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 (30 page)

Perez wasn’t the only player during that time to land with the Expos after a history of substance abuse. From June 1986 through December 1989, they also acquired right-handed starters Dennis Martinez and Oil Can Boyd, as well as outfielder Otis Nixon—all of whom had struggled with either alcohol or drug dependencies.

This should have seemed at least slightly crazy to just about everyone involved, since within recent memory the Expos had been compelled by common sense to excise multiple drug addicts and head cases from the roster. Yet now the front office was hoping that this new crop of addicts would find salvation in one of North America’s most notorious party towns? With just about any substance of abuse available in unlimited quantities in just about any bar on Crescent Street? What on earth could the suits have been thinking?

It was all about the money. The club’s roster, and especially the pitching staff, had been stricken by attrition, whether through injuries or skills erosion. The Expos needed someone—
anyone
—to soak up innings. They just had to be cheap.

“Take Martinez—we gave up almost nothing to get him,” said Cook, pointing to the 1986 trade that cost Montreal light-hitting utility infielder Rene Gonzales for Martinez and cup-of-coffee catcher John Stefero. At that price, “what did you have to lose?”

Like Perez, Martinez’s road back to big-league success was fraught with gigantic obstacles. When Martinez was born, the next-youngest of his six siblings was 10; his mother Emilia, 43. His father Edmundo was an alcoholic who left the family when Dennis was a small boy, and in Edmundo’s absence, Emilia sold beans and rice in a small stall at the
mercado
while young Dennis kept the books. Still, the family barely got by. Dennis went most of his childhood without socks, and wore hand-me-down clothes with patches sewn into the seat of his tattered pants. He played baseball day and night, using socks stuffed with rocks as makeshift balls before graduating to organized play with real equipment. Problem was, he wasn’t very good. Released by one of the worst teams in the Nicaraguan leagues, he signed with the Tiburones as a 120-pound third baseman at age 17. When manager Heberto Portobanco saw him messing around with curveballs in practice one day, he moved Martinez to the mound. That curveball, a pitch that often started at a hitter’s eyes and ended at his knees, became Martinez’s raison d’être.

“It was a natural pitch for me,” said Martinez in a 2012 interview. When Martinez came of age as a pitcher, the slider was becoming the trendy secondary pitch to complement the fastball, since few could command a big, 12-to-6 curve. Martinez had no such problems. “I knew how to handle it from the get-go. All other pitches developed around my curveball.”

Martinez’s prospects shot up soon after his conversion to pitching. In 1973, he started in the gold-medal game of the Amateur World Series. He lost 1–0 to Team USA in 10 innings, but showed enough to impress Baltimore Orioles scouts Julio Blanco Herrera and Ray Poitevint, who signed him to a contract. Three years later, at 21, Martinez made the Show. Earl Weaver liked to ease young pitchers into the rotation gradually, and Martinez was no exception: in 1977, Martinez’s first full year in the big leagues, he made 42 appearances, only 13 of them starts.

After that, however, he quickly developed into one of the most durable starters in baseball. Wielding four- and two-seam fastballs, a changeup, and his trademark curve, Martinez was a pitch-to-contact guy, which worked for him thanks to the perennially strong Orioles defence that was one of the pillars of Weaver’s strategy. In 1979, just Martinez’s second season as a full-time starter, he led the league in starts (39), complete games (18), and innings pitched.

Despite those achievements, though, Martinez felt underappreciated in Baltimore, pitching in the shadow of future Hall of Famer Jim Palmer and talented lefties Mike Flanagan and Scott McGregor. That insecurity formed a toxic mix with the same demon that haunted his father: the bottle. The day he lost that Amateur World Series heartbreaker, Martinez had been scheduled to meet with the O’s scout. To calm his nerves, the captain of the Nicaraguan team slipped him a bottle of rum. Martinez took one shot, then a few more. That was the start of a 10-year battle, one that clouded Martinez’s self-image and eventually wrecked his performance.

“I never got the credit I thought I deserved,” Martinez said. “I looked at it like I was the scapegoat, the black sheep of the staff. Mainly because people didn’t understand me. They called me a hard-headed boy, the guy who didn’t listen. It’s not an excuse, but sometimes having that resentment, that frustration—sooner or
later it puts you in a bad situation, especially in the lifestyle we were in, to be pushed to drinking. I was one of the weak people. I avoided facing reality, that frustration I was going through.”

