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 (31 page)

Charles Bronfman had other ideas. What started as an inkling to sell the team had grown into a full-blown notion, as Bronfman had grown increasingly bitter and disillusioned while wrestling with the cost of doing business, the sagging attendance, and the annual seven-figure losses. If he was getting out, though, Bronfman figured he should try to go out on top.

Word was getting around that the Mariners were willing to trade star lefty Mark Langston. Over the previous three seasons, only Roger Clemens had thrown more innings and struck out more batters than the 28-year-old Langston. When rumours started swirling that the Expos were not only interested but also a real threat to get him, no one could believe it. Trading for a high-priced star was something they’d never done—much less when that star was a few months away from free agency, and the price would be multiple premium prospects.

“The Mets were interested too,” said Dombrowski in a 2012 interview. “We knew we’d have to give up a lot, and we didn’t know if we’d be able to re-sign him. But we also knew we’d get two draft choices as compensation if we couldn’t keep him. Really it came down to this: Charles wanted to win.”

On May 25, the trade was made. Coming to the Expos were Langston and a player to be named later (Mike Campbell, a first-round pick who would never pitch for Montreal). Going to Seattle was a trio of high-quality pitching prospects. First was Gene Harris, a righty flamethrower whom the Expos considered the prize of the deal, then Brian Holman, a right-hander who projected as a number-four starter. The third was a gangly left-hander who threw harder than any other lefty in the game, but was so raw that half the time neither he nor the batter had any idea where his pitches were going. “No one knew,” said Dombrowski, “that Randy Johnson would become that good.”

Also, no one on the Expos roster that season cared. When word
spread that Montreal had made a go-for-it trade of that magnitude, the reaction was one of shock—and joy.

“I just thought, ‘Oh man, we’re going for it!’ ” said Dave Martinez. “ ‘This is
awesome
.’ ”

“I got back to my hotel room,” said
le Journal de Montreal
writer Serge Touchette. “Tim Wallach had called me. He’d asked me if it was a joke. I called him back and said, ‘No, Tim, it’s true.’ He just started yelling into the phone.”

The trade didn’t just lift the team’s spirits: it marked the start of a big run. In the first series following the deal, the Expos took two out of three in San Diego. Langston started the final game of the set and absolutely bulldozed the Padres. In eight innings, Montreal’s new ace surrendered just one earned run on four hits, striking out 12. A two-hour drive north brought the Expos to L.A., where they took two out of three from the Dodgers. And after a long flight, they capped the road trip by sweeping three from the Phillies. That series included Langston’s second start as an Expo, and it was another gem: eight innings, one run, five hits, nine punchouts. Throughout Expos history, West Coast swings had turned into graveyards for the team’s playoff chances. This time—counting the three-game set played just before the trade—it netted a 6–3 record. Throw in the sweep at Philly, and you had one of the franchise’s most successful road trips ever, one that left Montreal just a game out of first place. Three weeks after that, in the middle of what would become a six-game winning streak, they grabbed sole possession of first place.

Time to double down. On July 2, Dombrowski flipped three prospects to the Braves for lefty Zane Smith. Normally a decent back-of-the-rotation starter, Smith couldn’t find a spot in Montreal’s loaded starting five, not with Langston, Dennis Martinez, Bryn Smith, Gross, and a rejuvenated Pascual Perez healthy and producing. Instead, the Expos found a capable
left-handed relief pitcher who excelled for the rest of the season, tossing 48 innings with a 1.50 ERA as a bridge to Burke at the back of the bullpen. Two weeks after picking up Smith, Perez outduelled Tom Glavine to beat Atlanta 5–2. That win improved the Expos’ record to 53–39, good for a 3½-game division lead.

That wasn’t even the most exciting part. After years sitting in a warehouse in France, then a few more years slapped onto the top of the stadium, the Big O’s orange roof finally did what it was supposed to do. It was a miracle: the piece of crap finally opened.

I missed it all. Thanks to a class trip, I spent nine weeks that summer in Israel. Years before the proliferation of Internet and cellphones, with each long-distance call home costing a week’s worth of pizza, my buddies and I searched for the tiniest scraps of Expos news wherever we could find them. Our parents mailed us clippings from the
Montreal Gazette
from notable games, so we could catch up on events of two or three weeks earlier. There was the 10-inning slugfest in Houston on July 7, won by a Tom Foley bloop single off Danny Darwin. The 12–4 rout of the Reds on July 23, in which Ken Griffey Sr.’s two home runs were answered by … two homers from
Mike Fitzgerald
in a five-RBI game that was probably the best of his career. Then there were the regular beatings laid on opponents by Langston—most notably the two-hit shutout with 10 strikeouts in Atlanta July 3, and the back-to-back complete games in late July against Cincinnati and Pittsburgh, in which Langston struck out 23 batters and allowed just one run.

