Former Expo Jim Fanning helped plant MLB roots in Canada
As Montreal’s first GM, he was integral to baseball’s success north of the border
Until the very moment Jim Fanning passed away early Saturday morning in London, Ont., the 87year-old Chicago native never truly realized his importance to the continuing and successful presence of major-league baseball in Canada.
Fanning’s relationship with Canada began with his role as the first general manager of the country’s first Major League Baseball team, the Montreal Expos. Hired in 1968, eight months before the first opening day of the expansion franchise’s initial season, they didn’t have a single player under contract and nowhere to play. But somehow, Fanning and the Expos made it work.
Fanning grew up in rural Iowa, played baseball as a catcher in the Chicago Cubs’ organization, including parts of three seasons in the majors in the mid-1950s, became a Canadian citizen in 2012, living with his wife Maria and two children, Cynthia, 25, and Frank, 25, in London. That’s where, at 2 a.m. Saturday, he suffered a heart attack and passed away with his family by his side.
Fanning had also been active with the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame in St. Marys, of which he was named an inductee in 2000.
As Montreal’s first GM, Fanning was part of an original front-office triumvirate that included club president John McHale and field manager Gene Mauch, hired by team owner Charles Bronfman. Without the trio’s existing MLB profile and respect they each brought with them from previous jobs, the early problems the franchise encountered could have been enough to scuttle MLB’s international experiment. It may, in fact, have ended the thought of further Canadian expansion before it even began. Baseball would have been loathe to consider Toronto if Montreal had failed.
Fanning, McHale and Mauch remained the face of the Expos franchise from 1968 through the end of the 1975 season, when Mauch was relieved of his duties. For any organization, expansion or otherwise, that is an incredibly long period of initial front-office stability. Fanning, who chose to live in Montreal year-round, was the most visible face of the franchise, proud of his team and city. Personally, I owe Fanning a lot. He was responsible for me being hired as an 18-year-old public-relations intern in 1973.
In an era prior to computers in sports and at the advent of major player agent influence, Fanning and the Expos felt they required more specialized statistics to use in arbitration cases. Such cases were becoming more of a thorn in MLB’s side, and weren’t going away.
Scoring all the games, home and away, and breaking down the Expos statistics — scoring position, by count and number of outs, pitchervs.-batter, late-innings and close — it was at a point where even the detailreliant, stats obsessed Mauch was impressed by such analysis. That led to a full-time job with the Expos which eventually led to writing baseball columns for the Toronto Star.
Without Fanning, none of that would have happened for me. It was a bond I reminded him of and one we shared through the years.
Forever self-deprecating and humble, Jim never realized how much he was admired in Montreal, especially by the French-Canadian community, by the new, casual fans that made it work. Part of his high profile was that during the Jarry Park years, the front office staff worked out of the Dominion Square building at Peel and Ste-Catherine. As a result, Fanning, with well-coiffed grey hair and distinctive style, was a downtown presence with a smile for everyone, always willing to talk baseball.
Of course, there was the good and the bad with Fanning as GM. There was the calculated decision in the expansion draft — one that offered ludicrously little talent — to select veteran, familiar names that nouveau-fans could recognize. Names like Maury Wills, Manny Mota, Donn Clendenon, Mack Jones, John Bateman and Mudcat Grant. Fan- ning would then cobble together some of that talent in a package for Rusty Staub.
But then there were iffy deals, like post-1971 in dealing Le Grand Orange to the New York Mets for Mike Jorgensen, Tim Foli and Ken Singleton, then sending Singleton and starter Mike Torrez to the Orioles after the ’73 season for a package led by left-hander Dave McNally and outfielder Rich Coggins. When the Expos moved to Olympic Stadium in 1977, Fanning took on other duties as vice-president and farm director. I recall on a road trip midway through the second half of the strike-shortened ’81 season when I was summoned to McHale’s suite in Philadelphia. He had decided to replace Dick Williams as manager and wanted me to assemble the traveling media for the announcement.
“Can you guess who it is?” McHale asked me, a highly unusual question for a man that was usually all business. With a throbbing headache caused perhaps by being out too late, I said I could not.
“Jim Fanning,” he said with a triumphant smile, then went on to explain Fanning was the man because of his knowledge of the organization’s young players that would be key, like Terry Francona, Brad Mills, Wallace Johnson, Bill Gullickson and Scott Sanderson.
Even as field manager, Fanning never changed who he was. He requested an IBM typewriter for his office so he could answer fan mail, and he insisted on wearing a protective cup, much to the giddy disbelief of his players. But McHale’s strategy worked.
The Expos clinched the second half with a dramatic win at Shea Stadium, won the NL East in a fivegame series against the Phillies then lost to the Dodgers on a ninth-inning Rick Monday blast in the decisive Game 5. One run, one inning from a World Series, and the Expos never went back to the playoffs again. Fanning’s five post-season wins as manager stood as the record for a Canadian franchise until Cito Gaston’s sixth playoff win with the Blue Jays, the World Series clincher in 1992.
I often reminded Jim of the impact he and Mr. McHale had on my life. They taught me to love the game and respect the people that work in it. They taught me not to punch a clock when you are doing something that you love and that wins and losses don’t necessarily equate to success and failure.
An example of Fanning’s true personality could be seen in his relationship with Bill Lee. The Spaceman famously walked out on the Expos in early 1982 after Fanning and McHale decided to release second baseman Rodney Scott, and Lee publicly ridiculed his former manager through the years.
Jim’s son Frank grew up as a catcher like his father, then turned his attention to music as a member of an alternative rock band in the London area. Frank told me one year at the Baseball Canada banquet about how he met Bill Lee and they became unlikely friends, with his father’s blessing. In fact, after Frank gave up baseball, Jim and Maria were fans at most live music venues where he performed.
A Fanshawe radio broadcasting grad, Frank was named 2015 firstyear broadcaster of the year and most promising on-air personality. Jim attended the awards ceremony on April 18 of this year. Upon winning the award, Frank honoured his family in his speech. Jim pulled himself to his feet from his wheelchair, stood up, and waved to the crowd. It was a huge ovation, the warmest applause of the night, and a lifelong moment for the Fannings. That crowd represented an entire country.
Jim Fanning will be missed by the entire Canadian baseball community.
RIP.