RMJ 153 July 18

FRIDAY, JULY 18 ● Montreal, vs Expos

As I looked out from my room on the 30th floor of Le Centre Sheraton, I saw an oppressive sky. Gray stratus clouds lay on the city like a blanket, heavy with gravity, blocking the sun.

Downtown Montreal spills from Mount Royal onto a narrow strip of land that butts up against the St. Lawrence Seaway. On the other side of the river, the landscape spreads far, wide and flat.

When I first came here in 1969, the Expos were new, and the city was as gay as an oompah band. Now the divide — between river and the mountain, between the English and the French, between Québec and the rest of Canada — grows deeper and wider by the day.  Fractured by selfishness and pride, growing ever more implacable, impenetrable, intractable.

The owners and players of the major leagues should take a hard look at what has happened here in Montreal before they dig their heels deeper into their own precious turf. Even as we celebrate the 50th anniversary of Jackie Robinson, we tear ourselves apart again, like Black Sox and White Sox. 

The greed of Charles Comiskey. The ignorance of Shoeless Joe Jackson. They are with us still, eating away our flesh like frostbite; like piranha. The patina of verdigris on the roofs, cathedrals, and government buildings here in Montreal attests to the endurance of the noble side of the human spirit.

May this spirit overcome the base elements of human nature that threaten the Expos, the Astros, the Pirates, the Brewers, the Padres, the Twins. May the sun finally break through this gunmetal sky and bathe us in a warm glow of togetherness.

 

Nineteen thousand fans came out to see the Expos on this Friday night; a good crowd by historical standards. These days, a crowd of nineteen thousand can soak a team in red ink.

 

Olympic Stadium is not a good place for a ballgame. It is enormous and cold. There is no intimacy here. The Expos, like the Astros, need a new stadium to capture the spirit of the game — and the money of the fans. Without a real ballpark, the dirge will sound. I can hear the orchestra tuning up in the background.  

These strains are less comforting still with the thought of Pedro Martinez, the nonpareil pitcher of this dying franchise. No team has developed more good young ballplayers than the Expos in recent years. No team has seen so many bright stars disappear over the horizon, to shine on lands of greater promise. Before long, Martinez will be gone too. But that won’t be soon enough to save us. Tonight, we must face the music.

 

Craig Biggio fanned to start the game, making this morning’s odds of 185 to 100 [?] in favor of the Expos look like a bargain. Chuck Carr went down, and then Bagwell fanned.

Ramón Garcia jogged to the mound like a Christian going to the lions. But Garcia has a noble spirit of his own, and in this game, he scoffed at the oddsmakers and matched Martinez pitch-for-pitch.

In the fourth inning, Pedro quaked. A double by Luis Gonzalez and three walks gave us a 1-0 lead. We made it 2-0 in the fifth when Biggio got an infield hit, advanced on a hit-and-run grounder, and scored on a single by Bagwell.

Garcia wobbled in the bottom of the fifth. I started Mike Magnante in the bullpen. Ramón pitched out of trouble, and Martinez got back in a groove. I warmed Magnante in the sixth and seventh, but Garcia kept after them. When I finally pinch-hit for him in the top of the ninth, we were still up 2-0. Billy Wanger came in to close the deal.

We beat the best, and we are in first place again.

As the dog days of summer loom in the distance, tempers flare and the sport gets a jagged edge. The specter of violence is always present when Martinez takes the mound. He pitches hard (94 MPH) inside on right-handed hitters.

The second time around, he hit Bagwell on the pad that protects his hand. Bagwell’s left hand has been broken three times by inside pitches. It would have been four times without the pad.

Martinez had already strafed several hitters, and I was getting hot. I don’t think he is a headhunter, but if he likes the inside pitch from his vantage point on the mound, I wonder how he likes it from the batter’s box.

We were about to find out, when we scored our second run. I didn’t want Ramón to hit Martinez, but I did want to send him a message. After we got the second run, I changed my mind.  

Sometimes the emotional value of a knockdown contest accrues to the benefit of the team that is trailing in the game. It arouses them, so to speak. Ramón had the Expos in a sleeper hold, and the game was passing its midpoint. I decided to let them lie.

As a pitcher, I was sometimes reluctant to throw at batters on command. Many times, I thought our hitters were overreacting to an accidental hit.

For some reason, hitters don’t think a pitcher can miss badly off the inside corner. If he throws a ball in the dirt or a foot outside, they know he has just missed the mark. But when you throw a fastball a foot inside, they start screaming.

In this case, I felt that Martinez simply came in too close when he was trying to jam Bagwell. This happens a lot with power hitters. If you leave the ball over the inside part of the plate, they can kill you. If you miss your mark, you want to miss on the inside.

Still, Bagwell is our meal ticket. Frank Castillo hit him when we were in Chicago, and then he dusted two other hitters. José Lima stood up for Bagwell by decking Sammy Sosa.

If I suspect a “hit” order has been issued on one of our key players, I feel justified in going after their top man. If I think a pitcher has simply been taking too many liberties on his own, I feel like that pitcher needs a dose of his own medicine.  

We used to take care of these things on our own, and the umpires let it go unless it got really bad. Now they are instructed to warn the pitchers and managers of both teams at the slightest provocation.

If Chief had thrown at Martinez, he may have been ejected from the game. The way he was pitching, we could not take that chance.

Brad came up to me while we were hitting in the fifth. He didn’t want Chief to throw at Martinez; he just wanted to keep the peace and try to win the game. This is what we did. But the next time Brad came up to hit, Martinez threw one right at his head, knocking him on his ass.

This time, we let it slide. If it happens again, we have to respond.