Montreal Expos
The Montreal Expos were a Canadian professional baseball team based in Montreal. The Expos were the first Major League Baseball franchise located outside the United States. They played in the National League East division from 1969 until 2004. After the 2004 season, the franchise moved to Washington, D.C., and became the Washington Nationals.
Immediately after the minor league Triple-A Montreal Royals folded in 1960, political leaders in Montreal sought an MLB franchise, and when the National League evaluated expansion candidates for the 1969 season, it awarded a team to Montreal. Named after the Expo 67 World's Fair, the Expos originally played at Jarry Park Stadium before moving to Olympic Stadium in 1977. The Expos failed to post a winning record in any of the franchise’s first 10 seasons. The team won its only division title in the strike-shortened season, but lost the 1981 National League Championship Series to the Los Angeles Dodgers. The team was sold in 1991 by its majority, founding owner, Charles Bronfman, to a consortium headed by Claude Brochu. Felipe Alou was promoted to the team's field manager in 1992, becoming MLB's first Dominican-born manager. He led the team to four winning seasons, including, where the Expos had the best record in baseball before a players' strike ended the season. Alou became the Expos leader in games managed.
After the 1994 strike, the Expos chose to sell off their best players, and attendance and interest in the team declined. After a failed attempt to disband the team, then a failure to secure funding for a new ballpark, Major League Baseball bought the team ahead of the 2002 season. In their final two seasons, the team played 22 home games each year at Hiram Bithorn Stadium in San Juan, Puerto Rico. On September 29, 2004, MLB announced the franchise would move to Washington, D.C., for the season, and the Expos played their final home game in Montreal.
The Expos posted an overall win–loss record of during their 36 years in Montreal. Vladimir Guerrero led the franchise in both home runs and batting average, and Steve Rogers in wins and strikeouts. Three pitchers threw four no-hitters: Bill Stoneman, Charlie Lea, and Dennis Martínez, who pitched the 13th perfect game in Major League Baseball history. The Expos retired four numbers in Montreal, and nine former members have been elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame, with Gary Carter, Andre Dawson and Tim Raines' plaques depicting them with Expos caps.
History
Founding (1960–1968)
Professional baseball in Montreal dates back to 1890 when teams briefly played in the International Association. A second attempt at hosting a pro team failed in 1895. The Montreal Royals of the Eastern League were subsequently founded in 1897 and played 20 seasons. The Royals were revived in 1928 and were purchased by the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1939 to serve as one of their Triple-A affiliates. Under Dodgers' management, the Royals won seven International League championships and three Junior World Series titles between 1941 and 1958. In 1946, Jackie Robinson joined the Royals and led the team to a Junior World Series title in advance of his breaking baseball's color line one year later. By the late 1950s, the Royals' championship years were past, and faced with declining attendance, the team was sold and moved after the 1960 season as the Dodgers reduced the number of teams they maintained at the AAA level.Almost immediately upon the Royals' demise, Montreal mayor Jean Drapeau and city executive committee chairman Gerry Snyder began their campaign for a Major League Baseball team. The city had in 1933 been considered a leading candidate to acquire the St. Louis Browns and was late to submit its candidacy for a team before the National League's 1962 expansion. In 1967, they presented their bid to the league's owners at the winter meetings. Aiding Montreal's bid was the fact that Walter O'Malley, who owned the Dodgers and formerly oversaw the Montreal Royals, was the chairman of the NL's expansion committee. On May 27, 1968, National League president Warren Giles announced the league would add expansion teams in San Diego and Montreal at a cost of US$10 million each.
With the franchise secured, Snyder built an ownership group of six partners led by financier Jean-Louis Lévesque and Seagram heir Charles Bronfman. Lévesque was originally tapped as chairman and the public face of the ownership group since he was a francophone. However, he bowed out, and Bronfman took over as chairman. The new group was faced with the immediate problem of finding a suitable facility in which to play for at least two years. Drapeau had promised the NL that a domed stadium–thought to be a must due to Montreal's cold weather in April, October and sometimes September–would be built by 1971. However, Snyder's successor as executive committee chairman, Lucien Saulnier, told Bronfman that Drapeau could not make such a guarantee on his own authority. As 1968 dragged on without movement from the city on a facility, Bronfman and his group threatened to walk away. While they had more than enough money between them to pay the first installment of the expansion fee, they wanted assurances that a park would be built before proceeding any further with the effort. Delorimier Stadium, which hosted the Royals, was rejected even as a temporary facility; it could not be expanded beyond its 20,000-seat capacity because it was in a residential area. The Autostade, home of the Canadian Football League's Montreal Alouettes, was ruled out due to the prohibitive cost of expanding it and adding a dome, as well as doubts that the city even had the right to make the needed renovations to the federally owned facility.