In 1983, he finally checked himself into rehab. The Orioles won the World Series that year, without Martinez throwing a single pitch in the playoffs. The next three years, Martinez said, were all about his recovery, not his pitching. And it showed: he posted the worst numbers of his career from 1983 through ’86, with a 29–42 record and an ERA over 5.00. A month past his 31
^st
birthday, his last quality season four years gone, Martinez needed a second chance. He needed a desperate team.

Enter the ’86 Expos. But despite their obvious needs, they didn’t hand Martinez anything. Rather than toss him into the rotation, the Expos first used Martinez in relief. It was a complete disaster. The Pirates jumped on him immediately, piling up the runs, and Martinez kept looking back to the dugout, hoping for some sign from Buck Rodgers that the Expos skipper might let him off the hook. Nada. Martinez’s final line that day: 3 2/3 innings, nine hits, nine runs.

“They let me
wear
it, man,” Martinez recalled, laughing a lot more 26 years later than he did then. “I was so miserable. I just let it all out, all the bad things, all the demons. After that, I started seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.”

In his first meeting with Larry Bearnarth, the Expos’ soft-spoken pitching coach told Martinez to forget his past struggles, that he should do what he’d always done and not worry about tinkering with his approach. Martinez made three relief outings, then joined the rotation in early July and pitched well enough the rest of the way—just 3–6, but with decent numbers otherwise—to merit another shot, somewhere. After an off-season in limbo due to his lousy four-year stretch, Martinez re-signed with Montreal, then got shuttled to Triple-A to start the 1987 season. On June
10, he finally got his first start back in the majors. Facing the same Pirates team that destroyed him a year earlier, Martinez threw seven strong innings, permitting just two runs and three hits. That start launched a huge comeback season in which Martinez went 11–4 with a 3.30 ERA in 22 starts. This was the beginning of the best six-year run of Martinez’s career—even better than his heyday with the Orioles. Harnessing the location on his fastball to go with his knockout curve, Martinez made three All-Star teams in the next six seasons, four times posting ERAs below 3.00.

Led by Raines and Wallach, strong relief pitching from the tandem of Tim Burke and Andy McGaffigan, and the twin revivals of Perez and Martinez, the ’87 Expos closed to within two games of first place with 15 to play … but got no closer. They finished the season 91–71, just four games behind the first-place Cardinals. They went 82–57 with Raines in the lineup, but just 9–14 without him. It might be a stretch to say that having Raines available in April would’ve swung the pennant race, but still, this was another what-if season for a franchise that just kept racking them up.

Meanwhile, after three seasons as GM, Cook was abruptly fired in August of ’87. His dismissal wasn’t due to poor performance by the Expos. Instead, it was over an affair he had with Pamela Brochu, team president Claude Brochu’s wife. Bill Stoneman took over the general manager’s job for a few months on an interim basis before giving way to farm director Dave Dombrowski in July 1988. The team obsessed with young talent on the field was now trying the same tack off the field: at 31 years old, Dombrowski became the youngest GM in baseball.

Dombrowski and company didn’t have much to celebrate in ’88. For starters, Opening Day was a bloodbath. The visiting Mets were a powerhouse, and this was one of their best performances. New York blasted six home runs at Olympic Stadium that day en route to a 10–6 win. The
coup de grâce
came in the seventh. With
one out, Darryl Strawberry came to bat, facing reliever Randy St. Claire. Strawberry had already homered off Martinez. This time, he got a belt-high fastball out over the plate, and annihilated it.

It was Easter Monday, and I was there. Even though it was Opening Day and a packed house was expected, I didn’t buy tickets in advance. Normally, that meant grabbing four or five buddies, buying cheap seats, then sneaking down to our preferred spot: section 117, first-base side, just past the base, 30 rows up. Since 55,412 others showed up that day, however, the best I could do were seats way down the line in left field in the upper deck, a nosebleed section of the stadium that in later years would be sealed off on account of apathy. This was so high up, it felt like you could reach out and touch the Big O’s ugly orange roof. After Strawberry’s blast, I could confirm that wasn’t true. Because Straw took that batting-practice fastball and blasted it higher and farther than any ball I’ve ever seen, a majestic shot that carried and carried … and struck the concrete ring at the top of the stadium, just missing the vast expanse of orange Kevlar.

