Montreal Expos: The day baseball came to Canada

On this day 49 years ago, the Montreal Expos made baseball history by taking baseball outside of the United States

“Nobody hated the Montreal Expos.” This is what I texted a fellow Phillies fan several months back while we considered why we “hate” the Washington Nationals. The Nats, of course, are the Expos, the Canadian team that just moved away at the end of the 2004 season.

The Expos always seemed from afar The Not Quite Team. They made the playoffs only once, despite having a farm system that produced fabulous players like Andre Dawson, Tim Raines, Randy Johnson and Vladimir Guerrero. Their tri-color logo was weird, a cursive M with a lower case e integrated into it on the left. Altogether it suggested a misspelling of Expos. “Maybe it’s French,” some people said. It didn’t quite work. Thus, perhaps it’s fitting to recognize the 49^th anniversary of the Expos home opener, the not quite Golden Anniversary of major league baseball arriving in Canada, April 14, 1969.

The Expos infancy belied the frustration that would come to define the franchise. A number of unexpected successes marked their opening April. First, they beat Mets Hall of Famer Tom Seaver on opening day in Shea Stadium, 11-10. Later in the month, in fact only ten days later, pitcher Bill Stoneman held the Phillies hitless, notching the most significant first in franchise history, 7-0.

In between, they had moved MLB outside of the United States for the first time, playing the NL champion Cardinals in front of 29,184 fans in Jarry Park. This was a standing room crowd, as the tiny venue seated only 28,456. However, that figure was a wild expansion from the ballyard’s amateur seating capacity of 3000.

As the crowd began to arrive for something unique in Canadian history, workers were still shoveling snow and bolting seats into place, according to CBC digital archives.

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Larry Jaster started that day for the Expos, and the Cards sent out Nelson Briles. In the bottom of the first Mack Jones gave the Hometown Nine (Ville Natale Neuf?) a lead with a three-run home run. He followed the immortal Don Bosch, who had singled in the lead-off spot, and the somewhat more immortal Rusty Staub, who had walked batting third. Staub had been one of the Expos prize picks in the expansion lottery, and later became a fan favorite in Montreal as “Le Grande Orange.” (Sadly, Staub passed away only about two weeks ago. After baseball he owned restaurants and was an active philanthropist.)

The game was a back-and-forth affair finally decided, in a strange, extended way, by relief pitcher Dan McGinn, who went 5.1 scoreless innings in relief of Jaster, who had surrendered seven runs, or rather, his defense did. The Expos committed five errors in the fourth, the only inning the Cardinals scored. They plated seven. Montreal scored their eighth run in the seventh.

McGinn set down three excellent batters, Joe Torre, Mike Shannon and Tim McCarver, in the top of the ninth. The pitcher’s performance may have been the high point of a five-year career.

Next: When Clemente threw out Mays

Baseball had come to Canada, eh?