Up, Up, and Away: The Kid, the Hawk, Rock, Vladi, Pedro, le Grand Orange, Youppi!, the Crazy Business of Baseball, and the Ill-fated but Unforgettable Montreal Expos Read Online Free Page A
will be competitive (see the pre-1969 Mets). The second school of thought posits that young talent is the way to go, that a few lean years can be worth it if you can poach a bunch of 22-year-olds and hope one or two of them become hidden gems.
The Expos’ strategy was … to show up, for starters. All the scrambling with stadium logistics and the early turmoil within the ownership group had set the franchise back several months, and the Expos were way behind their expansion cousins in every facet of the game. Fortunately, Fanning had served as the Braves’ de facto scouting director and farm director under McHale, helping him hone his eye for talent. McHale himself, despite some of his ill-advised decisions running the Braves, could still offer some useful feedback leading up to the expansion draft. But that was it.As draft day approached, the Expos still employed a grand total of zero scouts.
“We just had to hire as many scouts as we could,” recalled Fanning in a 2011 phone interview. “That late in the season, it wasn’t easy to find really good scouts who were also available. You end up hiring guys who are about to retire, or maybe they already have. But we got lucky. We got Johnny Moore, a great scout from the Braves. We got Bobby Bragan, who’d managed with the Braves and other places, and had a good eye. Larry Doby, Eddie Lopat, this was a good group. This was the busiest time John and I ever had—we did well to find all of these guys.”
Once they’d hurriedly assembled a staff, McHale, Fanning, and company hashed out how the Expos would approach their first round of player acquisitions. They finally decided to take as many brand-name veterans as possible—but for craftier reasons than you’d think. McHale and Fanning figured people would flock to Jarry Park at first regardless of the names pencilled into the lineup. What the Expos really wanted was to land players with market value. Draft a bunch of players maybe a bit past their prime, shine ’em up, then trade ’em for players who might actually contribute to winning seasons down the road.
The McHale-Fanning strategy of drafting known commodities and flipping them for something better would pay off in a big way a few months later. Before that could happen, though, the Expos would have to handle basic necessities—like getting Jarry Park renovated in time for the team’s first home game.
Montreal is one of the coldest major cities in the Western Hemisphere. On top of that, the winter of 1968–69 was one of the coldest, snowiest, and longest that locals had seen in years. Turning a 3,000-seat amateur park with a couple of grandstands into a fully-equipped, 28,546-seat major league ballpark in eight months would be tough enough under ideal conditions. Ferocious blizzards and -20 degrees Celsius (-4°F) temperatures made the job damn near impossible.
The Associated Press
sent a reporter to assess the situation in mid-February 1969, two months before the first regular-season game was slated for Montreal. The reporter saw construction crews splitting the work between two shifts and toiling from 5 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily, yet they still had a long way to go. Work hadn’t yet started on the locker rooms, nor were there tunnels leading to the dugouts. There were non-weather-related setbacks, too, including a bizarre incident in which steel that was supposed to be used to build the stands got sent to the wrong place. That set everything back another three weeks. As
AP
described it: “ ‘We’ll be ready,’ insisted Lou Martin, Expos director of operations, as he looked Thursday over the snow-covered expanse that resembles a disaster area more than a future diamond.”
(Bobby Wine was offered to the Expos as compensation after Larry Jackson decided to retire rather than report to Montreal)
Reporting on March 29, 1969—just 16 days before the scheduled home opener
—AP
bagged another quote from Martin, this one less optimistic. “We must have
The Expos’ strategy was … to show up, for starters. All the scrambling with stadium logistics and the early turmoil within the ownership group had set the franchise back several months, and the Expos were way behind their expansion cousins in every facet of the game. Fortunately, Fanning had served as the Braves’ de facto scouting director and farm director under McHale, helping him hone his eye for talent. McHale himself, despite some of his ill-advised decisions running the Braves, could still offer some useful feedback leading up to the expansion draft. But that was it.As draft day approached, the Expos still employed a grand total of zero scouts.
“We just had to hire as many scouts as we could,” recalled Fanning in a 2011 phone interview. “That late in the season, it wasn’t easy to find really good scouts who were also available. You end up hiring guys who are about to retire, or maybe they already have. But we got lucky. We got Johnny Moore, a great scout from the Braves. We got Bobby Bragan, who’d managed with the Braves and other places, and had a good eye. Larry Doby, Eddie Lopat, this was a good group. This was the busiest time John and I ever had—we did well to find all of these guys.”
Once they’d hurriedly assembled a staff, McHale, Fanning, and company hashed out how the Expos would approach their first round of player acquisitions. They finally decided to take as many brand-name veterans as possible—but for craftier reasons than you’d think. McHale and Fanning figured people would flock to Jarry Park at first regardless of the names pencilled into the lineup. What the Expos really wanted was to land players with market value. Draft a bunch of players maybe a bit past their prime, shine ’em up, then trade ’em for players who might actually contribute to winning seasons down the road.
The McHale-Fanning strategy of drafting known commodities and flipping them for something better would pay off in a big way a few months later. Before that could happen, though, the Expos would have to handle basic necessities—like getting Jarry Park renovated in time for the team’s first home game.
Montreal is one of the coldest major cities in the Western Hemisphere. On top of that, the winter of 1968–69 was one of the coldest, snowiest, and longest that locals had seen in years. Turning a 3,000-seat amateur park with a couple of grandstands into a fully-equipped, 28,546-seat major league ballpark in eight months would be tough enough under ideal conditions. Ferocious blizzards and -20 degrees Celsius (-4°F) temperatures made the job damn near impossible.
The Associated Press
sent a reporter to assess the situation in mid-February 1969, two months before the first regular-season game was slated for Montreal. The reporter saw construction crews splitting the work between two shifts and toiling from 5 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily, yet they still had a long way to go. Work hadn’t yet started on the locker rooms, nor were there tunnels leading to the dugouts. There were non-weather-related setbacks, too, including a bizarre incident in which steel that was supposed to be used to build the stands got sent to the wrong place. That set everything back another three weeks. As
AP
described it: “ ‘We’ll be ready,’ insisted Lou Martin, Expos director of operations, as he looked Thursday over the snow-covered expanse that resembles a disaster area more than a future diamond.”
(Bobby Wine was offered to the Expos as compensation after Larry Jackson decided to retire rather than report to Montreal)
Reporting on March 29, 1969—just 16 days before the scheduled home opener
—AP
bagged another quote from Martin, this one less optimistic. “We must have
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