Farrar and his fellow Expos fans have had their hearts broken before, and they could be setting themselves up for more pain. Major League Baseball loves the idea that various cities, even formerly jilted ones, want to buy into the sport. But Montreal already lost one team amid plummeting attendance. Baseball needs to be persuaded that this city can be entrusted with another team.

With a population of more than four million people in the metropolitan area, Montreal is the largest city in North America without a baseball team, and it now has two French-language sports television networks thirsting for content, in contrast to the days when the Expos left.

Fans here see Rob Manfred, baseball’s new commissioner, as more open to the idea of Montreal baseball than his predecessor, Bud Selig. In a recent telephone interview, Manfred gave his blessing to Montreal as a potential future site — with emphasis on the word potential.

“We either have to be in a mode where we are expanding or someone is looking to relocate,” Manfred said. “Assuming that we are in one of those modes, I see Montreal as a viable possibility.”

Those kinds of words made once-despondent Montreal baseball fans like Farrar swoon in anticipation. Farrar is the son of a former Expos season-ticket holder and hopes to one day buy season tickets of his own and use them at a shiny new downtown stadium.