BLUE MONDAY IS A MUST READ FOR EXPOS’ AFICIONADOS

With the World Series now behind us, baseball aficionados craving for more will be pleased to learn that Danny Gallagher, a tireless chronicler of the Montreal Expos, has just launched his latest Expos-orientated book, his fifth. In Blue Monday: The Expos, the Dodgers, and the Home Run That Changed Everything, Gallagher turns his attention toward that bleak, fateful Monday afternoon in October, 1981, when the Expos and the Los Angeles Dodgers clashed head to head in the fifth game of their 3of 5 National League finals, with the winner destined for the World Series. “The Expos played 10 playoff games that October,” Gallagher writes in his Introduction, “only to be rocked on Blue Monday, the 19th, by a player named Monday. Blue Monday.” And in a nutshell, that says it all. Danny Gallagher is a friend. Some time ago I had the good fortune to co-author two well-received Expos-themed books with him: Remembering the Montreal Expos (2005), and Ecstasy to Agony: The 1994 Montreal Expos. (2014). Recently, I met up with Gallagher at a Chapters West Island book-signing where as ever he was chatting with Expos followers and signing books. Everyone wanted to talk about Rick Monday, to ask how, in that bleakest of cold and rainy days, with two out in the top of the ninth inning, and ace Steve Rogers on the mound, he managed to drive the ball through the mist toward right field and out, into oblivion. By winning that game, 2-1, the Dodgers qualified for the World Series against the New York Yankees, where, as the Expos wept, Los Angeles would win it all. Gallagher’s book has 36 chapters, each of which subtly draws the reader closer to that dreaded day. Perhaps the most revelatory chapter for me is the one entitled: Conspiracy Surrounds Postponement of Game 5, where the focus is actually placed the previous day, on a rainy Sunday. There was heated discussion with the umpires and the two managers, Jim Fanning and Tom LaSorda, as to whether or not the Sunday game should be postponed. Although, without ever saying as much, both were hoping for a postponement, one long enough to give their pitchers an extra day rest. After much back and forth, the game was postponed to the next day. When Monday morning broke there was little to distinguish it from the day before. Nevertheless, Sunday’s break seemed to serve both pitchers well. With the score tied 1-1 after eight full innings and the rubber match on the line, Expos’ Manager Jim Fanning decided to bring in Expos’ ace, Steve Rogers, far and away the best hurler on the club, to start the ninth inning. Rogers quickly disposed of both Steve Garvey and Ron Cey. Next up was right fielder Rick Monday. With the count three balls and one strike, Monday took the swing that hit the home run that we still talk about today.