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 (35 page)

The media skewered him for the move, writing a stack of critical columns. Serge Touchette nicknamed him “T-ball,” because he felt the fatigues were a bush league move. Though the General Schwarzkopf impression got all the headlines, most of the players got the joke.

“He was doing a spoof on his hard-ass routine,” said Fletcher. “I think he was trying to do a
Saturday Night Live
skit, to make light of it.”

Runnells spent a good chunk of that spring trying to loosen the team up. Playing against type was certainly a goal. But so too was raising morale for a team that had been through a truly miserable 1991 season.

“We had a long-drive [golf] competition out on one of the back fields,” Runnells recalled in a 2012 interview. “You should have seen Walker and some of the other guys just rippin’ away. Some of the Latin guys [who hadn’t golfed before] taking full swings and the ball just barely dribbling off the tee. Everybody just hootin’ and hollerin’.”

Those who defended Runnells felt that he meant well, but also that he was in over his head. He was just 36 years old, and lacked the experience and gravitas to command the respect and attention of his players.

As the season started and the losing resumed, everyone got tight, coming down with a case of what Fletcher called “booty-lock.” Furthermore, the long list of rules posted in every locker
like the Ten Commandments, treating the players like high-school kids, and the puzzling player moves (such as shifting the Gold Glover Wallach to first base in order to shoehorn inexperienced second-base prospect Bret Barberie into the lineup) proved too much for the players to take. It wasn’t long before they declared a mutiny.

“We’re in San Diego, this is early 1992,” said Elliott Price, who was doing play-by-play for the West Coast swing. “And L.A.’s burning, because of the Rodney King riots. So the games got cancelled, and we didn’t go. We stayed in San Diego. So Runnells schedules an early-morning practice at Jack Murphy Stadium before the flight home. I’m having this wonderful crab sandwich at Horton Plaza, sitting there by myself reading the paper. Next thing I know, Tom Foley, Spike Owen, and Rick Cerone are sitting at the table with me, and I know that the manager’s gone. Because they’ve had it. He’s done. They had made up their mind that this guy was not going to manage the team anymore.”

Dan Duquette had taken over as GM in September 1991 when Dombrowski left for Miami. He wasn’t a big Runnells fan, agreeing with the consensus that Dombrowski had rushed Runnells into the job. On May 22, the hammer fell. The man who fired Runnells and the man who replaced him were about to engineer a gigantic turnaround.

Duquette’s background was in player development, having served for four years as head of that department. During that time, he worked alongside an all-star team of up-and-coming managerial talent. Jerry Manuel had also worked as a minor league instructor, honing the skills of the Expos’ many great prospects; he later landed his own major league managing job. Neal Huntington parlayed his minor league experience into a future GM job. Kevin Malone replaced Gary Hughes as scouting director in ’92, and would later rise to the position of general manager.
Those men, along with Frank Wren (who’d been hired during the Hughes era and served as assistant farm director and assistant scouting director before going on to become GM in Baltimore, then later, Atlanta), helped influence Duquette’s decision making, guiding his views on everything from how to value young players in trades to knowing when to call a prospect up to the big leagues.

Duquette had also been impressed by the long-time West Palm Beach manager who’d then coached on Runnells’ staff—despite having had more success than Runnells in player development. Passed over repeatedly for the big chair, Felipe Alou and his six winter league championships finally found an ally in Duquette, who was willing to give him a shot. So it was that at age 57, Alou became the Expos’ new manager, and Major League Baseball’s first Dominican-born skipper.

The Expos didn’t start off well under Alou, though, losing eight of their first 13 games. Then they caught fire. From June 7 to July 30, Montreal won 31 of 51 games, and even pulled into a tie for first place. Players—especially the team’s younger members—responded to Alou’s leadership. DeShields returned to the solid form of his rookie season, while Grissom started to show off the power/speed combination he’d shown in the minors; the top two batters in the Expos lineup combined to steal 124 bases that year. Walker, now entering his prime and four years removed from the major knee injury that cost him the entire 1988 season, hit .301 with 23 homers. Felipe’s son Moises, given a crack at the starting left-fielder’s job thanks to a Calderon injury, hit .282 and smacked 28 doubles in 115 games.

