10/4/94

The Montreal Expos: Hopelessly Lovable,

25 Years Later

By: SAM ORBAUM

On April 8, 1969, Montreal shortstop Maury Wills stepped up to home plate at New York's Shea Stadium, and promptly set an all-time team record: most games played by a Montreal Expo: 1.
    The Expos' first game, 25 years ago, brought baseball to Canada and the French language to baseball. It gave the Quebecois, fiercely proud of the winning tradition of their dynastic Montreal Canadiens, a terrible team to love. And it added pages of comic and dramatic lore to the rich annals of a game already steeped in icons and legends.
    The New York Mets would go on to win the World Series that year, and the Expos would finish 52-110, but you couldn't have guessed it on that memorable opening day, a wacky game the Expos won 11-10 in extra innings.
    It was so silly that relief pitcher Dan McGinn came up to bat in that game for the first time in his career, against the great Tom Seaver, and belted the ball out of the park for his - and the Expos' - first-ever home run.
    It only got nuttier.
    Just nine days after their first game, unbelievably, they had their first no-hitter. Bill Stoneman, who was noted for major-league dimples but little else, twirled a 7-0 gem against the Phillies in Philadelphia. His brand-new fans back in Montreal, who had never even seen him pitch yet, barely knew what a no-hitter was. Stoneman had a bizarre career: despite a lifetime record of only 54-85, he threw two no-hitters (including one in 1972) and had a remarkable 15 shutouts.
    (It should be noted by Mets fans that, while it took the Expos nine games to register a no-hitter, and they have had a half-dozen more since, the Mets have played more than 5,300 games and have never had one. )
    The Expos only began their season in earnest a month later, when they put together a torrid 20-game losing streak.
    We happened upon a win, and then 18 days later, another fast first: in a game at the tiny tin cup called Jarry Park (seating: 28,450; hot dogs: 35 cents), the Expos had their first triple play. It was probably the first triple play in major league history that did not have the fans hysterical with joy (we didn't know what it was).
    We did, however, give a standing ovation the first time an Expo jogged down to first on an intentional walk. It took us a while to learn the game, maybe because it wasn't fully translated into French yet.

THE JARRY Juggernaut drew 1.2 million fans that first zany season, and none of us cared if the team properly executed the hit-and-run or if a pitcher's fastball was up to snuff. The Expos were fun.
    They had a coach named Calvin Coolidge Julius Caesar Tuskahoma "Buster" McLish; A comical battery of 5-foot-7 Ron Brand crouching behind the plate and 6-foot-6 Dick "The Monster" Radatz on the mound (little Brand was a fiery holler-guy; The Monster was blushingly shy); has-beens like Wills, Manny Mota and Elroy Face (18-1 as a reliever for Pittsburgh in 1959, 4-2 for Montreal in 1969); guys like Leo Marentette and Marv Staehle whose talents suggested they only came to Jarry to use the bathroom; there was John Boccabella, who we liked only because we liked his name. There was a real French Canadian - pitcher Claude Raymond - and even a bona fide Jew, owner Charles Bronfman.
    (Bronfman doesn't own the team anymore, but he's not entirely forgotten: the team logo depicts his initials. Officially, at least, the emblem represents the stylized letters EDBM, for the team's initials in French, Expos de Montreal Baseball. )
    To cheat a bit, we must include in Canada's dream team of 1969 a player who didn't arrive until 1970. Joe Sparma was a pitcher so abysmal that he has to symbolize the true red-white-and-blue early Expos. Sparma gained fame for his unique inability to issue the intentional walk. More often than not, a Sparma lob to the catcher entailed a wild pitch to the screen. In one memorable ninth inning of a close game, manager Gene Mauch instructed Sparma to put the batter on base. Wild pitch. Run scored. Now the Expos led by one and, with the tying run now at third, Mauch called time and, in abject exasperation, pulled what would become known as the Sparma Shift: he called in his leftfielder and ordered him to back up the catcher. It might have worked, but the ump insisted that Mauch position eight men between the lines.
    So on the next pitch, Sparma, still trying to give this guy an automatic ticket to first, lobbed the ball far over tiny Ron Brand, who by now was hopping mad and fed up with running around after Sparma's pitches. But Sparma's wild pitch hit a bar on the screen and caromed back over the head of charging Brand, who was now running the wrong way - right to Sparma covering at the plate, where he tagged the runner for the final out.
    So how did they manage to win 52?
    There were some dandy players, too:
    Rusty Staub was the Expos' first superstar, a redheaded slugging rightfielder who hit .302 with 29 homers and, most impressively, learned French. His greatest defensive play came in a pregame warmup when, lazily shagging a fly ball, his belt broke and his pants fell down. He blushed, waved at the crowd, but didn't drop the ball. Montrealers like that kind of a player.
    Coco Laboy played third base, knocked in 83 runs, won Rookie of the Year honors, and then swiftly disappeared from the Big Leagues. (The next year, Carl Morton won 18 for the Expos, won Rookie of the Year, and followed Laboy into oblivion. )
    The Jarry Park bleachers were named Jonesville after the beloved leftfielder Mack Jones, a rotund fellow with a huge toothy smile. Jones hit the team's first grand slam a month into the season, hit another two months later, had a glorious season and then joined the Expos Washout All Stars.
    Bob "Beetle" Bailey was a solid power-hitting, game-breaking first-baseman who, for some reason, never appealed to the fans. He was the first player ever to hit a ball to the upper deck of the Astrodome, a feat memorialized by a little black beetle painted on the seat where the ball landed. When he hit that home run, light- hitting Panamanian utilityman Adolfo Phillips gawked in awe and said: "Yumpin' Yiminy, right up in de jellow seats!"
    For hockey-mad Montreal 25 years ago, it was a whole new ballgame. We learned to love a loser. Who really cared that year when the Canadiens won another Stanley Cup?