Stream it or skip it?

In 1994, the Montreal Expos were the best team in baseball. A decade later, they moved to Washington and renamed the National Team. How did Major League Baseball’s first international franchise — and one of baseball’s most attractive setups — meet its untimely end? Who killed the Montreal Expo?a new feature-length documentary on Netflix released in time for the 2025 World Series, attempts to answer that question.

Essence: Who killed the Montreal Expo? He brings in a wide range of characters from all over the team, including a number of notable former players, journalists, team employees, former co-owner Claude Brochu, former team president Jeffrey Loria, and even the team’s former mascot. They are brought in to investigate the crime—examining the many factors that led to the team’s death—and perhaps identify the killer.

What movies will it remind you of?: Structurally, there are undertones from ESPN’s highly acclaimed Chicago Bulls docuseries The last dancein the way this film avoids a linear timeline for storytelling purposes. Emotionally, there are similarities to other autopsies conducted on teams that have been alienated from their fans, such as the Baltimore Colts, which focuses on… 30 for 30 episode The band that won’t dieor focus on the Cleveland Browns Football life “Cleveland ’95” episode.

Performance worth watching: There’s a host of familiar faces to baseball fans here, including Hall of Famers like Pedro Martinez, Larry Walker, and Vladimir Guerrero Sr. And more — a reminder of how good the Expos were before the 1994 strike derailed things. However, no one elicited a more finger-pointing reaction from me than Jean-Simon Bibeau, the performer inside Youppi! like. This is a baseball exhibition.

Unforgettable dialogue: “It was a great atmosphere, I felt very comfortable. They took me under their arms,” ​​recalls former Expo star Dennis Martinez. “It was always fun to be across the border,” Hall of Famer Pedro Martinez recalls. “Safe, no weapons, no violence, nothing.” “It was a fun place to be when we were playing well,” adds Hoover’s teammate Larry Walker. “When this place was full and we were playing our best baseball, there was no other stadium in the league that was louder.”

Sex and skin: Yuppi! He’s not wearing pants, but he’s covered in fur.

Take us: “People don’t understand how far baseball has come in Montreal,” asserts former Expos player, Baseball Hall of Famer and current television commentator Pedro Martinez. We remember the city’s long history with the game, where baseball flourished in the first half of the 20th century, and where black players were able to play before integration. This montage sounds a bit defensive, but it’s important to remind viewers why Montreal got the show in the first place — before Toronto, and before any other city outside the United States. Montreal was a great, true baseball town, deserving of an expansion team like Kansas City, Seattle, Anaheim or wherever.

There are enough flashes of Montreal’s glory days to show us that the decision to franchise the city was not a mistake. The Olympic Stadium may have been a strange place, but when the Expos were winning, it was a loud environment full of excited fans. In the early 1990s, the team reached its peak under head coach Felipe Alou, the patriarch of a legendary baseball family leading a team filled with star talent. In 1994, this team had the best record in the major leagues — that is, until pressure from MLB owners for a salary cap led to a strike that ended the season. During the long offseason, the team’s stars were shipped out, the roster was stripped down, and baseball was never the same in Montreal.

The strike is not being presented as the only factor in the Expos’ demise, far from it, but it is a turning point for a franchise that has been hampered by a number of unique factors. These include a weak Canadian dollar, unfavorable political conditions, a dilapidated stadium unsuitable for baseball, the lack of Quebec billionaires to buy the team once the sport became big business, and several figures who did not have the city’s best interest in mind.

One of the oft-cited villains joins the discussion here.

David Sampson, the team president who was hired under new owner Jeffrey Loria in 1999, made a big impression from the start. “David Sampson arrived with a certain style,” recalls former baseball player and baseball analyst Mark Griffin. “He carried a mirror everywhere he went so he could see himself,” recalls another person close to the team. “He was arrogant and self-satisfied, and he looked at you as if you were insignificant,” adds journalist Serge Touchet, without much resentment. I have yet to meet someone who likes it. I’ve never met anyone so despicable.” We go straight from these quotes to the smiling, smug Samson sitting down for an interview, looking exactly as described. “If you don’t have a healthy dose of arrogance, you can’t run a business,” Samson shares in the voice of every character about to shut down a beloved business in a movie. However, he denies carrying the murder weapon. “Did I single-handedly kill the Expos in Montreal? As arrogant as I am, there’s no possible way to do that. Although it is unacceptable, he makes the case that the situation is dire. “People thought Jeffrey Loria would come and suddenly the team would be saved and everything would be fine, but I don’t think they were fully aware of how dire the situation was in Montreal long before we got there.”

This is not a simple crime with a clear answer, but identifying a single killer is almost unimportant. Baseball was a more glamorous sport before every franchise became a billion-dollar business. It was a much more glamorous sport when you could have a team like the Montreal Expos (or, more recently, the Oakland A’s).

Even if you’re not an Expos fan, Who killed the Montreal Expo? It makes you feel that loss.

Our call: Broadcast it. Who killed the Montreal Expo? It’s a fitting elegy for a losing team, but more than that, it’s an encapsulation of what was lost when professional sports teams became multibillion-dollar businesses.

Scott Hines, widely beloved publisher Cookbook Newsletter, He is an architect, blogger, and Internet user based in Louisville, Kentucky.