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 by Jonah Keri Read Free Book Online Page B

based mostly on what Russ told me. Because I saw limos pulling up and people getting out dressed to the nines. I said, ‘Russ, this is like an event that’s caught on here. All the high rollers seem to be coming out.’ And he said, it’s all of Charles’ friends. The community would not dare turn its back on this enterprise that Charles is involved in, and he said he is greatly involved in the community here in Montreal. He never said the Jewish community. Everything that Charles was involved in in Montreal, from corporations to hospitals to museums, they all came out because it was Charles. Not that there weren’t some baseball fans amongst them. There were, of course. But most of them came because this was Charles’ baby.”
    Ever looked at an Expos cap? Like,
really
looked at one? What do you see?
    For the first 19 years of my life, I saw the letters “elb”, and nothing else. Others have put forth various alternate interpretations. Some have claimed the logo is simply “eb.” A few pointed to “mb.” Still others squinted and somehow saw “cb.”
    Each of those interpretations has required theories as to what the initials might mean. The “eb” combination was easy to decipher—that had to be “Expos Baseball.” The “mb” camp had it as “Montreal Baseball.” Little Jonah and teenage Jonah figured “elb” must mean “Expos Limited Baseball.” Conspiracy theorists had their own ideas. Those who saw “cb” figured this was some self-serving callback for owner Charles Bronfman. And if you were way out there, you had “eb” pegged for Ellen Bronfman, the name of Charles’ daughter.
    It took my college girlfriend—not much of a baseball fan when we met and barely aware of the Expos’ existence, much less their logo—to finally set me straight. “Don’t you see,” she said. The lower-case letters were “eb,” for “Expos Baseball.” Take a step back and eyeball the larger pattern, and you can see that it’s a giant “M.” For “Montreal.”
    Turned out she was right—as both Charles Bronfman and his son, Stephen, confirmed.
    The pomp and circumstance at the parade mesmerized the players too.
    “You thought you were at an inauguration,” McGinn told me in 2013. “There was confetti coming down, the parade went through the heart of downtown. We were all dressed in uniform. The whole thing felt like we’d just won the World Series. Most of the guys still talk about it.”
    The first game at Jarry Park was an even bigger party.
    “Drapeau was on a roll,” said legendary quipster Tim Burke, sitting on a bar patio on Bishop Street in downtown Montreal, recalling his years covering the Expos for the
Montreal Star
(and later the
Montreal Gazette
). “The day before was a blizzard. He must have waved a wand or something, it was such a glorious day. Everything kept building up after that first game in New York. They won, and you couldn’t believe how it all happened, McGinn hitting that famous home run, and then just hanging on for dear life. It was the most exciting thing you could imagine. Then they come home for that first game. It was such a scene, it felt like everybody all across North America was watching.”
    The players themselves came together from all across North America. Simply being in Montreal was a new experience for everyone on the roster—at least until the team acquired its first Quebec-born player four months later.
    “We had no idea about Montreal,” said Stoneman. “So somebody said, ‘Well, use the subway. You can get around real easy.’ I remember going out to the park with some of the other guys. We were all in what was then the Windsor Hotel down on Peel between Dorchester and Sainte-Catherine. It was a nice old hotel and you could get on the subway not far from there and we kind of figured out how to get out near the stadium. We made a mistake on our first trip out, got off at the wrong station. But it was a heck of a nice day, so we had a nice