Up, Up, and Away: The Kid, the Hawk, Rock, Vladi, Pedro, le Grand Orange, Youppi!, the Crazy Business of Baseball, and the Ill-fated but Unforgettable Montreal Expos (11 page)

Of course, one player alone doesn’t make a team. After whiffing repeatedly on draft picks in their first few seasons, the Expos finally started connecting on some singles and doubles—even a few homers.

In 1973, the Expos struck out in the primary June draft. At the time, though, the league had three different amateur drafts: one in January, and two in June. With the fifth pick of the secondary June draft, the Expos landed a player who would become one of the most memorable figures in franchise history, not only for his play on the field and his constant exuberance, but also for his contributions 20-plus years after his retirement.

Warren Cromartie holds the rare distinction of being drafted five times. He spurned offers from the Chicago White Sox (seventh round, June 1971); Minnesota Twins (third round, January ’72); San Diego Padres (first round, June ’72); and Oakland A’s (first round, January ’73) before finally signing with the Expos in the summer of ’73. Drafted out of Miami-Dade Junior College, Cromartie jumped straight to Double-A, starting his career with the Quebec City Carnavals. It was a loaded club that surged to the Eastern League playoffs, led by three players who would go on to play big roles with the Expos. But Cromartie was already dreaming of playing in Montreal, two and a half hours away. He racked up big numbers in that ’74 season (.336 batting average, 13 home runs, and 30 stolen bases), and when the Carnavals drove southwest from Quebec City toward Montreal, then turned away from Montreal and south over the border to play American teams, he’d catch a glimpse over his shoulder of what awaited him in the big leagues.

“Driving across the bridge, the city was so beautiful lit up,” Cromartie said. “I’d heard so much about the Expos, about Montreal, and all the pretty girls there. What more could you ask for?”

He got his chance on September 6, 1974, making his major league debut against Pirates right-hander Dock Ellis, just 10 days before Gary Carter got his own call-up. Cromartie had 17 at-bats in the big leagues that year, then returned to the minors in 1975, spending the entire season with the Triple-A Memphis club. Two years later, he finally headed north for good with the big club out of spring training. Cromartie had drawn more attention in the draft than any of his core teammates on those Expos teams of the ’70s and early ’80s, yet never quite rose to All-Star status. Still, as a durable, better-than-average hitter who hit righties very well in his prime, he was an excellent supporting-cast member.

Another Florida native, born just six weeks after Cromartie, seemed to shadow Cro’s every move as he climbed the ladder. Larry Parrish, undrafted, signed with the Expos in 1972. By age 20, he was Cromartie’s teammate in Quebec City, manning third base and hitting with promise. When Cromartie got the call, Parrish was right there with him.

“We drove in from Quebec together, took the plane together, took a cab together, came through the tunnel together in Pittsburgh—we were almost crying,” Cromartie said. “Before we went to the ballpark, we went to the hotel. ‘Skip wants to see you,’ we were told. So we go to Gene Mauch. ‘Congratulations,’ he says. Then the next thing we hear is, ‘We lost your luggage!’ Two rookies come to the big leagues, we got no fucking luggage! No gloves, no shoes, no bats. We borrowed other people’s stuff. I had to borrow Steve Rogers’ shoes. The problem was, they had a pitcher’s toe plate on. My first big-league game, and I’m walking around pigeon-toed!”

Ill-fitting shoes notwithstanding, Cromartie and Parrish got through that first game just fine. It was Parrish, however, who progressed more quickly from there. While Cromartie headed back to the minors in 1975, Parrish claimed the starting third-base job in Montreal. He hit .274 with 10 home runs and played solid defence, holding his own as a 21-year-old rookie. Parrish was another player often remembered as much for his personality as his numbers: when the Expos eventually grew into contenders, many cited Parrish’s intangibles—his ability and willingness to play hurt, his leadership—as key factors.

“When Parrish had his best year, he was playing with a wrist that he could barely move,” said long-time Expos trainer Ron McClain. “Finally, the doctor had to put it in a cast. That was the only way to stop him from playing.”

Not for long, though. Parrish sat for only six days before getting back in the lineup. In that peak 1979 season, even with that badly
injured wrist, he played 153 games, hit .307, and smacked 30 home runs. When Parrish’s later departure coincided with a downturn in the Expos’ fortunes, his ouster would become a big part of the narrative.

Andre Dawson was yet another Florida find, a Miami guy like Cromartie. But he didn’t get nearly as much attention initially, partly because he was damaged goods. Playing football for Southwest Miami High School in 1971, Dawson severely injured
his right knee after taking a direct shot from a teammate’s helmet. He rolled on the ground in agony, and couldn’t put any pressure on his leg. The team trainer said he only had a strained ligament, but Dawson felt something far worse.

Dawson went to the hospital the next day and learned that he’d torn both cartilage and ligaments, and required surgery on the damaged knee. Medical technology in the early ’70s was nearly prehistoric compared to what it would become later, as was the advice proffered by doctors. After the surgery, Dawson got fitted for a brace and was told to just wait a couple weeks and see. No one prescribed any physical therapy, nor did Dawson pursue any. He tried to play on the knee in his senior year, but his mobility was shot. That injury helped drop him all the way to the 11
^th
round before the Expos scooped him up.

When sportswriters talk about a player’s work ethic, the tone can get hyperbolic in a hurry. We want to ascribe heroic traits to athletes, so we conjure up the most glowing descriptions imaginable: about how they worked out 22 hours a day in the snow, bench-pressing 18-wheelers while running to Bhutan and back. If a player is perceived as limited athletically, the gushing even escalates—as scribes vie to lionize the scrub who, through sheer force of will, made himself into a ballplayer.