Mets fans and Expos fans still talk about that moonshot, about Strawberry, and about the worst omen a team could ever have on Opening Day.

By the third week of May, the Expos sat more than 10 games behind the division leader; by year’s end they’d just managed a .500 record, falling 20 games short of the NL East–winning Mets. There were a few bright spots, though. Perez and Martinez continued their renaissances, and those two right-handers, along with the rest of the staff, got lots of support from a much stronger defensive middle infield. Tom Foley and especially Luis Rivera didn’t hit much, but they were still big defensive improvements over Vance Law (gone via free agency) and Hubie Brooks (moved to right field, where he looked a lot better). Wallach won his second Gold Glove at third base while Galarraga earned his
“Big Cat” nickname as the most agile first baseman to ever play for the Expos. The additions of veteran castoffs Otis Nixon and Rex Hudler added 75 stolen bases from two part-time players. But the team just couldn’t hit. Rookie Nelson Santovenia became the latest Expos catcher to make too many outs since Gary Carter’s departure, and Wallach had a down year at the plate.

It was also time to accept that another prospect had flamed out. Though Brooks put up some pretty good numbers during his five seasons in Montreal, Floyd Youmans was supposed to be the gem of the Carter trade. Instead, he was a bust. In his one good season, 1986, the right-hander tossed 219 innings with a 3.53 ERA, but still led the league in walks. It all collapsed after that, in an all-too-familiar pattern. After an injury-plagued 1987 season, he checked into rehab, hoping to kick alcoholism. In ’88, he managed just 13 starts, missing a huge chunk of the season after getting suspended for cocaine use. Then there were the terrible work habits that left him overweight and unable to harness the blazing fastball and promising secondary stuff that once portended future stardom.

Like Ellis Valentine, Youmans says he’s a changed man now, having learned from a wasted youth. “I just had to grow up, man,” Youmans told me in 2013. “I just had to understand. With my kids now, I teach them lessons, help them understand consequences. That it’s not always about you, it’s also other people. As a young person, when you’re going through that, you have to think about who are you hurting.” Unfortunately, Youmans’ lessons came too late for the Expos, who traded him to Philadelphia after the 1988 season. He lasted just one more year in the big leagues, finished at 25.

If big-ticket free agents wouldn’t come to Montreal, Dombrowski would find other ways to build a winning roster. While Murray Cook had gotten forced into a blockbuster trade due to owner
disenchantment, and John McHale was usually too complacent to pull the trigger, Dombrowski showed he was willing to make aggressive deals to improve the team.

It started in December of ’88, when Dombrowski flipped Youmans and Jeff Parrett to Philly for right-hander Kevin Gross. Parrett was coming off a big year in relief, having tossed 91 2/3 innings with a 2.65 ERA that offered a great sell-high opportunity. Dombrowski figured the veteran Gross would soak up some innings, and that the bullpen was deep enough to overcome Parrett’s loss. Two days later, Dombrowski upgraded the shortstop position, a problem for nearly every one of the Expos’ first 20 seasons. The trade sent young right-handed starter John Dopson and punchless shortstop Luis Rivera to Boston for a hoped-for boost in veteran Spike Owen. Failing to find an elite second baseman to fill another historically weak position, the Expos GM instead signed veteran Damaso Garcia, then slotted him into a half-decent, low-cost platoon with incumbent Tom Foley. Add to that a centre-field platoon featuring Dave Martinez (acquired two years earlier, just nine days into Dombrowski’s GM tenure) and Otis Nixon, and you had a team still short on stars, but more intelligently built, with more depth, than most Expos rosters before it.

Things didn’t go quite as hoped to start the year, though. Expected to lean heavily on quality pitching, the Expos instead got the ugly version of Pascual Perez. First came a relapse of his cocaine habit, one that landed him in rehab in early February and left his status for the start of the season in doubt. Though he made it back in time for spring training, he went 0–7 with a 5.04 ERA to start the season, temporarily losing his spot in the rotation. Perez’s seventh loss came against the Dodgers on May 20, the Expos’ fifth straight defeat. It dropped them to two games under .500 and fourth place in the NL East. Another disappointing year seemed inevitable.