America is discovering what could be its new sweetheart this summer. For me, America’s new sweetheart is my beloved old team from Canada.

Far and wide, the talk in baseball this summer is about the Washington Nationals. How they went from having 8,000 fans per day in Olympic Stadium in Montreal to drawing 20,000 to 30,000 in Washington D.C. How they went from baseball’s homeless vagabonds that nobody wanted or loved to the wuonderkinds who currently stand atop baseball’s toughest division.

Fans and pundits marvel at how they went from losing 95 games in 2004 to winning 50 games by July 4th of 2005. Much of the credit has been heaped on new general manager Jim Bowden for his acquisitions, as well as manager Frank Robinson for leading his team from the gutter. Certainly all of those accolades are deserving ones. I want to talk about the team that nobody looked twice at for the past 10 years.

Rewind to 2004: 95 losses, we all know, a miserable way for a team to end its miserable final years in Montreal. What you probably don’t know, after the all star break last season, the Expos played some of the best baseball in the major leagues. With no serious batting threats, and an injury-plagued pitching staff, the Expos played out their final day in relative anonymity. I was proud of the players.

A much more heart-breaking tale in 2003. The team was good, very good in fact. Former Expos general manager Omar Minaya said recently that the Expos were as good as their division rival the Florida Marlins, who won the World Series that season. Baseball showed no regard for the Expos, or their potential, making them play 22 home games in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Then, while the team was in contention for a wild-card berth, baseball shot them in the foot again, refusing to allow them to call up minor league players, breaking the team’s will and spirit. That team finished third in the National League East, behind perennial powerhouse Atlanta, and the aforementioned world champion Marlins.

While I was not an advocate of keeping the team in Montreal necessarily, it was a travesty the way that franchise was treated by Major League Baseball over the past decade. One thing I know the fans of Montreal will never forget, is the Expos had the best record in baseball in 1994 when the players strike ended the season early. That event forever broke baseball in Montreal, the stadium fell into disrepair and the fans lost interest, all while watching some of baseball’s brightest stars slip through their fingers.

As I am sure most people are unaware, the Expos organization held (for tragically brief stints) some of today’s greatest players. Imagine a team with a starting rotation of Randy Johnson, Pedro Martinez, Bartolo Colon, Livan Hernandez and Javier Vazquez(who in 2003 was third in strikeouts behind Cubs flame-throwers Kerry Wood and Mark Prior). And oh, the hitters. Vladimir Guerrero, Larry Walker, Cliff Floyd, Vinny Castilla, Orlando Cabrera, Jose Vidro, Brad Wilkerson and Michael Barrettform one of several all-star lineups that never were because poor ownership and a lousy stadium drove the money out of the franchise.

Now the murky, desolate Olympic Stadium sits unused, waiting to be paid off by Montreal’s taxpayers. I will continue to wear my tired old Expos cap and be proud I liked them before anyone else in America really did.