FOND MEMORIES OF ’81 EXPOS
Raines and Rogers take a look back
There was a sweet scene at Sunday’s annual Montreal Sports Celebrity breakfast when rapper Annakin Slayd introduced the Tip That Cap video he made last year to honour Tim Raines on his induction into the National Baseball Hall of Fame.
Raines’s seven-year-old twin daughters Ava and Amelie, who had sat so well-behaved, but obviously bored, for about two hours, suddenly perked up and their eyes opened wide as they watched the video of their father in action with the Expos long before they were born. They are two of the cutest little girls you will ever see.
“No thanks to me … you know that,” Raines said with the boyish laugh he still has at age 58. “They got that from my wife (Shannon Watson, from Arnprior, Ont.).”
Raines received the 2018 Expos Legend Award at the breakfast and on Tuesday night he was back on the Big O field where his Hall of Fame career began. Raines was joined by former teammate Steve Rogers before the start of an exhibition game between the Toronto Blue Jays and St. Louis Cardinals as the 1981 Expos team that came within one win of advancing to the World Series was honoured.
Three hours before Monday night’s first exhibition game between the Blue Jays and Cardinals, I had a chance to sit alone with Raines to chat for about 10 minutes in Section 105 behind home plate at the Big O.
“I’m not used to being up in the stands,” Raines said. “But this brings back fond memories. It seems like just yesterday I was playing out there in left field.”
The Expos played 36 seasons in Montreal, but 1981 was the only year they ever made it to the post-season as National League East champions, and former Montreal Gazette sports editor Brodie Snyder wrote a book titled The Year the Expos Finally Won Something. Raines was only 21 at the time, playing in 88 games during the strike-interrupted season while batting .304 with 71 stolen bases.
“It’s the one memory that I’ll never forget,” Raines said. “We were a hit away from going to the World Series.”
The deciding hit was a two-out, ninth-inning home run by Rick Monday that gave Los Angeles a 2-1 win over the Expos in the fifth and deciding game of the NL Championship Series at the Big O. The Dodgers went on to win the World Series.
Blue Monday became a devastating blow for the Expos, who had been dubbed the Team of the ’80s but never even got to a World Series despite having three future hall of famers in Raines, Andre Dawson and Gary Carter.
“I don’t think I could even separate ’81 from ’79 and ’80,” Steve Rogers, the pitcher who gave up the Blue Monday homer, said on the Big O field before Monday night’s Blue Jays game. “I think the old adage is when a franchise becomes championship ready, you have a window of five years. You take four of those five years and we were right there.
“You take ’79, ’80, ’81 and ’82 … we came in second (in the NL East) three times.”
If playoff wild card spots had been available then, the Expos would have had more than one shot to advance to the World Series and maybe even won, which might have kept them in Montreal.
“We would have been considered a dynasty,” Rogers said when the wild card scenario was brought up. “We were that good. It was a special time, but looking back it’s also a frustrating time because we didn’t get over the hump.”
It’s unfortunate that younger Expos fans who only remember the team’s final years, when the Big O was a cold, dark place with tons of empty seats, never got to experience the early ’80s when it was the place to be in Montreal with fans partying and singing “Valde-ri! Valde-ra!” while Nos Amours played what former Gazette sports columnist Michael Farber described as “fire-wagon baseball,” similar to the type of hockey the Canadiens played in the 1970s.
“Montrealers considered (the Big O) a destination back then and you would see the box seats full and just like at the old Forum, they would be dressed to the nines,” Rogers said. “It was very much that European touch of how sporting events were viewed. It was different than every other stadium — in a good way — and it was a lot of fun.”
Recalled Raines: “There were 35,000 to 40,000 fans every night screaming. It was a lot of fun … some exciting teams. I played with some great players.”
There were 25,816 fans in attendance Tuesday night — including Raines’s twin daughters — to watch the Blue Jays beat the Cardinals 1-0 on a ninth-inning, two-out home run by Vladimir Guerrero Jr., the son of the former Expo who will be inducted into the Hall of Fame this summer.
It’s too bad the little girls never got to see their dad — and the Expos of the early 1980s — live in action at the Big O. They were pretty awesome.
We would have been considered a dynasty … We were that good. It was a special time, but looking back it’s also a frustrating time.