From 1995: How will 'baseball's comeback' play out in Canada?

It wasn't just the ballplayers who were glad to see Major League Baseball's longest strike come to an end.

The people who worked at Major League stadiums had been out of work, too, as had many employees at local bars and sports memorabilia stores.

"With two Major League teams, Canada has a big stake in baseball's comeback," the CBC's Peter Mansbridge told viewers on The National on April 3, 1995, a few weeks before the MLB season was set to begin.

"The game delivers a lot of paycheques here, besides the big ones collected by the players."

And as those Canadian workers and business owners prepared for the 1995 season, they wondered what effect the strike would have on their own lives — especially with their livelihood relying on fans, some of whom were fed up with the game.

'The Jays don't play, the fans don't pay'

The eight-month-long strike had put many people out of work and caused businesses to lose big-league bucks.

Ben Freedman, the owner of a Toronto-based souvenir business, said he'd lost $300,000 as a result of the strike.

"We're anticipating a return of all the people we've laid off ... seven part-timers and three full-time staff, including our mascot who's always out in front of our store," he told The National.

The National reported that it was estimated that businesses in and around the SkyDome — as it was then known — lost a combined $1.7 million in business for each Blue Jays game that was lost to the strike.

As the CBC's Kevin Tibbles put it, if "the Jays don't play, the fans don't pay."

'It will be really difficult'

It was a similar situation in Montreal, where the tourist board said the Expos generated an estimated $100 million for the local economy each year.

Luis Avelino told The National that he lost $100,000 as a result of the baseball strike.

While he was glad to see Expos games on the horizon again, Avelino expected the team's fans would be skeptical of the on-field product.

"It will be really difficult, you know, for them to get a crowd — not only in the sports bar, like us and other ones, but at the Big O," he said, referring to the Expos' home field at Montreal's Olympic Stadium.

The Expos, of course, had been in a prime position to take on the playoffs a year earlier. The team was 74-40 when the strike that wiped out the season and Montreal's post-season dreams occurred.

Bad and worse

Jack Todd, a sports writer with the Montreal Gazette, said the Expos had a lot riding on the coming season.

He told CBC News that if the team wasn't competitive, he "wouldn't be surprised if this team moves this year."

The strike-shortened 1995 season ended up being a rough one for the Expos, as the team finished 12 games below .500 and last in their division.

But it was worse for the Blue Jays: They won less than 39 per cent of their games and tied with the Minnesota Twins for the worst record in Major League Baseball.