Dawson was no scrub. He was a gifted athlete who would surely have generated a lot more buzz among scouts without the knee injury. But it’s unlikely he would have wound up in the Hall of Fame if he hadn’t pushed himself as hard as he did.

Not long after his surgery, Dawson started experiencing fluid buildup in his knee, and it only got worse from there. Doctors diagnosed the knee as arthritic. Another operation followed; cartilage was removed, leaving the knee as bone on bone. The diagnosis was grim.

“The docs said I’d be lucky if I played four years,” Dawson said.

These weren’t obstacles besetting an aging ballplayer at the twilight of his career. Dawson’s knee was deteriorating—and his window to play seemingly shrinking—just as he was entering his early 20s. So he started attacking the problem as aggressively as he could.

The medical procedures were intense and never-ending. He’d get his knee drained three times a year: once at the end of spring training, once around the All-Star break, then again near the end of the season. He also got multiple cortisone shots every season, the number rising as his career progressed. The maintenance regimen was long, at times mind-numbing. Massages and icing, but also showing up before all his teammates for marathon stretching sessions. He’d get his knee taped before batting practice, then re-taped 45 minutes before the game. After the game came 20 minutes of additional icing, then a shower, after which the clubhouse was nearly empty.
Then
there were the workouts. Training with heavy weights was frowned upon in those days, with trainers suggesting that too much bulk hurt players’ flexibility. So Dawson used Cybex machines to strengthen his quadriceps and hamstrings. Alongside those exercises were push-ups and sit-ups—too many to count. He’d often do all of that after 10 or 11 hours in the ballpark, having gone through all those warm-ups, played the actual game, and treated his knees afterwards. Made sense. There certainly weren’t any lines for the machines that late at night.

Dawson’s diligence kept him on the field and helped fuel some huge performances at every step. In his first year as a pro, he hit .330/.383/.553 at Lethbridge, Alberta, of the rookie-level Pioneer League. The next season, he hit .352/.413/.658 with 28 homers in just 114 games between Double-A Quebec City and the hitters’ haven of Triple-A Denver. He made his major league debut on September 11, 1976, and became an everyday player in the big leagues the next season.

Numbers aside, Dawson’s stone-faced resolve under the stress of searing pain quickly earned his teammates’ respect and admiration.

“You’d see him laying quietly on the training table, getting his knees drained over and over—it was un-fucking-believable,” said Bill Lee, the eccentric left-hander who would join the team in 1979 and become its most colourful character. “We would just go in and look at him. You knew how much it had to hurt, but he never showed it. I mean, his fucking knees looked like fucking Frankenstein’s face.”

It took a little longer to build a stable of dynamic young pitchers to complement the barrage of hitting talent emerging from the Expos system. Rogers got it started.

Montreal snagged Rogers with the fourth pick in the 1971 secondary draft. When the Expos took him, Rogers had 19 hours of senior-level classes left to complete his degree in petroleum engineering. He felt that if he didn’t take those classes right then, he’d never earn his degree. An intellectual and a pragmatist as well as an athlete, Rogers wanted a fallback plan in case baseball didn’t work out. So when he signed that first contract with the Expos, he made a pointed request: Don’t send me to instructional league—let me finish my college education first. It took about 14 seconds from that point for the media to get on his case, a pattern that continued throughout what would become a long, illustrious, and outspoken career.

The argument over Rogers’ desire to finish his degree wasn’t his only immediate beef with the organization. When the three players drafted ahead of him in ’71—the Senators’ Pete Broberg, the Cubs’ Burt Hooton, and the Brewers’ Rob Ellis—all cracked the big leagues right away, Rogers expected the same.

“I went to Triple-A—and I thought I had been screwed,” said Rogers. “I really felt like my talent hadn’t been recognized enough.”

Many elite athletes have that kind of arrogance as they climb the ladder toward professional success. It’s often a healthy and necessary confidence that lets them shrug off failures and keep working toward their goals. Rogers was simply more candid than most about how good he was, and how his team should treat him accordingly. He did learn a little humility, though, and much sooner than he expected.

“I ran into the Rochester Red Wings, Baltimore’s Triple-A team” while playing for the International League’s Winnipeg Whips, he recalled. “They had [Don] Baylor, [Bobby] Grich, [Al] Bumbry, [Rich] Coggins, Terry Crowley … when you totalled all of the team’s major league playing careers, they had just under 100 years of major league service. That team and those players pinned my ears back. They taught me that I had a lot to learn. So I learned that I needed to learn a whole lot before I could move up through the system. Which was a good lesson.”

Rogers’ minor league lessons were physical as well as mental. When he joined the organization, he threw only two pitches: fastball and curve. He showed some variety with the two offerings, sinking his fastball at times, then throwing another one that moved sideways rather than down. His curve also did a couple of things, one of them conventional and the other a slow bender (what Rogers called a changeup-curveball). In the fall of ’72, though, Rogers learned two new pitches in instructional league.

One was the slider. In the early ’70s, the slider hadn’t yet become the ubiquitous pitch that hitters would see a decade or two later; for awhile, the Dodgers wouldn’t let their pitchers throw sliders at all, just curveballs. As Rogers explained it, the Expos wanted him to learn the slider so he’d have another weapon against left-handed hitters.

The other pitch he learned was the cross-seam fastball, today more frequently called a four-seamer. It was (and is) less common
for pitchers to start with a sinking two-seamer, then have to learn the straighter (and often slightly harder) four-seamer. Then again, Rogers was uncommon in many ways: he was a finesse pitcher with the swagger of a fireballer, smarter than many of his rivals, the kind of player who defied the notion that baseball was a reactionary game that ate deep thinkers alive … and was one of the most superstitious pitchers you’ll ever see.