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 (36 page)

The pitching staff had some new faces too. Kirk Rueter was an 18
^th
-round pick out of Murray State in 1991. That modest
pedigree made sense, since his fastball couldn’t dent a loaf of bread. But Rueter knew how to pitch. He
lived
on the outside corner, inducing weak contact and getting calls at the edges of the strike zone. He also walked fewer than two batters per nine innings in the minor leagues, en route to a career 2.48 minor league ERA. And while no one expected big things from Rueter as a 22-year-old rookie, he put up terrific numbers in ’93 after a July call-up, allowing just five homers in 14 starts, with a 2.73 ERA (and an 8–0 record, if you’re into that kind of thing).

Jeff Fassero didn’t start the year in the Expos’ rotation either, instead coming out of the bullpen for the first half of the season. Once he did crack the starting five, he thrived. From his first start on July 10 until the end of the season, Fassero struck out 93 batters, walked 30, and allowed just four homers in 97 2/3 innings—good for a 2.30 ERA. Fassero’s origins were even less glamorous than Rueter’s. A 22
^nd
-round pick by St. Louis in 1984, he languished in the Cardinals’ farm system. After the 1990 season he became a six-year minor league free agent, one of baseball’s most overt examples of an unwanted player. But the Expos scooped him up on January 3, 1991, and four months later he was in the majors as a 28-year-old rookie. Two-and-a-half years later? He was the best starting pitcher on one of the best teams in the National League.

This was the Expos returning to their scouting and player-development roots, bringing in waves of new talent to bolster the major league roster. If anything, this was the next evolution of the organizational success of the mid-’70s to early ’80s—with the Expos not only nurturing future stars, but also turning lightly regarded prospects into high-quality big-league players.

“You knew what you were doing [in player development] was going to count at the major league level,” Duquette said in a 2012 interview, “because
there were no other options
. That was how we were going to win with a small payroll.”

With Alou at the helm, a battalion of holdover 20-something players coming into their own, plus that infusion of new blood, the Expos won more games in 1993 than in any season since 1979. Duquette spoke of a rebuilding plan that had 1994 as the target date for NL East contention. Montreal got there a year ahead of schedule.

Just like in Alou’s debut season, though, they didn’t start off as contenders. Hosting the Giants on July 5 and 6, the Expos lost by scores of 10–4 and 13–5. That knocked Montreal down to 43–40 for the year, 11½ games out of first place, with more runs allowed than runs scored. After a five-game winning streak to end the first half, Montreal returned from the break and promptly started another losing skid, dropping six of seven games on the West Coast (including three more losses to a loaded Giants team). The Expos were back to 11½ games out, with 66 to play. A mediocre season, it seemed.

Then, crazy things began to happen. The Expos worked out a trade with the Braves, sending Dennis Martinez to Atlanta for power-hitting first-base prospect Brian Hunter. The Braves were in an electric pennant race with the Giants—one that would end with Atlanta winning 104 games and San Francisco finishing a game back with 103. Atlanta wanted pitching reinforcements, and Hunter became expendable after the Braves acquired star slugger Fred McGriff in a deadline deal. But Martinez vetoed the trade, exercising his right to do so as a player with 10 years of major league experience and five with the same team. El Presidente turned down the deal because the Braves’ starting rotation was brimming with talent, and there was no guarantee that Martinez and his 4.23 ERA would have a place.

Though Martinez missed out on that incredible NL West race, he ended up getting a taste of pennant fever in Montreal instead. From July 22 to September 16, the Expos won 36 out
of 51 games. That included a stretch in late August and early September in which they won 16 times and lost just once. Many of those victories were cliff-hangers, with a now formidable bullpen holding the fort night after night until the offence could rally. They posted one of the league’s best records in one-run games at 32–24, and went on a run in which they won seven of eight in extra innings, reversing some ugly extra-inning results from earlier in the season.

Within that stretch came one of the most electrifying moments of all time at the Big O. On July 10, 1993, the Expos had traded for a left-handed pitcher named Denis Boucher. From a distance, this didn’t seem like a big deal, considering Boucher’s mediocre stuff and 6-plus ERA through his first 19 major league starts. What made the trade newsworthy was that Boucher was a native of Lachine, Quebec, making him the rarest of Expos species: a local boy with a shot at making the team.