Thirty-eight-year-old Dennis Martinez was still the staff ace, making the fifth of what would be six straight Opening Day starts, flashing a 2.47 ERA, and making his third straight All-Star Game that season. Some young stars were emerging on the pitching side, too.

Mel Rojas had been signed as a teenager out of the Dominican Republic seven years earlier. Given his first heavy workload in his third big-league season, he was a monster, firing 100 2/3 innings, allowing just two home runs all year, and delivering a 1.43 ERA. Rojas always had good raw stuff, including a split-fingered fastball that could be devastating with two strikes. The problem was that he didn’t get ahead of hitters often enough during much of his minor league and early major league careers. But under Alou, Rojas harnessed his command, issuing just 26 unintentional walks and fanning 70 batters—many of those with the splitter. Like Moises, Rojas had good genes; he was Felipe’s nephew. And like Moises, Grissom, Walker, and other improving young players, he benefited from Felipe’s guidance.

“He had a way about him,” said Fletcher about the new manager. “He had a good sense of whether his players could do it or not. That ought to have been his forte, having spent so much time with younger players, having all that experience in the minors and in winter leagues. But it was more than that. He had a calming effect too. Guys played well under him.”

“He put us in the right situations,” said DeShields. “There was never any doubt about what was going on between the lines when he was managing. Plus he had the ability to connect with players, and still give them space. I never saw him in the locker room, never saw him invading anyone’s space. If you came to him, sure, he’d talk to you. But he never crossed that line.”

The Expos couldn’t hold on to first place in 1992. But they still won 87 games, finishing second in the East behind the Barry Bonds–led Pirates and improving by 16 games from the year before. Alou’s Expos also re-energized the fans. After suffering through that catastrophic 1991 season—even worrying about their safety as the ballpark started to crumble—Expos supporters stormed back to the Big O in ’92. They averaged 30,000 fans a
game for a mid-July series with the Padres, then drew huge crowds of 41,935 and 46,620 for two weekend games against the Dodgers a few days later. This was nearly sold-out territory in the early ’90s, when the Expos closed off several thousand seats in the stadium’s highest reaches, dropping capacity from just under 60,000 to the mid-to-high 40s. By year’s end, they’d lifted attendance to 20,607 a game, a 50 percent jump compared to 1991 levels.

For the final home game of the season, 41,802 filed into Olympic Stadium. The Expos were out of the race—but the fans came to say goodbye to a legend.

On November 15, 1991, Montreal had reacquired an old friend, plucking Gary Carter off waivers from the Dodgers. Thirty-seven years old and nearing the end of his career, Carter would serve as a veteran leader and goodwill ambassador. Reduced to part-time catching duties, he played in 95 games and hit just .218 in 1992. No one cared. Just as fans feted Rusty Staub’s return in ’79, they were eager to welcome Carter back for a final season.

Carter started in that final home game, batting fifth behind Walker. He went hitless in his first two at-bats, which was no big surprise given the tenor of the game: a 0–0 tie through six innings, as Expos right-hander Kent Bottenfield traded zeroes with Mike Morgan (the well-travelled veteran who a year earlier had gone toe-to-toe with Martinez during his perfecto). With two outs in the seventh, Larry Walker drew a walk, bringing Carter to the plate.

The crowd erupted, greeting Carter with a long standing ovation. They kept right on cheering throughout the at-bat, even as Morgan got ahead in the count 0–2. Carter stepped out of the box, adjusted his batting gloves, then did his trademark tug of the left sleeve. He stepped back in, tapped home plate and waggled his bat twice, then set up in his classic stance, bat held high. Cubs catcher Rick Wilkins set a target down and away. Morgan kicked and delivered. It was a fastball that caught more of the plate than
the Cubs pitcher wanted. Carter slashed the pitch deep to right field. It carried and carried, over the right-fielder’s head. It took one hop off the wall, giving Walker enough time to scamper home with the go-ahead run—the only run of the game, it would turn out, in a dramatic 1–0 Expos victory.

The reaction was deafening. An explosion of sound, every man, woman, and child in the ballpark standing and saluting The Kid. Carter’s ear-to-ear smile lit up the scoreboard. He pulled off his batting helmet and waved it at the crowd. Pumped his fist. Jogged off the field as Tim Laker came in to run for him, pointing his helmet skyward again. A dugout full of hugs. Then, after what would turn out to be the final at-bat of his Hall of Fame career, one last curtain call. For every scorching-hot game Carter squatted in, every knee injury he fought through, every day game after night game he played long after the Expos had fallen out of contention … Montreal fans gave it all back with their appreciation that day.

