MLB Schedule 2014: Baseball Back In Montreal As Toronto Blue Jays Will Play NY Mets At Expos Olympic Stadium

The Montreal Expos are no longer an active MLB team after the franchise moved to Washington and took the moniker of the Nationals, but after some grassroots campaigns and some solid fan support, Major League Baseball has decided to play some exhibition games at their old home in Olympic Stadium north of the border.

According to a report from SI.com published last week, baseball officials will have two exhibition games in Montreal featuring the Toronto Blue Jays and the NY Mets scheduled fort 2014, with an official release coming later from the team. The report says that the teams will play two games next season in March as an exhibition and that the planned dates are March 28 and 29, 2014.

The SI report delves deep into the history of baseball in Montreal and Toronto, including about how Jackie Robinson previously played for the Montreal Royals when he was in the farm leagues back in the day. Robinson won a championship back then with the team and also an MVP award and that time was also shown in the new film about Robinson titled "42".

The Expos were once a very popular franchise and they were also on the cusp of being a successful one too, as they had a number of young stars and had the best record in baseball before the infamous strike of 1994 happened. The team has had players like Cliff Lee, Bartolo Colon, Tim Raines, Pedro Martinez, Larry Walker and Vladimir Guerrero play for them and then the franchise obviously was moved back in 2004 to the nation's capital.

Toronto is the only team north of the border now and at various times this season there have been some fans travelling to Blue Jays games with Expos signs, making themselves known around the stadium and on television. Playing baseball at Olympic for an exhibition isn't enough to make fans forget about the team leaving, but it helps. A little.