Screaming crowds of 35,000, even 40,000-plus started showing up to the ballpark, toting armfuls of cardboard Ks to mark each Langston strikeout. The venerable Peter Gammons wrote a huge
Sports Illustrated
summer story on the Expos, in which he waxed optimistic on the team’s chances (“After 20 years of disappointment, the Expos are suddenly, well, maybe not America’s Team, maybe not even Canada’s Team, but they are a team that believes
in itself and believes that it can win the National League East”). Gammons also quoted Bryn Smith complaining about Quebeckers serving gravy instead of ketchup with fries, and Smith’s wife, Patti, lamenting her periodic drives across the U.S. border to buy Doritos (never mind that any proper
casse-croûte
had ketchup aplenty, and many
dépanneurs
carried Doritos). From nine thousand kilometres away, getting news of this first-place team in dribs and drabs, it all seemed like some kind of fever dream. But back home, people were starting to believe.

“As the season unfolded, there was a sense that the team had a chance to do something,” said former Expos broadcaster Jerry Trupiano. “Expectations really went up after the Langston deal. Then they kept winning. [Legendary broadcaster] Jack Buck even said to me, ‘You’re going to get a ring this year.’ ”

On August 2 against the Pirates, Perez fired eight strong innings en route to a 3–1 victory. That marked the Expos’ third straight win, moved them to a season-best 19 games over .500, and capped a seven-start stretch for the lanky Dominican in which he posted a 2.38 ERA with a 5-to-1 strikeout-to-walk rate. After that game, Montreal led the division by three games. The pitching-and-defence plan was working: the Mets were in the midst of a big dip following their huge 1988 season, and the rest of the NL East looked weak. The second Expos playoff berth in 21 years seemed ripe.

“I remember when we were supposed to be the team of the ’80s, but then we didn’t win and the place went dead,” Raines told Gammons in that
SI
article. “Then [Gary] Carter and [Jeff] Reardon were traded, Andre [Dawson] left, and it looked like the franchise was dying. I know I wouldn’t be here if collusion hadn’t prevented me from going elsewhere. But I’m glad I didn’t go. This is the most fun I’ve ever had. It used to be that all you ever heard around the clubhouse was how tough it is to play in a foreign city.
Now, all you hear about is how this is the happiest summer of everyone’s baseball life.”

Then the heartbreaking losses started.

The day after Perez’s great start led to a win, Dennis Martinez’s seven shutout innings weren’t enough against the Pirates as mediocre right-hander Bob Walk dominated and the Expos finally lost in the 12
^th
inning on a single by bench jockey Benny Distefano. Three days later, five Mets pitchers steamrolled the Expos lineup, leading to a 2–1, 14-inning loss on Kevin McReynolds’ walk-off homer. From August 3 to August 23, the Expos went 0–3 in extra-inning games, 0–5 in one-run games, and dropped 14 of 20 overall.

The last of those losses might be the craziest game the Expos ever played. For sure, it was the craziest game I ever saw.

We’d been back for a week from our summer-long trip when the Expos capped a 13-game home stand with a Wednesday night tilt against the Dodgers. Our team was no longer in first place, but still stood just two games out, very much in the race. After two months away from the Big O, it was time to go back. My buddy Bean and I met up at the du Collège Metro stop, and off we went.

Starting for the Expos was Perez, by now completely free of his early-season struggles and coming off a complete-game win over the Padres. Starting for the Dodgers was Orel Hershiser, the defending Cy Young Award winner. With two of the best pitchers in the league and a Dodgers team that didn’t hit a lick all year, the ingredients were there for a low-scoring game. Nobody had any idea
how
low-scoring.

The Expos threatened in the early innings. They put a runner on third with two outs in the first but failed to score. Two singles in the second also netted nothing. The Dodgers didn’t do anything at all until the fifth, when a leadoff single went nowhere. In the eighth, L.A. put runners on second and third with one out, then pinch-hit for Hershiser. But Perez struck out Mike Sharperson, then got Alfredo Griffin to line out, keeping the game scoreless.

Weird tactical moves started piling up. Rookie Larry Walker, playing in just his seventh major league game, was batting second. Manager Buck Rodgers apparently trusted Walker enough to bat that high in the order but not to swing away, and had ordered him to sacrifice in the bottom of the first after leadoff hitter Dave Martinez had gotten on with a single. In the bottom of the eighth, after ace pinch-hitter Wallace Johnson led off with a single, base-stealing machine Otis Nixon pinch-ran, but Rodgers ordered another bunt anyway. Again, the Expos didn’t score.

