I remember the excitement of going to see my first live major league baseball game. Parking in Park Extension and taking the pedestrian bridge over the tracks and into the stadium. The throng of people. The smell of beer and the taste of peanuts. The flags,pennants, and signs. The crack of the bat and jumping to my feet over and over again propelled, it seemed, by the roar of the crowd. It reminded me of the excitement of three summers before. You did not go to Man and his World to relive some of the magic of Expo ‘67. You went to Jarry Park to see the team that was named after Canada’s best-ever party. And even though the Expos lost 13 - 8 to the Pittsburgh Pirates that Sunday afternoon in 1970, at seven and a half years of age I was hooked.
Mack Jones. Throughout the summers of the 1970s I went to sleep listeningto the broadcasts on CFCF from the transistor radio under my pillow. Dave Van Horne. Throughout the winters I filled reams of paper playing with the statistics from baseball cards and yearbooks. Bill Stoneman. Dreaming of next season. Le Grand Orange, Rusty Staub.
I wasn’t particularly good at the sport but that didn’t stop me from playing with anyone who would play with me. Bob Bailey. First, with plastic bat and ball and later with the real items. Claude Raymond. My father would occasionally take us to see a game. John Boccabella. Always on the third base side. Ken Singleton. “You can see the plays at the plate better” he would say. Mike Marshall.
We would play street baseball almost as often as we played street hockey. Tim Foli. I remember bugging my father to play pitch and catch with me when nobody else was around. Steve Rogers. My father still says all I ever wanted to do with him was play pitch and catch. Larry Parrish. When we street baseball players got good enough to break neighbours’ windows, we graduated to playing in the park a few blocks away. The Kid, Gary Carter. And the Expos graduated to Olympic Stadium.
The Hawk, Andre Dawson. With new digs came new expectations. The Crow, Warren Cromartie. The players who the fans really loved were given nicknames. The Spaceman, Bill Lee. The re-building was starting to pay off. Tony Perez. In 1979, the Expos won 95 games and missed the playoffs by 2 games. Woodie Fryman. As the 1980s were ushered in, Expos fans were sure their team was going to be the team of the decade. Chris Speier. A highlight of my childhood was when I convinced my father to drive us from southern Quebec to Cooperstown, NY to see the Hall of Fame. Tim Raines.
In 1981, the Expos made the playoffs for the first time. Tim Wallach. They would have been in the playoffs many times starting in 1979 and through most of the 1980s had baseball introduced the wild-card earlier. Al Oliver. That might have made a big difference to their ultimate fate. Bill Gullickson. Unfortunately, they never made it to the playoffs again. The Terminator, Jeff Reardon. After 1983, when the Expos peaked in attendance at over 2.3 million, second highest in the National League at the time, and again they didn’t quite make the playoffs, the lustre wore off for many fans. Charlie Lea. There were many changes in personnel as well. Bryn Smith. Some players had their careers abruptly shortened by injury. Hubie Brooks. Other veterans were traded or left via the free-agent route. Andres Galaragga. Attendance dwindled as the Expos continued to re-build. Tim Burke. The exciting 1987 team was a surprise contender, despite having a terrible April. Dennis Martinez. When Raines came back in May after sitting out to protest collusion among the owners, the Expos were the best team in the league for the rest of the year. Pascual Perez. But they could not quite overcome the early-season deficit and missed the playoffs again. Buck Rodgers.
My favourite team was the 1990 Expos. Larry Walker. Picked by all the pundits to be the worst team in baseball that year, the best farm system in the majors for the last quarter of the twentieth century came through again. Delino DeShields. They contended until the last few games of the season. Marquis Grissom. The re-building continued and the 1992 team contended again finishing second in the East. Moises Alou. They came second again in 1993 and won 94 games. Ken Hill. You could feel the excitement building again as this great young team was getting ready to peak. John Wetteland.
The 1994 Expos had a .649 winning percentage, the best in baseball. Pedro Martinez. They were trying to prove that you did not have to spend big money on free agents to have a great team. Jeff Fassero. Of course, the strike ended the season and the Expos did not get their chance to keep the World Series championship in Canada. Wil Cordero. If they had maintained that same winning percentage for the whole season, they would have won 105 games, one of the best totals ever in the history of the game. Darrin Fletcher. Unfortunately, during the off-season, the Expos only ended up proving that the teams that can afford to pay big salaries are the only ones that can contend in the post-1994 baseball world. Felipe Alou. They were unable to keep the 1994 team together and in 1995, it was back to re-building. Rondell White. They finished last in the East, but there were still 4 other teams in the National League with worse attendance than the Expos. Mel Rojas. The Expos still had a clutch of hardcore fans. Mark Grudzielanek. The 1996 team rebounded to come 2nd in the East, missing the wild-card spot by only 2 games. Oh Henry, Henry Rodriguez. But the Expos had to pay their players in Canadian dollars which became an increasing problem as its value continued to slide relative to the American dollar. Dustin Hermanson. Although the farm system continued to produce great players at an amazing rate, the economics of the game made it impossible for the Expos to contend.
Vladimir Guerrero. By 1998, the Expos had the lowest attendance in the National League, for only the second time in franchise history, a position they would maintain for their few remaining years. Ugueth Urbina. In 2002, the Expos came second in the East, but did not really contend, ending up 19 games behind Atlanta. Orlando Cabrera. Even though the Toronto-based Canadian national media had been wrong every year since 1990 with their gleeful predictions that the Expos were leaving Montreal immenently, now the writing really was on the wall. Jose Vidro. The talk of a real downtown major-league ballpark which the Expos never had, amounted to nothing. Javier Vazquez. If the CFL’s Alouettes are any indication, a move out of Olympic Stadium may have helped. Brad Wilkerson. We will never know for sure.
So, the city with the proud baseball history dating back to before Jackie Robinson made the Montreal Royals his first pro stop en route to breaking the colour barrier in the Major Leagues, is left without a team. For those of us who have spent virtually our entire lives cheering for the Expos, it feels like a part of us has left. On behalf of all Expos fans, I want to say to all those people involved with the Montreal Expos in any capacity over the past 36 years, thanks for the great memories. And I’ll see you in Cooperstown in fifteen or twenty years when Vladimir Guerrero joins Gary Carter there, as a Montreal Expo.
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Copyright © 2004 by W. A. MacCallum. Posted February 17, 2005.
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