Montreal's Expos-ition

I picked up an official Expos t-shirt in Montreal over the weekend, and it’s a gem; red sleeve ends, the retro “elb” logo and an emblem marking the 1982 All-Star Game. And I thought my mate Jose’s Nintendo T-shirt was old-school. Throw on some Bon Jovi jeans and pair of Dunlop Volleys with this baby and watch the ladies swoon.

While the shirt instantly earned a spot in my weekly rotation, it joins the wardrobe with some sorrow in tow.

I never saw the Expos play, you see, or even watched a game on TV, but what I do know of them from highlight reels and baseball books is enough to feel some regret. I regret that I never caught even a glimpse of Canada’s first major league team at Olympic Stadium—maybe even bought up a few extra tickets to help them stay in town.

But would that have helped?

The Expos were apparently doomed for a long time, so my money probably wouldn’t have made a dent, I recently learned. As a new baseball fan, my trip to Montreal had me asking, “What happened to the Expos?”

How did a team with such a cool retro uniform and such a wonderfully random nickname loose its place on the sporting landscape?

Here you had a pioneering club—the first of its kind in Canada. If you’ve ever seen the photo of legendary Canadian PM, Lester B. Pearson, throwing out the Expos’ first pitch you’d say it was all smiles for French Canadian baseball.

Maybe that was just a façade but I like to think the Expos were hard done by. At least then my romantic ideal of the battling club from a non-traditional town and a retro era can live on. For me, the Montreal experience is not unlike that of the North Sydney Bears. The Bears were as retro-chic as it gets in the Aussie rugby league world; furry red jerseys, complete with awkwardly rectangular black stripes, and a squad that barely seemed capable of mustering a few wins per season. They had a rich history of losing, as did the Montrealers, and fan base that was small—cultish. Like the Expos, they had a few good years, a couple of decent players and an hard-not-to-love outdated logo. But thanks to money—or more specifically, a lack there of it—found themselves being run out of town.

As if perennial losing wasn’t a big enough kick in the teeth, the Bears were forced to merge with their biggest rivals, the Manly Sea Eagles in 1999. Five years later, the Expos were similarly shuffled off to Washington DC. The Expos' boot to the choppers? How about that when on the verge of a breakout season in 1994, one in which they appeared destined for incredible heights, they were cruelly cut down by a players strike and never recovered.

Almost tragically, the Expos were denied the possibility of winning 105 games that season. At 74 wins and 40 losses up until August 12th, Montreal amazingly had the best record in the Majors. The powerhouse New York Yankees were next at 70-44. Does it get any crueler than that? They were better than the Yankees!

To rub salt into the wound, the owners at the time hadn’t the cash flow to retain the team’s best players, so there was no push for the World Series the following season as you’d expect. The winning squad, the morale of the fans and the future prospects for the club were all flattened like a French crepe.

If that wasn’t enough, baseball’s commissioner, Bud Selig, decided sometime in 2001 that he’d like to kill off two teams; the Minnesota Twins being one—and you guessed it—Montreal, the other. How these types of drastic moves are placed in the hands of single-minded individuals I’ll never know. I liken this decision to Channel Nine’s screening of Seinfeld at 10.30pm in the early Nineties.

Anyway, it was simply another sports club at the mercy of money merchants. Sure, a sports organization has to make moola in order to survive and be a viable part of its larger network, but nothing was done to save the Expos. Nothing. They were essentially pillaged by other clubs and psychologically dismantled by men in suits. In 2002, they played 22 of their home games in Puerto Rico for crying out loud! Which braniac proposed that idea?

Following the mid-Nineties, it was like the whole thing was on a contingency plan. Instead of being properly invested in, built a new stadium, or more than adequately marketed, the Expos’ history and fans were nonchalantly dismissed. The team finally packed its bags for the US capital in 2005, where contract disputes for a new stadium and attendance numbers have hindered success.

It’s interesting how things turn out. The Washington Nationals have one of the worst records in baseball, and a superstar in Alfonso Soriano who doesn’t seem interested in even playing there. And most importantly, their logo is nowhere near as stylish as the Expos’.

At least Montreal will always have cool t-shirts to remember their team by.