On September 6, Boucher got that chance with a start at home against the Rockies. To many, the timing seemed curious. Boucher would later recall how several teammates expressed frustration with the move, since the Expos were now in the middle of a pennant race and Boucher hadn’t exactly shown championship-calibre performance to that point in his career. The fans, however, felt otherwise. Boucher’s first start as an Expo drew 40,066 fired-up souls to the stadium—a crowd twice the size of the one that showed up for the team’s previous home game a week earlier.

The crowd gave Boucher a massive ovation when the lineup was introduced, again when the Expos took the field, again when his name was introduced as the game’s starting pitcher, and one last time after he carved through the top of the Rockies order on just five pitches, inducing three straight weak groundouts. Boucher and Joe Siddall (a native of Windsor, Ontario) made history that day as the first all-Canadian battery in the major leagues.

“I always tell people it’s good it was a day game, because if it happened at night, it would have been too much waiting and anticipating,” Boucher said. “It was a good thing I was well prepared for that game. I’d been up with the team for a full week before that, and I was prepared to pitch. I didn’t let emotions, fans, everybody yelling get the best of me. I just never let myself look up and be in awe of this giant, packed stadium. I’ve watched it on tape a few times since then. Still get chills.”

Milestones aside, Boucher was outstanding, tossing six innings and allowing just one run on that crazy day, en route to a 4–3 Expos win. In fact, Boucher’s five September starts added up to some excellent numbers: just three walks allowed in 28 1/3 innings, and a tiny 1.91 ERA. Not bad for a guy who’d been labelled by some as a publicity stunt.

By the time the first-place Phillies came to town for a three-game series starting on September 17, the Expos had sliced the NL East gap to five games, with just 15 to go. Montreal was surface-of-the-sun hot by then; sweep the Phillies and the final two weeks of the season would be the most exciting home stretch at Olympic Stadium in a decade. The series opener was a zoo, as 45,757 fans packed the house. The Expos took a 3–0 lead into the sixth, only to see Martinez, then Rojas, combine to give up a seven-spot. The game went to the bottom of the seventh with Philly leading 7–4. A pair of singles sandwiched around a groundout put runners at first and second with one out. With the pitcher’s spot due up, Alou signalled down the bench. He wanted Curtis Pride to hit.

One of the hallmarks of Felipe Alou’s managerial style was to value skill over grey hairs; if a rookie was more talented than the 13-year veteran, the rookie would get the call—even in a big spot. You couldn’t find a much bigger spot than this one, nor a greener player than Pride. The Expos were eight outs away from falling to
six games behind the Phillies, which would effectively end their season. Meanwhile, Pride was barely even a rookie. He’d been called up just a few days earlier, appeared in just two games, and would now make just his second career at-bat, his first at home in front of the giant, rabid Big O crowd. The first pitch from Phillies right-hander Bobby Thigpen was a fastball out over the plate. The lefty-swinging Pride smoked it, lashing a screaming line drive to the gap in left-centre. By the time the Phillies flung the ball back to the infield, two runs had scored.

The crowd went completely berserk—I know, because I was there. As the Phillies made a pitching change, we all stood and cheered.

And cheered.

And cheered.

Pride stood at second watching us. He walked over to Jerry Manuel, who was coaching third base. Michael Farber recounted the scene from there.

“Do I have the green light?” Pride asked.

“Tip your cap,” Manuel said.

“What?”

“They’re cheering you. Tip your cap.”

Pride, who is deaf but reads lips, would later say that he couldn’t hear the crowd’s thunderous cheering—
he felt it through the turf
.

“The way they kept cheering,” Manuel told Farber after the game, “it’s as if the crowd wanted to break a barrier. They wanted him to know how they felt, to get beyond the wall. That’s the greatest thing I’ve ever seen.”

Same here. The first game I ever saw in person came in 1982, just after what would prove to be the only playoff experience in Expos history. When you spend the next 22 years cheering for a team that never wins anything, finding a favourite moment gets tricky. I didn’t have Reggie Jackson going deep three times
in a World Series game, Kirk Gibson limping off the bench for a game-winning homer in ’88, or even Joe Carter’s World Series walk-off in ’93.

