10 Reasons Why Baseball Is Back

Tampa Bay, which trailed the first-place Yankees by 10� games and the Red Sox by five, has little chance of overtaking both teams. Last week Piniella called for the front office to increase the payroll and be more aggressive in signing players. "Let's just not sit on the streak," Piniella said. "Now that we've gained momentum, let's build on it."
—Albert Chen

5 Relocation of the Expos will soon be resolved.

Major league baseball's ownership of the Expos, a ball club based in Montreal, exported occasionally to Puerto Rico and irrelevant everywhere in between, has been an embarrassment in three languages. After three years as proprietor, a botched contraction scheme, a shameless conflict of interest and countless empty seats, MLB at last may be only weeks away from improving its weakest link. The Expos will be sold to an ownership group in a locale that actually wants them and that will build one of those spanking new stadiums that seem to be in every big city's driveway.

"What has been a drag on the game the last several years will be a positive," says baseball chief operating officer Bob DuPuy, one of nine members of the relocation committee. Las Vegas; Portland; Norfolk, Va.; and Monterrey, Mexico, have kicked the Expos' tires, but the favorites are Washington, D.C., which would build a ballpark on the urban site of RFK Stadium, the proposed temporary home for the team, and northern Virginia's suburban Loudoun County, which would build a stadium for the Expos without raising taxes. (The D.C. group has been vague on the tax issue.) Improving attendance won't be difficult; the team has averaged 9,269 fans for home games in Montreal and San Juan this season.

Burned in 1993 when it gave South Florida a team without ballpark funding in place, baseball has delayed the Expos' sale with a show-me-the-money attitude. The "preferred location" should be decided around the All-Star break and announced in August, according to one high-ranking source. The source estimated the chance of the Expos returning to Montreal next season at "less than 10 percent."

6 San Diego has playoff fever.

What's the worst team in the National League last year doing in the thick of the NL West race this year? Thanks to revenue sharing and the requisite cash-generating postmodern ballpark, the Padres are the latest club to prove how quickly a baseball team can turn around these days.

After losing 98 games in 2003, San Diego was three games behind the first-place Giants at week's end. They're attempting to become the 11th team in history, including the sixth in the past eight years, to reach the postseason after a 90-loss season (box, right). What's more, six other teams coming off 90-loss years—the Rangers (leading the AL West), Indians, Devil Rays, Reds, Brewers and Mets—all were within five games of a playoff spot.

"It's good for the fans," Padres general manager Kevin Towers says of the increased frequency of bounce-back teams. His club's revival began last Aug. 26, when he traded a second-year starting pitcher and two prospects to the Pirates for All-Star outfielder Brian Giles, who was in the fourth year of a six-year, $42.5 million contract extension. "People were asking, 'Why take on payroll for a team that's on pace to lose 100 games?' " Towers says. "We needed to show our fans that we were serious about 2004"

Translation: San Diego had to sell tickets for its new stadium, Petco Park, which opened this season. As a team bringing in less than the industry revenue average, the Padres were bolstered by a revenue-sharing check of about $12.7 million received for the 2003 season. Giles, a San Diego-area native, cost them about $1.4 million for the final 29 games.