And meanwhile in Montreal, fans prepare for another dose of unReality TV.

	Conflicts and controveries • Caple: Meet 'The All-Snarls' • Caple: Expos' (un)reality check • Caple: Five potential blowups • Reynolds: Hitting the big issues • Poll: Who's the biggest misfit?

Baseball's despicable contraction plan is off the table for five years, but the Expos remain a team with a prognosis bleaker than "Celebrity Mole.'' The club is owned by the league's 29 other teams. It drew fewer fans last year than the Sacramento River Cats. It traded a 20-game winner for an aging pitcher who has spent much of the past season in the same place he'll open this season -- on the disabled list. It will play 22 of its home games more than 2,000 miles from its stadium. It will play 103 games on the road. And for the third year in a row, it's expected to leave Montreal for good after the season.

Whether this indeed turns out to finally be the Expos' final season in Montreal remains to be seen, but the real question is not whether Les Expos are renewed for another season but whether anyone in Montreal would bother tuning in.

With all that hanging over Montreal's head, this season promises to be one that defies reality. ...

March 30: Commissioner Bud Selig announces that Baghdad has been removed from the list of potential relocation cities for the Expos.

	Vladimir Guerrero might be running out of options.

March 31: The Expos make their final push for the season by signing the entire extended Hernandez family, then placing all 33 on the disabled list. In a related development, the Yankees finalize their roster by purchasing the entire Montreal starting rotation. "We needed the insurance in case all seven of our starters tear their rotator cuffs at the same time,'' New York general manager Brian Cashman said.

April 2: The Expos open the season at Atlanta's Turner Field with a 4-3 victory, but fans in Montreal do not hear the game when they lose the team's broadcast signal after the string becomes detached from the tin can.

April 10: Montreal's first series in Puerto Rico begins poorly when customs agents at San Juan airport insist on quarantining Yuoppi! for the entire season.

April 11: The Expos opening game at Puerto Rico's Bithorn Stadium starts a half hour late after the two teams argue over who was supposed to supply the baseballs.

April 22: Three weeks and 18 games into the season, the Expos play their home opener in Montreal where they are greeted at Olympic Stadium by 2,300 raucous, loyal fans and a parade of U-Haul vans.

May 2: The White House intensifies diplomatic and economic pressure on Canada to join the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq, threatening to send Jeff Loria back across the border if it doesn't.

May 3: Canada sends 30,000 troops to the Persian Gulf.

May 9: Although it hasn't been awarded the team yet, an ownership group from Washington, D.C., threatens to move the Expos to Sacramento "just to practice for the real thing.''

May 18: General manager Omar Minaya places Vladimir Guerrero on eBay.

June 3: The Expos are forced to forfeit three games when they accidentally travel to the San Juan Islands in Washington state.

June 13: The Expos lose again to extend their losing streak to 12 games despite the presence of the club's newest promotion, the Rally Snail.

	Acquiring Jose Vidro to play second base would put the finishing touches on the Yankees' lineup.

June 29: Groups from Northern Virginia, Southern California, Western Australian and Eastern Europe all submit relocation proposals for the Expos. Selig thanks each group, but says he is still waiting to hear from Outer Mongolia.

July 7: The Expos lose yet another star player when Jose Vidro is stolen out of the Montreal clubhouse. When the Expos report him missing, the commissioner's office insists it has no suspects in the case even though Vidro mysteriously appears in the Yankees' starting lineup that night.

July 27: With the trading deadline fast approaching, Minaya places Guerrero on the NASDAQ.

July 31: Minutes before the trade deadline, the Expos complete a complicated three-way deal to send their entire roster to Atlanta, with the Florida Marlins covering all the salaries.

Aug. 8: A group from Portland, Ore., presents the commissioner's office with the most impressive bid yet to be the Expos relocation city. "Quite frankly, it was an overwhelming presentation,'' Selig says. "Now all Portland needs is an ownership group, a $450 stadium with a retractable roof, an OK from the Mariners, a seven-percent improvement in the state unemployment rate and a million more residents, and then the moving vans can roll.''

Aug. 28: With three days left to make a trade and have a player be eligible for the postseason roster, Minaya places Guerrero in the Land's End fall catalogue.

Sept. 5: The Expos final trip to Puerto Rico ends with the Hernandez brothers, seeking a place where they may again play baseball under major league conditions, apply for asylum in San Juan.

Sept. 17: In what would be their last scheduled game in Montreal, the Expos don't bother showing up. No one notices.

Jim Caple is a senior writer for ESPN.com.