Friday, January 8, 2010

Buy Me Some Peanuts & Cracker Jack, Eh?

Andre Dawson was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame earlier this week. The first major league game I attended was at Jarry Park in Montreal during the Expos maiden season in 1969, when Rusty Staub was La Grande Orange and owned that town. Their red, white and blue beanie-like hats with the odd logo seemed to cry out for a propellor on top.
The
New York Times has a fine piece about what was, at times, a great organization. I would go on to split my allegiance to Les Expos with the New York Yankees, but I'll always hold a warm place for that long-gone team from the north deep within my border boy, baseball heart.

(UPDATE: More bittersweet Expos news. This report says Dawson wants to be inducted as a Cub, although the final decision on which team an inductee will represent rests with the Hall.)

BeltwayBlips: vote it up!
allvoices

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Andre Dawson, in his prime, was as fine an all around player as I have ever seen. He could run, hit, catch and had an arm like a cannon. Extra base on Andre, make my day. Screw the Cubs, he was an Expo. Bierre Froid, deux chen chaud, tabernack.
You could watch the Expos play for a dollar Canadian, if you didn't mind the bleachers. At one point in time, they would allow you to bring your own beer, but it had to be cans. I wonder what went wrong?

JohnnyRussia said...

Jeff Loria was a big part of what went wrong. He didn't want to be in Montreal because it's, well, in Canada! Now the scumbag owns the Florida Marlins. A friend of mine works for the Marlins and confirms what's always been said about Loria: he doesn't care a whit about the fans, doesn't abide by MLB's stated concept that a franchise has a civic as well as profit-making side and routinely holds fire sales if his margins aren't just so. You'll notice the Marlins have great young players--those guys are found by old Expos scouts, who are great at what they do, even if they still decide to work for an asshole.