There was one last little postscript on that final at-bat. As Carter’s line drive carried out to right, it looked for a moment like the ball might be caught. But the right fielder was just three months younger than Carter himself, not quite at the end of his career, but in his 17
^th
major league season. If Carter’s swan song was going to mark the end of an era for the Expos, it seemed only fitting that his final hit would land just inches beyond Andre Dawson’s reach.

If the 1993 Expos needed an extra source of motivation, they got one five hours down the road in Toronto. In the fall of ’92, the Blue Jays became the first Canadian team to make it to the World Series. The first two games were played in Atlanta, home of the National League champion Braves. Before Game 3—the first World Series game ever played outside the United States—Jays president Paul
Beeston had to decide who he’d ask to throw out the first pitch for this momentous occasion. Beeston chose the man who made baseball in Canada a reality in the first place: Charles Bronfman.

“I told him yes, of course,” recalled Bronfman. “That was probably the craziest and most wonderful 24 hours of my life. I threw out the first pitch at that game, then I went the next day with my family to Ottawa, where I was made a member of Her Majesty’s Privy Council for Canada. Then later that day, I became a Companion of the Order of Canada. I remember the governor general [Ray Hnatyshyn], he put this thing around my neck, and I said, ‘Well, today was a doubleheader.’ And he said, ‘No, it was a tripleheader. I was at the ballgame last night.’ ”

It was a thoughtful gesture, one that touched the Expos’ long-time owner. It also rang a bit hollow for many Expos fans, given the Jays’ muscling Montreal out of the Southern Ontario broadcast market (a defensible if ruthless business move … but a much nastier manoeuvre was coming in the years ahead).

If the Expos were going to challenge the Jays’ claim to Canadian baseball supremacy, they’d have to do it with a day-care lineup. Montreal position players averaged just 25.7 years old in ’93, the second-youngest group in franchise history behind only the 107-loss disaster of 1976. Among the eight batters with the most plate appearances that year, none were older than 27. Even so, with players like DeShields, Grissom, and Walker by now established as lineup mainstays, the time was right to hand Felipe Alou a new crop of prospects on which to work his magic.

The youngest everyday player was Puerto Rico native Wil Cordero. He’d earned his first taste of the big leagues in ’92, hitting .302 in 45 games. Spike Owen leaving via free agency had opened the door for Cordero to take over at shortstop. As with Hubie Brooks before him, Cordero was a bat-first player who ended up at short out of necessity. Big and strong at 6-foot-2 and
over 200 pounds (he’d top out at 230 later in his career), he had limited range, however, and would need to hit a ton to justify his place in the lineup. Prospect hounds believed he could do it, as
Baseball America
ranked him the top prospect in the Expos’ system in 1991 and 1992. Unfortunately, things didn’t go so well that first year, as Cordero hit just .248/.308/.387: sub-par numbers at a time when scoring levels were starting to surge all over the league. Then again, Cordero was just 21, playing every day in the majors for the first time. The Expos were optimistic that he would improve with experience.

Cordero’s rookie infield running mate was 25-year-old Wyoming product Mike Lansing. Here was a needle in a haystack, an infielder for the Miami Miracle of the Florida State League. Though Miami played against high Single-A teams affiliated with major league franchises, the Miracle were an unaffiliated team that operated independently. That unique status afforded Miami some unusual privileges, including being able to select some players during the lower rounds of the 1990 amateur draft. In the sixth round that year, the Miracle picked Lansing. Without the backing of a parent club, Miami occasionally needed to sell its best players to stay solvent. So when Lansing hit .286 with a .355 on-base percentage in 1991, he became intriguing bait—assuming anyone had bothered to notice. Since Alou had managed another team just up I-95 in West Palm, he’d gotten plenty of looks at Lansing. Alou recommended him to the Expos, and the deal was done. Though Lansing didn’t win a steady everyday job right away like Cordero did, he proved to be a valuable superutility player in his debut season, hitting .287 with a .352 on-base percentage, 29 doubles, 23 steals, and solid defence at three different positions (third, short, and second) over 141 games.