Hall of Fame catcher Gary Carter was a beloved figure in Montreal during his 12-year career with the Expos. (Bernard Brault/Canadian Press)
Commentary
Lack of Expos-ure
Baseball hasn't been the same since Montreal's demise
By Brian Kemp, CBC News
I'm lost. The major-league season is nearly over again and I still don't have a baseball team to call my own.
The poor Montreal Expos. Man, I miss them. It's been since 2004, and the pain is there, like a tooth-ache you're too cheap to have fixed.
Just where is the manual that describes what you should do when your team folds or moves to a city that has zero appeal to you. Washington, I'm sure, is a wonderful city, I guess.
But it doesn't have comparable smoked meat sandwiches or Old Montreal, or heart-clogging poutine, or the European sensation of sitting on a Sunday morning in an outdoor café, hungover, watching others feel the same way, in a way that says "the heck with the rest of the world, we just had a wild Saturday night in Montreal, and we love the Expos."
The hallowed Forum
I'm the New Brunswick-born dude who loves Montreal so much that when he first saw the old Forum he kissed it in front of a large group waiting to get into a Red Army-Canadiens game way, way back. For the record, it tasted like car exhaust fumes and the waiting crowd didn't seem impressed with my love for a building. I wonder if there is a word for that type of love. I won't go there.
The Washington Nationals. Even the name scares me. Not sure why. Maybe a manual could tell me, but there isn't one. I've looked.
So here I am, a man wandering the Earth like a homeless kid in a Dickens novel, teamless, hopeless and clueless. Melodramatic, I know, but baseball loves romantics and drama of the melo kind. But baseball doesn't know how to help me find a team. It sucks. Oh yeah, I'm fickle too.
Rick Monday crushed the dreams of every Montreal fan when his game-winning home run propelled the Los Angeles Dodgers into the 1981 World Series. (Mike Feldman/Canadian Press)
Toronto doesn't measure up
I live in Toronto now, going on two years.
Yep, been to a bunch of Toronto Blue Jay games. I've tried very hard to love them, but they seem like a first cousin, and kissing is not allowed. Forever, it was the Blue Jays and the Expos, linked like long-lost relatives, and even playing each other a few times at the end of the Expos' glorious run (yeah, I said glorious).
But they were always the upstart Jays to me, the new guys on the small Canadian block. We were the Expos, around longer, in the better league, and just plain cooler.
I've sat at many a Jays game in all areas of the park, behind the benches, behind home plate, in the outfield and waited for the love to form. I've even had a few beers in hopes that the "beer goggles" will help, but nope, nothing. It just didn't happen.
It's always been like that first date that goes nowhere, no kiss, and a good-bye hug that's as uncomfortable as the day Rick Monday of the Los Angeles Dodgers crushed the fibre of our dreams. (Yes, it still hurts. It's been hard to live through Mondays after that day. They remind me of that man...I can't say his name again. It hurts.)
I like the cousin analogy because it lets the Jays off the hook. There's absolutely nothing they can do to gather my fan appeal.
It's clearly not my fault that they can't woo me. Clearly.
There are others out there just like me, perhaps thousands of us living life like Patrick Swayze in the movie Ghost, always yelling to friends about our Expos, but nobody hearing.
No good option
I've talked to former Expos fans (I hate that phrase), who have explained to me quite nicely why and how they've gone to other teams.
"There are a lot of former Expos on that team," one said.
My retort is this: "What about when there are no former Expos on the team? You gonna move on to a team that has one?"
Another buddy: "I like San Diego, because it's in the National League and it's a beautiful city."
My bitter reply: "Montreal is a beautiful city. You suck."
Yep, I know, there is no reasoning with me and my logic.
So as the playoffs move on and as the Red Sox Nation gathers strength (nope, won't join the nation … don't like Ben Affleck), I sit here remembering the day in the early 1970s when I sat along the first-base line at Jarry Park and fell in love with a team that I can't shake from my heart.
Maybe I should go for a walk in a cornfield, but I'd probably meet up with that annoying Kevin Costner, who would start crying or something, and then make me cry.
I hate him.
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