*Comme C'est Bizarre* -- Examiner Offers Sports Scores For Defunct Team

Excusez-moi?

​The old saying notes that the upside of living in the past is that it's cheaper there. And it would be a hoot to chain smoke Old Golds and pound back Schaefers -- the one beer to have when you're having more than one -- at Ebbets Field. But the notion of nostalgia evaporates when dealing with modern-day entities such as a "widget" meant to provide one's Web site users with up-to-the-second sports scores.

So it was more than a bit odd to see nostalgia and widgets combined -- unintentionally of course -- on the San Francisco Examiner Web site. The Ex was offering live, up-to-the-second scores for a team that hasn't existed since 2004.

What the hell is going on? That's hard to say. As you may have noticed, the widget has inexplicably used a Montreal Expos logo for the Washington Nationals (the Expos were taken off the hands of owner Jeffrey Loria by Major League Baseball and subsequently relocated to our nation's capital in 2005 -- giving French Canadians one more reason to hate America). 

We e-mailed and called the Atlanta-based SpringWidgets company, which created the score-updating device used by the Ex and others. We asked, as any Expos fan would, vous faites quoi? Yet since the phone number listed on their site was disconnected, we're not optimistic about getting a call back.

By the way, the Montreal Expos are also listed on the SpringWidgets application on the Washington Examiner Web site -- where the Nationals are the hometown team. 

Reading the San Francisco Examiner's political op-eds, it's all too easy to detect the paper's decision-makers' longing to live in the past. The notion of the messianic billionaire Republican-run paper forging an allegiance with mad-dog French Canadians still smarting over the loss of Les Expos would be a far-fetched conspiracy theory -- but, then again, far-fetched conspiracy theories are what the Ex is all about!