What I had—what all Expos fans of that generation had—was that Phillies series. Grissom followed Pride’s double with a game-tying single two batters later, then the Expos won it on DeShields’ sacrifice fly in the 12
^th
, the capper on a four-and-a-half-hour thriller. The Expos lost the next day, then won the series finale on a walk-off two-run single down the left-field line by Wil Cordero. More than 50,000 fans showed up that Saturday, another 40,000-plus on the Sunday. People still talk about Cordero’s hit, RDS colour commentator/excitable fellow Rodger Brulotte’s call of “Cordero, Cordero, COR-DE-RO!!!!!” still ringing in people’s ears.

No, the Expos couldn’t quite catch the Phillies that year (again), finishing just three games out in second place. Regardless, my pinnacle of joy as an Expos fan was that Curtis Pride double. The deafening noise all around, as 45,757 of us yelled so loud we lost our voices, and our minds. A stuffed Olympic Stadium sending out a big F-U to those who’d mocked the Expos and their supposed lack of fan support. And Pride standing there on second, this rookie, this bit player who couldn’t even hear, tapping his chest, telling us that he couldn’t process what was happening with his ears … but he could with his heart. In all my years as a baseball fan, this was the moment I wished I could stick in a bottle, and keep forever.

O
ne of the greatest trades the Expos ever made took impeccable timing, luck, and an extremely misguided self-appraisal by a free agent. It also required a little bit of sneakiness.

The Los Angeles Dodgers finished 81–81 in 1993, an underwhelming result even if it was an 18-game improvement over 1992. They needed to get better, and couldn’t afford major holes in the lineup. The Dodgers’ starting second baseman in ’93 had been Jody Reed, a free agent at season’s end. The Dodgers wanted Reed back, and dangled a three-year, $7.8 million contract. He’d made $2.5 million in ’93, the fifth-highest salary among all second basemen that year, so the offer was a minor raise on a per-year basis. But the deal would also last three years and run through his 34
^th
birthday, a dicey proposition given his most recent season. In 1993, Reed hit .278 with two home runs and just 28 unintentional walks in 132 games. He didn’t run all that well, either. And while he was a solid defensive second baseman, he wasn’t elite: more like the kind of player who could start for
a last-place team, or be a utilityman on a contender. If he was already overpaid in ’93, he’d be royally overpaid under the terms of this proposed deal.

Reed and his agent, J. D. Dowell, rejected the offer. In the annals of baseball history, this would go down as one of the worst decisions ever made by a free agent. Dowell never got the $10 million-plus he sought for his client, and Reed instead had to sign a one-year deal with the Brewers for just $350,000 in base salary. In one way, the Dodgers dodged a bullet by not having to pay their mediocre second baseman that much money. But Dowell’s miscalculation would have a much deeper impact than anyone could have foreseen at the time. It would cost the Dodgers—and hand the Expos—a future Hall of Famer named Pedro Martinez.

When the plan to re-sign Reed failed, Dodgers general manager Fred Claire went after free agent Robby Thompson instead. Unlike Reed, Thompson was coming off a huge year, having hit .312 with 19 homers in ’93 for the Giants, and winning the Gold Glove and Silver Slugger awards at second base. Also unlike Reed, Thompson got the big contract he was seeking, spurning the Dodgers’ advances and re-upping with San Francisco for three years at $11.6 million (with an option for a fourth year). With Plan A and Plan B off the board, Claire instead turned to the trade market. His target: Delino DeShields.

“We thought Delino had an extremely bright future,” Claire said in 2013. “He wasn’t just a talented player, he was also a leader of that Expos team. He looked like he could be someone who would be with us for 10 years.”

Dan Duquette was also a big DeShields fan. The Expos GM called him “our most recognizable player,” a blazingly fast risk-taker who played with emotion and swagger. DeShields was a great fit playing on Olympic Stadium’s AstroTurf, stretching singles into doubles, doubles into triples. Duquette and others saw potential
for improvement too: just 24 years old, DeShields was fine-tuning his ability to turn double plays at second base, and honing his batting eye, having walked more times than he struck out for the first time in ’93. A middle infielder that young, coming off a season in which he posted a .389 on-base percentage with 43 steals in just 123 games? Any team would salivate over someone like that.