fork over what many expect would be more than US$2.5-billion to $3-billion for an expansion team, then another $2-billion or more to buy land in Greater Vancouver and build a new stadium. (The existing BC Place Stadium would not work for baseball.)
The person, or persons, would then have to sharpen their pencils to see how they were going to make it all work financially, given that a good portion of their revenues would be in Canadian dollars while the greatest percentage of their expenses – players’ salaries – would be in U.S. greenbacks.
Finally, someone would have to take a hard look at the corporate presence in the city. As the owners of the NBA’s former Vancouver Grizzlies discovered, there are not a lot of head offices with CEOs looking to slap down hundreds of thousands of dollars each year for a corporate suite.
Let’s face it. The city has its hands full supporting its NHL Canucks. And while the MLS Whitecaps get decent crowds, they may be on the way out as well because of problems with the team’s stadium deal. There is also the not-inconsequential fact that you need fans showing up for 81 home games, not 41 like the NHL or 17 for MLS. Yes, Vancouver is a gateway city, a door that opens up the Asian market. But again, that’s not enough to make the underlying economic fundamentals work. They don’t.
Editorial: How Canadian baseball can find its bounce
I hate to discourage the Mayor’s little dream here, but it’s time for a reality check. Nashville and Salt Lake City are the current front-runners to land an MLB expansion franchise. And while Vancouver is far more aesthetically pleasing than either of those places, that doesn’t count for squat. It’s about money, and the financial viability of any potential new market. And Nashville and Salt Lake City both top Mr. Sim’s city on that front.
Vancouver can’t even get an art gallery built.
While Mr. Sim sounds sincere about his motion, I personally think it’s just a distraction, a shiny bauble to hold up during what’s expected to be a tough re-election campaign this fall. Vote Ken, the guy who will bring Major League Baseball to Vancouver!
But the odds of it happening are slim to, well, non-existent. Vancouver is not a big-league city. Montreal isn’t either, although given its MLB history it likely has a greater case to make for a team than Vancouver does. Toronto is major league all the way.
To conclude: the idea Vancouver is ready to land an MLB franchise is a fiction. And it’s every bit as much of one today as it was 40 years ago.