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 (26 page)

McHale reacted with complacency. Armed with a free-agency system that didn’t exist when he ran the Tigers and later the Braves, the Expos GM barely touched the open market. From 1979 through 1983, with Montreal in contention every year and the need never higher to round out the roster with a few more jolts of talent, McHale signed: Ray Burris, the veteran right-hander who helped the rotation in ’81 but didn’t do much thereafter; Elias Sosa, a right-handed relief pitcher who pitched well for two years but was pretty much done by 1981 … and that was about it. The two biggest trades in that time were Valentine for Reardon (a big winner) and the Oliver deal, which looked great in ’82 but less so thereafter, as the big name going the other way (Larry Parrish) enjoyed several more productive seasons in Texas. But the team’s increasingly terrible middle infield remained unaddressed. Meanwhile, McHale and company failed to properly identify the rare quality young players they had in the system. In addition to giving away Bernazard and Phillips, the Expos also sold Ken Phelps to the Mariners, dumping a player who became a terrific hitter in Seattle (and later a punchline in a classic Frank Costanza rant on
Seinfeld
).

Even with the shortcomings, you can’t have as much top-flight talent as the Expos did and not at least be in the mix. And the ’83 squad did in fact contend for the NL East crown. They led the
division for much of April, then again for a three-week stretch in late June and early July. They vaulted back into first on Labour Day and held that spot as late as September 13, after a 5–2 win over the Cubs. Through it all, fans again descended on Olympic Stadium, with the Expos’ attendance setting a record that will forever stand as the highest mark in franchise history.

But yet again, an Expos season ended in disappointment. On September 14, the Expos lost both ends of a doubleheader to the Phillies, a team so old that—in a nod to the 1950 Philly team christened as “the Whiz Kids”—they were dubbed “the Wheeze Kids.” That aging Philadelphia squad won just 90 games, but it was enough to take the East, and to put down the perpetually underachieving Expos.

“Woodie Fryman used to talk about how teams had a five-year window to win,” said Farber. “This was the closing of that window.”

From 1979 through ’83, the Expos won more games than anybody else in the National League. Yet they reached the playoffs just once, and that lone post-season berth came with an asterisk due to the split-season format that allowed the Expos to sneak in.

“That was sort of the demise of the franchise,” Carter said. “We didn’t win those championships during the prime years, when we had a real chance.”

So what went wrong?

There were the cocaine cases, of course. Beyond those off-field problems, though, some believed the Expos had the talent to win championships—but not the leadership. Parrish in particular had been well liked and respected in the clubhouse, and the trade that sent him to the Rangers got blamed for Montreal’s leadership void.

“He was the heart and soul of those teams,” said Dave Van Horne. “In the clubhouse, in the dugout, in the runway leading out before games. The team really missed Larry. Al Oliver was a terrific player, but Parrish was the one who could rally the troops.”

At the end of the ’82 season, Fanning returned to a front-office role, leaving the manager’s job open. Here was another opportunity to hire a candidate who possessed both the experience and tactical acumen necessary for the role and the right temperament to lead the team. Once again, Felipe Alou was considered. Once again, the Expos brass went in a different direction. This time, the pick was Bill Virdon.

Having led three different teams to division titles or shares of division titles (the 1972 Pirates, 1980 Astros, plus the second-half crown for the ’81 Astros), Virdon had the experience that Fanning didn’t. He was also incredibly old-fashioned, a stickler for protocol who forbade drinking on flights during road trips. McHale hadn’t realized the extent of the coke problem rippling through the roster until it was too late, and hiring a disciplinarian like Virdon was an attempt to instill order on a team in apparent disarray. With a lineup full of free-swinging hitters and a perpetually leaky defence that often featured players throwing to the wrong base, Virdon’s strict approach seemed the perfect fit.

“He wasn’t the easiest person to get to know, but when you took the time to get to know him, you found an interesting man, someone with a sense of humour,” Terry Francona said in a 2013 interview. “He was the best outfield instructor I’d ever seen—he personally did it, himself, as manager. I’ve never been around somebody who made you work that hard, who paid attention to detail that much. It was hard. He was a taskmaster. But when he was there, that was the best outfield I ever played.”

