Jays weren’t on Walker’s road to Cooperstown

Canadian star isn’t upset that Toronto passed on chance to sign him

Like most teenagers, Larry Walker loved to have fun.

Bored one night in the small town of Kindersley, Sask. — at the 1984 world youth baseball championship — Walker decided to take a billet’s car and went out on the town with Canadian teammate and fellow B.C. resident Steven Hodges.

“My dad told me the story,” Jesse Hodges said in an interview. “My dad and Larry Walker snuck out one night and screwed around and they got caught.”

Walker and Hodges had broken curfew and Jim Ridley, Canada’s head coach and a Blue Jays scout, heard about it.

“They had to do 90 sprints until they threw up,” the younger Hodges said.

Assistant coach Tom Erasmus remembers: “Ridley put me in charge of that stuff (discipline). We had a few incidents here and there with a couple of guys that came in after the 10 o’clock curfew. It was a good reminder to everybody that we had rules.”

It was a small stumble near the start of Walker’s baseball career, a stellar journey that ends in Cooperstown on Wednesday, when Walker will be inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame, along with Derek Jeter, Ted Simmons and the late Marvin Miller.

After running afoul of curfew on the watch of a member of the Jays organization, Walker went on to sign a free-agent contract with the Montreal Expos for a mere $1,500 in November of that year.

Expos scout Bob Rogers, who also worked as a longshoreman in Portland, Ore., had seen Walker at a number of tournaments before the deal was reached and was impressed. Watching the Kindersley championship was Canadian team technical director Bill MacKenzie, who worked for the Expos before and after his time with the national program.

MacKenzie was taken aback by Walker’s natural talent and called Jim Fanning, then in charge of the Expos’ farm system, to come see for himself. MacKenzie drove four hours to Calgary, picked up Fanning at the airport and brought him to Kindersley. Fanning was immediately fascinated.

A few months after the tournament, Rogers called Larry Walker Sr. in Maple Ridge, B.C., and asked how his son was doing. Rogers learned that Walker had dropped out of high school, making him eligible to be signed.

Two days later, Rogers flew from Portland to Richmond, B.C., and met with the family at the Airport Inn. Within minutes, the deal was done.

“If Jim Ridley was still alive, I’d like to know his reasoning for not wanting Larry for the Blue Jays. Larry was right under Jim’s nose in Kindersley,” MacKenzie said.

Walker went on to play more than five seasons with the Expos before enhancing his Hall of Fame case over nine years with the Colorado Rockies. The Rockies logo will be on his Cooperstown plaque.

On a Zoom conference call last Thursday, the 54-year-old Walker said he “didn’t follow baseball that much growing up” in Maple Ridge — where he was more interested in hockey as a kid — so cheering for the Jays and Expos wasn’t a focus for him.

“I wasn’t upset or anything” about the Jays not wanting to sign him before the Expos came along.

“There was a bit of interest from the Blue Jays and the Cubs, I think,” Walker said. “I know Bob Rogers came to Vancouver to sign me. I’ve been told by some people Jim Fanning was the guy who scouted me, but I’ve never been able to find out how accurate that story is.

“The Expos years were where I learned everything. I was very raw and a little behind everybody in learning the game. Without the Montreal Expos, we might not be having this conversation now.”

Those who saw Walker play in Kindersley say they knew he was something special, even though he went just 7-for-33 at the plate. He was the only member of that team to make it to the majors.

Former teammates remember Walker hitting bombs onto the roof of the dugout of an adjoining field during batting practice.

“I was a rookie on that team and Larry was two years older,” pitcher Mike Dorrington said. “He certainly was a guy that had all the skills. He could hit, run and throw. He certainly had a God-given talent. Even then, the conversation was how good he was as a physical talent.

“Mentally, he was always happy to be there. He was always having fun. He was a jokester, but he put the work in. Having seen the beginning of his career, he definitely had an athletic background. It was not surprising then that he signed.”

During one game, future Cuban great Omar Linares tried to go from first to third on a single to right field, but Walker surprised the tournament MVP by gunning him down.

“The crowd just went nuts …,” Erasmus recalled. “There was no bounce. A rifle shot to third, four feet off the ground. Larry had such a cannon. He blew people away. He had the arm, the power.

“As a team we didn’t do that good (3-6), but Larry had his moments. You could see Larry was a bona fide major-leaguer. He had fire in his eyes every game. He was an unbelievable talent, the nicest guy to coach.

“I wasn’t surprised the Expos were all over it. It’s ironic that Jim Ridley was part of the Blue Jays organization.”

“The Expos years were where I learned everything. I was very raw and a little behind everybody in learning the game.”

LARRY WALKER