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Montreal Mayor Denis Coderre did not return empty-handed from New York this week in his quixotic quest for the return of major-league baseball to his city. The commissioner of the sport gave him a baseball.

It was the least the commissioner could do for one civic official offering to let the owners of the present major-league franchises use his city for leverage to extract concessions from theirs.

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You know where this is going, don’t you? Sooner or later, there will be a request to the Quebec government for a commitment to have the province’s taxpayers invest in a new ballpark in Montreal.

We’ve seen this before, most recently in Quebec City, where the $400-million Vidéotron Centre will open in September as the world’s costliest junior-hockey arena.

The arena was built in the hope that it would bring back the National Hockey League franchise Quebec City lost 10 years ago and put it back on an equal footing with Montreal.