“He just commanded your respect,” Tim Wallach told me in 2011. “Not because he was loud—he wasn’t. You’d see him walk in and he had a way about him that got your attention. I just respected the heck out of the guy.”

Francona himself went on to become a World Series–winning manager after his playing days, and in early 2014, Wallach was the
Dodgers’ bench coach and a candidate for a future major league manager’s job. Others, however, didn’t see Virdon the way they did.

“Nobody liked the guy,” said Cromartie. “It’s a tough choice for me between Karl Kuehl and Bill Virdon, but I think Bill Virdon’s got it. [Virdon] was a military-style guy. He was very uncommunicative. He liked to flex his muscles on top of the dugout steps. He thought he was a Marine guy.”

To be fair to Fanning and Virdon, both men managed flawed rosters. McHale’s overconfidence in his roster and/or reluctance to make impactful moves (depending on your perspective) led to inertia, and the Expos kept proving that what they had wasn’t quite enough. Both the manager hirings and roster weaknesses fall primarily on McHale, who served as both team president and general manager from ’79 through most of the 1984 season.

Even with all that, we can still chalk up a big part of their failure to far simpler factors: bad timing and bad luck. The Expos faced very tough competition for four years in a row. The Pirates knocked them out at the end of the 1979 season. Then came the Phillies in 1980, the Dodgers in the final inning of the deciding NLCS game in ’81, and the Cardinals in September of ’82. In each of those seasons, the Expos lost out to the team that would eventually win the World Series. If baseball had allowed four playoff teams per league in 1979 and 1980 the way it did after the introduction of the Wild Card format in the mid-’90s, and all else stayed the same, the Expos would’ve made the playoffs three years in a row.

But every other team faced the same challenges, and instead, the Expos reached the end of an era. After one more good season in ’83, the bottom finally fell out for Rogers, who retired two years later. Cromartie signed with the Yomiuri Giants and didn’t reappear in the majors until eight years down the road.

Entering the 1984 season, with yet another disappointing finish under their belt, Bronfman funded and McHale executed
just one notable off-season pickup: an over-the-hill Pete Rose. The Expos knew him well from all those early-’80s battles with the Phillies. “Charlie Hustle” was expected to provide the leadership the team supposedly lacked, even if he was many years past his physical prime.

“I would characterize the Expos as a ship without a rudder [and] Pete Rose could be that rudder,” Steve Rogers told
Sports Illustrated
writer Ron Fimrite. “He can bring another dimension. We have a strong nucleus, but nobody from that nucleus can assert himself as a leader. We’re equals. You can’t be a leader to your peers. Hell, we all grew up together. We’re brothers. How can any of us be the dominant brother? We need somebody above that, a Pete Rose.”

“Pete’s the missing ingredient,” Rose’s former teammate turned Expos second baseman Doug Flynn added. “We need leadership, not so much on the field as on the bench and in the clubhouse. Our club has been too laid-back. Pete’s not going to let anybody relax. I don’t care if he hits .240, he can help us. He looks hungry and good. He has that look in his eye.”

“He represents professionalism and enthusiasm and a winning attitude,” said McHale. “We’re betting that he has a breath or two left. Peer pressure, I think, is more effective than pressure from the manager or from management. Players respond more to it. As the crowds get bigger, the prizes larger and the races closer, we need someone to get up and say, ‘Let’s do it!’ ”

They did not do it. Rose hit .259 with no homers in 95 games before getting dealt to the Reds, and the Expos were never really in the hunt in ’84. But the cruellest blow of all would come at the season’s end … with the trade of an icon.

On Opening Day 1977, Gary Carter squatted behind the plate to catch Steve Rogers, then added a home run as the Expos went on
to beat the Phillies 4–3. That was Carter’s first season as the Expos’ everyday catcher, rather than the injury-prone hybrid catcher/outfielder he’d been. From 1977 through 1984, Carter was the best catcher in the game by a wide margin. Actually, that’s underselling The Kid’s value. Going by Wins Above Replacement—a stat that measures offense, defense, and baserunning, then adjusts for ballpark effects and the era in which a player played—Carter was the second-best player in baseball at
any
position over that eight-year span, trailing only the great Mike Schmidt.

