Okay, it’s official: New MLB commissioner Rob Manfred really sucks at shaking down cities for stadium deals. Or rather, he sucks at putting those shakedowns into English. I mean, listen to this:

“I think it is really important for baseball to have viable alternatives with respect to expansion and relocation,” Manfred said [of a possible team in Montreal]. “It’s just good business to make an effort to make sure that we have alternatives available to us in the event that there is a problem. I’m reluctant to characterize them as only relevant on the context of relocation, because I think our sport’s a great sport. It’s tremendously healthy and it has the potential to grow so that I see it as both an expansion and relocation issue.”

I had to read that three times just to figure out even partly what Manfred meant by it; how on earth are the poor francophones in Montreal supposed to suss that out as a “build it with taxpayer loonies, and we will come” ultimatum? I mean, come on, “characterize them as only relevant on the context of relocation,” who talks like that? Sheesh, lawyers.

Anyway, the upshot of all of Manfred’s verbiage is that Montreal might get a team someday through expansion, or it might get a relocated team, but it’s way too soon to talk about either of those, especially without a stadium. But you knew all that already, as did everyone in Montreal, so all this was going to do was maybe get some scare headlines in Tampa Bay, since Manfred made his statement at a Rays game in Toronto. Scare headlines in Tampa, anybody?

Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred talks about Rays stadium issue

Yeah, that’s probably about the best he can hope for. Oh dear, oh dear, doesn’t anyone know how to haggle anymore?