On this episode of What happened to…? , Erica Vella revisits Canada’s first Major League Baseball team, the Montreal Expos. She speaks with former players about what it was like playing for a Canadian team and finds out if there is a chance baseball will come back to the Canadian city.
Elliott Price attended the Montreal Expos‘ first home game on April 14, 1969 at Jarry Park.
“There was a lot of worry because it snowed significantly during that week in April 1969, and it was a makeshift field, as well, and they were worried about what kind of, you know, will they be able to play the game?” Price said.
“And lo and behold, April 14, 1969, the sun came out and was 72 degrees Fahrenheit, and there were people standing on snow mounds behind the outfield fences, looking into a full house to the first game ever played in Canada.”
The Expos were Montreal’s team for over three decades and in 1994, the team was on track to go the World Series but a labour dispute ended the season.
“They were arguably the best team in baseball,” Price said.
“It was clear to me, and I said so on the radio, that there was a very good possibility that there was going to be a significant work stoppage. Owners and players had reached the point and there had been such animosity for years, and this was the tipping point that they would never complete the season. That they would stop and have a full stop, period, and never play the World Series that year was unfathomable. But apparently unfathomable happens.”
Jeff Fassero was on the team in 1994 and said there was always hope among the players that they would go back to finish the season.
“We were taking the chance of it was going to be like it was in what was it like (in the 80s) when there was another major strike, but they got back and finish the season and that’s what we were hoping for,” he said.
“But we just didn’t happen.”
Attendance after the 1994 season began to decline in Montreal and a decade later, it was revealed the Expos would no longer be Montreal’s team.
The team would move to Washington and become the Nationals.
“We cried. The game ended, I recorded. I knew it wouldn’t get through the finale and closing off the last broadcast, so I recorded it. And while we were listening to it … it was the end,” Price said.
The legacy of the Montreal Expos has continued and there were hopes that Major League Baseball would come back to the Quebec city.
On this episode of Global News’ What Happened to…?, Erica Vella speaks with former players and people in Montreal who have been calling for the return of baseball to the city of Montreal.
Contact:
Email: erica.vella@globalnews.ca
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