Author Keri still flies the Expos flag
MONTREAL REVIVAL: Growing nostalgia coincides with increasing support for baseball’s return to Quebec
Two years ago, when Up, Up, and Away was published, St-Laurent, Que., native and baseball fanatic Jonah Keri thought his book about the team he grew up devoted to might have niche appeal. The reality, he has found, has been something else entirely.
While it’s not a position he has actively sought — “I don’t root for any team these days, I root for baseball,” he said — the Sports Illustrated baseball beat writer and podcaster finds himself one of the standard bearers for Expos Nation.
And as Montreal gets set to demonstrate its baseball love by packing Olympic Stadium for two Toronto Blue Jays-Boston Red Sox pre-season games this weekend — the latest in what has become an enormously popular annual tradition — the thought Expos Nation might one day have its own team again is not as far-flung as it might have seemed a few years ago.
“It was two-pronged for me,” the 41-year-old, who is based in Denver, said of the grassroots response to his critically acclaimed comprehensive Expos history. “One was personal, the other a little more detached and professional. On the professional side, I found while working on the book that things were changing.
“In 2012, Gary Carter died. Warren Cromartie came to town and started doing these galas every year. So by the time the book came out — and I’m not going to claim any credit for this, it’s all part of a bigger process — interest in the Expos had gone from practically nothing to this skyrocketing situation. On repeated occasions, without my ever asking him about it, the (MLB) commissioner is saying it would be great to have baseball back in Montreal. Denis Coderre is completely on board. It has become a mainstream opinion.”
On a personal level, said Keri, the past two years have blown his Exposformed mind.
“If I met Sandy Koufax or Willie Mays or whoever, that would be cool,” he said. “But meeting guys I spoke with for the book like Hawk (Andre Dawson)? Seeing him in the weight room at the gym and he says to me ‘Hey Jonah, how are you?’ ‘Oh, I’m good, Hall of Famer Andre Dawson who I rooted for when I was six years old, how are you?’ That kind of thing is trippy to me, to have guys like that acknowledge me, let alone want to buy my book or talk about it. It’s been fun and gratifying and super cool.”
Keri isn’t buying the suggestion that a return to Montreal would constitute an admission of failure by MLB and thus a possible obstacle. A lot is different now, he said, including the MLB commissioner.
“Bud Selig is long gone. Rob Manfred is his own man. The economics of the game are different. Listen, baseball returned to Washington in 2005 and that was the third try for that city. There are all kinds of things that can happen.”
Signs that the time is ripe for an Expos rebirth are there in the streets of the city, said Keri.
“Let’s face it, it pretty much stunk for the last 10 years (post-1994 fire sale through 2004). So we’re now at 20-plus years since big crowds could be relied on. That means there’s a whole generation who may never have seen the team, but have built up a whole sort of retro mystique around them, wearing the caps and buying the (merchandise). They’re seen as a cool thing.”
Being an all-purpose baseball maven may mean he seldom writes specifically about the Expos these days, but Keri certainly keeps up on the alumni. Though he doesn’t yet qualify as a Cooperstown voter, he’s bullish on the Hall of Fame prospects of Tim Raines and Vladimir Guerrero.
“There’s a scenario in which Raines and Vladi could get in at the same time,” he said. “That would be a pretty great party for Montreal.”