Dom Bettinelli has an idea that’s got some good and some bad: moving the Expos to Boston or, maybe, suburban Massachusetts.

The good:

Boston supports its teams well and has grown sufficiently that it’s reasonable to believe it would support two teams, much like the Bay Area

Those Expos fans still in Montreal would have a shorter trip to see their new home.

The fight with Peter Angelos that would accompany a DC move would be avoided.

The bad:

Unless the Expos play in Fenway for a few years as tenants of the Red Sox, the move would be an unreasonably long time off. The situation should be resolved quickly.

The cost of building a ballpark in downtown Boston is probably prohibitive.

The new ballparks that have succeeded (PacBell, Coors, Bank One, Minute Maid, Safeco, Jacobs, Camden Yards) are downtown parks. The new parks that aren’t near their home cities’ downtowns (Miller, Pro Player, Arlington, Tropicana) have been flops. I know of no reason to believe that the experience in New England would be that different than the experience in the rest of the country, but I could be wrong.

It doesn’t get baseball back in DC, where RFK stadium is ready as a short-term solution pending the construction of a real new ballpark for the nation’s capital.

The defeat of Peter Angelos that would accompany a DC move would be avoided.