More than just a superstar on the field, Carter was also the team’s most popular player, the successor to Rusty Staub who embraced fans’ rabid enthusiasm the way Le Grand Orange did. Carter took the time to learn some basic French, same as Staub. One of the most famous photos in team history is of Carter on Camera Day in 1983, being mobbed by delirious fans, most of them donning Expos gear, all of them either kids or teenagers.

“Gary was always available to the fans,” recalled long-time Expos administrative assistant Marcia Schnaar. “His agent told him, ‘These are the people who pay your salary; be there for them.’ But I didn’t see it as forced. It was genuine. He enjoyed talking to people. Especially all the little boys and girls who came to see him.”

Carter was an invaluable asset for the Expos. Still, Charles Bronfman was about to trade him anyway.

The Expos’ owner had grown frustrated by the team falling short of expectations year after year. During all those close calls, Carter had played well through injuries and come through in many big spots. But when he went 0 for 8 in a season-deciding home doubleheader against the Phillies in September 1983, Bronfman lost it. He accused Carter of choking—of not being worth the big money. That last part was the most germane. Even Babe Ruth had a few 0-fers in big games. But what started as a request for a $1 million investment in 1969 had become a major annual financial
commitment for Bronfman. (And some of Carter’s teammates felt underpaid by comparison, believing Carter’s salary was augmented by his attention-grabbing personality.) Revenue streams were now falling behind players’ salary requests. In 1984, the Expos finished below .500 for the first time in six years; attendance plunged 31 percent to just 1.6 million, the eighth-highest mark among the National League’s 12 teams.

On April 13, 1984—just the ninth game of the season—Rose slapped his 4,000
^th
hit a day before his 43
^rd
birthday. It was a legendary individual achievement, but when that’s the most notable highlight in a dull, mediocre season, you can understand why an owner would take things out on his highest-paid player. Even if Carter was worth every penny.

On December 10, 1984, it happened—the Expos traded Carter to the Mets. In the process, they unloaded the best, most beloved player in franchise history to that point.

“I was disappointed—I thought I’d be an organization guy, with the same team for my entire career,” Carter said. “[But] by the time ’84 came around, we were in fifth place. Bronfman took the same kind of approach with me that the Pirates did with Ralph Kiner: if the Expos can finish in fifth place with Gary Carter, they can do the same without him.”

Today, a sub-.500 team with a thin farm system might ask for a package stuffed with top prospects in return for an established star in his prime like Carter. Montreal didn’t do that. Instead, the deal revolved around players with big-league experience: Hubie Brooks, a 28-year-old third baseman with a decent bat who profiled as an offence-first shortstop for the Expos; Herm Winningham, a 23-year-old outfielder who’d shown no evidence he could hit (and never did); and Mike Fitzgerald, a 24-year-old catcher who was Carter’s default replacement—but who surprised everyone a bit by having some decent years later on. The only player in the deal
with exciting potential was Floyd Youmans, a 20-year-old flamethrower who grew up with Mets phenom Dwight Gooden in the Tampa area, and who the Expos hoped would develop into a slightly lesser version of the spectacular Dr. K.

The Carter deal was reactive rather than proactive, a half-hearted attempt to stay semi-competitive rather than a well-conceived plan to build for the future. Though Brooks did put up some pretty good numbers in Montreal, the trade was made because of Bronfman’s frustration with rising salaries, and his realization that the Expos were headed for financial trouble.

“When attendance declined, I remember saying that we weren’t doing well, but Philadelphia wasn’t either,” said Bronfman. “Then I found out Philadelphia’s season-ticket base was 20,000. Ours was 10,000.”

“There was no question in my mind even then that we had a Hall of Fame–calibre catcher,” said Van Horne. “Johnny Bench was the greatest catcher ever, and we had the heir to Johnny Bench’s throne. The trade was a great disappointment because of Gary’s charisma, his attachment to the community, and everything else. And also the bitterness that came out of all of that. I know it affected Charles [Bronfman]. He had perceived the Expos as one big family, and of course they were not. He realized it was all about business. In his mind, the players’ attitude was that all the other things—the way they were treated, the way they had a good relationship [with the owner], all of that means nothing if the numbers on the contract are not to my liking. That was a bitter, bitter pill for Charles to swallow.