The game stayed scoreless through the ninth and on into extra innings. The crowd of 21,742 started thinning out. Bean and I ditched the bleachers and snuck over to section 117. We ran into Brian (another one of the core group of diehards who bought walk-up bleacher seats 30 to 40 times a year) and his parents. They left after the 12
^th
inning, the game still scoreless. Two guys two grades above us were downtown listening to the game, then drove over to the ballpark on a whim. They made it for the 13
^th
, walked right in without paying, and ended up getting a full nine innings for their zero-dollar investment.

The game got more and more surreal as the innings ticked away. At one point we noticed a commotion from the Los Angeles dugout. Dodgers manager Tommy Lasorda was yelling about something; about what, we couldn’t tell. Red-faced, he stomped
over to home-plate umpire Greg Bonin, then unloaded a river of spittle in his face. A minute later, Bonin pointed to the top of the dugout. Turned out Lasorda had been kvetching about an unwelcome visitor. Youppi!, the Expos mascot, had been dancing on the heads of Lasorda and his players for the better part of two innings. When Youppi! pulled off his signature move, getting a running start then belly-flopping with a loud thud on the dugout to mimic a slide into second base, the Dodgers skipper snapped. He’d been nodding off in the dugout, and didn’t appreciate being startled out of his nap. Bonin responded by doing something that had never been done in a major league game: he ejected the mascot.

For the few thousand fans still left in the ballpark, this was an outrage. In 1978, the Expos had introduced their first mascot, a freakish-looking cross between Mr. Met and Evel Knievel called Souki. He was a disaster, a sight so scary to kids that a father attacked him. Youppi! (French for “Yippee!”) replaced Souki, and was an instant hit. Designed by Bonnie Erickson, creator of Miss Piggy and several other Muppets, Youppi! was a giant orange furball partly modelled after the Philly Phanatic, another Erickson creation. We all adored him as kids, posing for pictures with him, giggling when he bopped his nose, a move that made his googly eyes bounce around (but was really just Youppi! repositioning his huge fuzzy head so he could see). We used to invent origin stories to explain his massive body and head-to-toe orange fur. The best theory we came up with was that he was a cat caught up on the Big O’s roof, struck by lightning and transformed into the lovable creature who roamed the aisles and danced on the dugouts. The alternate theory was that Youppi! was Hubie Brooks in disguise. Whoever or whatever he was, an umpire tossing him from the game was a grave injustice. Tommy Lasorda would be on our shit list forever more.

Souki, we hardly knew ye.

The game only got nuttier from there. In the bottom of the 16
^th
, the Expos looked like they were about to win it as a pair of singles and an intentional walk loaded the bases with nobody out. Wallach hit a flyball to centre, but not deep enough to drive in the winning run. Fitzgerald then hit a shallow flyball down the right-field line: Mickey Hatcher made the catch and threw home, but not in time to get Walker at the plate. Game over, Expos win.

Well, not quite. The Dodgers appealed at third base, arguing that Walker had left the bag too early. Bob Davidson agreed, calling Walker out and ending the inning. We were going to the 17
^th
, still scoreless.

In the top of the 18
^th
, it was the Expos’ turn to catch a break. With a runner on first and two outs, Eddie Murray lined a ball all the way to the wall in right. Walker raced back after it and appeared to make a spectacular catch. Again, not quite. Replays later showed that he’d trapped the ball against the wall (MLB rules state that a ball must be caught in flight for an out). The initial ruling held. More baseball. More insanity.

In the meantime, Youppi! was allowed back into the game, on the condition that he stay on the Expos dugout and not
venture over to the Dodgers’ side. By game’s end he was wearing Youppi!-sized pajamas, entertaining the three hundred of us crazy enough to stay the six hours and 14 minutes it would take to finish the game.

We reached that ending in the 22
^nd
when the Dodgers’ 25
^th
man, backup catcher Rick Dempsey, came to the plate. Always a poor hitter (he batted .179 that year and .233 with just 96 homers in 1,766 career games), Dempsey was now almost 40 years old, hanging on as a little-used backup. Pitching for the Expos was Dennis Martinez. The team’s number-two starter, Martinez hadn’t pitched in relief in three years—but with the game going deep into the night, he lobbied Rodgers relentlessly to put him in the game.

“He kept yelling at Buck, ‘Put me in the game, put me in the game, I want to save the game!’ ” recalled Dave Martinez.

He didn’t save it. Instead, he left a pitch up, and Dempsey jumped all over it, jerking it down the left-field line for a home run no one expected. In the bottom of the 22
^nd
, Dempsey would solidify his hero status. With two outs, Rex Hudler singled, then tried to steal second, only for Dempsey to gun him out. Game over. For real this time.