With the Olympic Games winding up, we missed an anniversary. Aug. 12 marked 30 years since the start of the 1994 baseball strike that marked the beginning of the end for the late, lamented Montreal Expos.
In case you’ve forgotten, Felipe Alou’s brilliant young team was 74-40 on that date. They weren’t merely leading the National League East, six games up on the Braves, they were the best team in baseball. Only the 70-43 New York Yankees were even close.
But the owners wanted to play hardball with the players, and the union wanted to hit them where it hurt, with pennant races heating up and the post-season looming.
Claude Brochu, always a timid and cautious five-dollar wannabe at a poker table set for billionaires, went along with the guys who ran the cosy little owners club their way. The balance of the season was lost, the shot at a World Series title was lost, the era of fire sales and bitter disappointments began, and within a decade, the notorious carpetbagging duo of Jeffrey Loria and David Samson had shipped the franchise to Washington and themselves to Florida — and the Expos were no more.
The news this summer that the Tampa Bay Rays had won approval to build a $1.3-billion stadium in Florida went almost unnoticed here, but it almost certainly marks the last nail in the coffin of Montreal baseball. The new stadium won’t work either, but Stuart Sternberg got his ballpark and Montreal got the shaft. Again.
We will always wonder. What if Bud Selig Jr. had been a little wiser, what if small-market owners like Brochu hadn’t been led around by the nose, what if Alou and Pedro Martinez and Larry Walker and Mo Alou and the rest got their shot.
We’ll never know. I remember the clubhouse that last day, with players cleaning out their lockers and even Marquis Grissom (as sweet-tempered an athlete as you will ever meet) turned surly as an old bear.
Like Blue Monday, the strike has become part of our bitter baseball legacy. Stephen Bronfman gave it everything he had, only to have the door slammed in his face by the successors of the Lords of Baseball who cost the Expos their shot at a World Series.
You never say never but I see no route back to MLB for Montreal. We’re left with the tri-colour hats and the memories — some bitter.
Quarterback controversy? They’re calling the Alouettes quarterback “Alexander the Great” and given the performance we’ve seen from Davis Alexander since the third-string QB replaced the injured Cody Fajardo, it’s appropriate.
Alexander has won game after game on grit and resilience. In front of a hostile Saskatchewan crowd Friday, it seemed like a lost cause. Trying to get through the Alouettes defence was liking sprinting through razor wire in your boxer shorts, but the offence couldn’t get much going.
Then James Letcher Jr. returned a missed field goal 128 yards for a touchdown and the Als were on their way. A late drive capped by Alexander’s 15-yard tiptoe down the sidelines and the Als had another win.
So — quarterback controversy? I don’t believe so. This is Fajardo’s team when he’s healthy. He earned it by taking blow after blow and leading this team to the Grey Cup last season — but it’s good to know the Alouettes have Alexander waiting in the wings.
Hanging Chad: If you’re going to rip when leagues and commissioners and GMs and athletes mess up, you have to say well done when they do the right thing.
Randy Ambrosie and the CFL did just that when they drew a line in the sand and would not allow Argos quarterback Chad Kelly back in the league unless it was clearly a last-chance deal. Who knows? Maybe he’ll even live up to it.
Unfortunately, trouble and Kelly go together like peanut butter and jam.
Lies, rumours &&&& vicious innuendo: Canadians getting their knickers in a twist because Alysha Newman twerked after winning bronze in the pole vault is just plain silly. Priorities, people. Priorities. …
When Chris Nilan posted a photo of himself and a dozen other former Habs from the dynasty of the late 1970s in the company of Scotty Bowman at Serge Savard’s golf tournament, Ken Campbell of the Hockey News calculated that the 14 gentlemen in that photo had won 97 Stanley Cups as players, coaches or executives — a figure that Bowman himself amended to 99. We’ll never see the likes of it again. …
And in other news, the Toronto Maple Leafs last week named noted Ron Jeremy look-alike Captain Underpants to serve as Captain Underpants.
Heroes: James Letcher Jr., Davis Alexander, Charleston Rambo, Tyrice Beverette, Mustafa Johnson, Wesley Sutton, Aaron Judge, Bobby Witt Jr., Alysha Newman, Mondo Duplantis, Randy Ambrosie &&&& last but not least, Serge Savard and the great Montreal Canadiens dynasty of the 1970s.
Zeros: Bev Priestman, John Herdman, Chad Kelly, Auston Matthews, Aaron Rodgers, Greg Allensworth, Jack Draper, Noah Lyles, Tyreek Hill, Tom Cruise, the 1994 baseball strike, Bud Selig Jr., Claude Brochu, David Samson &&&& last but not least, Jeffrey Loria.
Now and forever.