MONTREAL _ The first thing you need to know about the world's grandest museum dedicated to the Montreal Expos is that it's also the world's only museum dedicated to the Montreal Expos.
You could spend all day searching the streets and walls of this city and not find one statue, plaque or monument dedicated to the days of Les Expos. It's as if residents were so disheartened by the team's departure in 2004 that they vowed to wipe its history from their collective memories.
Perry Giannias went the other direction. A lifelong fan, he began collecting everything Expo-related. Hundreds of game-worn jerseys. Balls, photos, cleats, Gold Glove and Silver Slugger awards. Some items so rare that baseball's Hall of Fame has borrowed them for exhibits. All this glory and sorrow discreetly tucked away in one man's basement on a tree-lined suburban street.
So who will do that for the Tampa Bay Rays?
The question is not out of line. Many people see owner Stu Sternberg's proposal to share the Rays with Montreal as a precursor to leaving Tampa Bay altogether. In Montreal, they are conspiratorially theorizing that the half-season plan will eventually become a permanent relocation.
Which leads to this interesting conundrum:
The only people left in North America who can possibly understand the pain of losing baseball are some of the same people who would see the Rays snatched from Tampa Bay.