By August 1968, the NL owners had grown increasingly concerned about the unresolved stadium question, putting the franchise's future in doubt. There were rumours of awarding the franchise to Buffalo, New York, instead, whose War Memorial Stadium was ready to host a team. League president Warren Giles was reassured of Montreal's viability when shown a 3,000-seat community field in the centrally located Jarry Park that Drapeau proposed expanding to 30,000 seats as a temporary home for the Expos, at a cost of over C$1 million.
Several options for a team name were considered: "Royals" was a popular option with fans in honour of the minor-league Royals, but the name had already been taken by the Kansas City Royals. Other names considered included "Voyageurs" and "Nationals". The team settled on "Expos", a name with the same spelling in French and English, in recognition of the recently concluded Expo 67 World's Fair. Less than a year after the city was awarded a team, the Expos took to the field to begin the season.
Jarry Park years (1969–1976)
With Gene Mauch as their inaugural manager, the Expos made their debut on April 8, 1969: an 11–10 victory over the New York Mets at Shea Stadium. The team played its first home game—and the first Major League game outside the United States—on April 14; it was an 8–7 victory over the St. Louis Cardinals before 29,184 fans at Jarry Park Stadium. Three days later, on April 17, in just the team's ninth game played in their history up to that point, Bill Stoneman pitched the first no-hitter in Expos history with a 7–0 victory over the Philadelphia Phillies. The excitement of the early-season heroics quickly gave way to the realities of being an expansion team as the Expos struggled for much of their inaugural season. Montreal tied their expansion cousins, the San Diego Padres for the worst record in the NL with a record of. The team fared little better in the following seasons; the Expos went 73–89 in 1970 and 71–90 in 1971.The team's best player, and first star, in its early seasons was Rusty Staub. Acquired from the Houston Astros in a trade before the Expos' inaugural season, he led the Expos with 30 home runs in 1970 and, owing to his red hair, was nicknamed Le Grand Orange. Staub was Montreal's lone representative at the All-Star Game in the team's first three seasons, and endeared himself to the local fans by learning French. Also popular was pitcher Claude Raymond, who completed his major league career with Montreal in 1972 and was the team's first French-Canadian star. Pitcher Carl Morton, who posted an 18–11 record in 1970, was the first player in franchise history to be named National League Rookie of the Year. Bill Stoneman threw his second no-hitter, and the first pitched outside the United States, in a 7–0 win over the New York Mets in Montreal on October 2, 1972.
The team failed to post a winning season in its first ten years and finished fifth or sixth in the six-team NL East eight times. Attendance declined as the initial excitement of having a team wore off. It recovered briefly in 1973 as the Expos mounted an unsuccessful charge at the NL East pennant, before declining sharply in 1974 and beyond. By 1976, attendance had dropped to just over 600,000 fans over the course of the season, less than half of what the Expos drew in their inaugural season.
The on-field performance was not the only concern for the Expos. Jarry Park was only intended to serve as a temporary home until 1971 at the latest. Even allowing for this, it left much to be desired as a baseball venue. The grandstands were completely exposed to the elements, forcing the Expos to postpone a number of early-season games. Additionally, the sun set directly in the face of first basemen, forcing delays. Due to numerous delays and cost overruns with its intended replacement, Olympic Stadium, the Expos were forced to stay in Jarry through 1976.
The team's future was also placed in doubt after an angry speech by Bronfman in which he threatened to move his family and the Seagram company outside Quebec if the separatist Parti Québécois won a majority government in the 1976 Quebec election. The Parti Québécois did win the election; however, Bronfman and the Expos remained in Quebec.