1981 Coda: Les Expos Nous Souviens

A PERPETUAL FIRE SALE. Anyone who came of age after the wrecked season of 1994 can be forgiven for thinking the Montreal Expos were never anything but that. To all appearances they were a forlorn franchise in a foreign outpost whose destiny it was to develop top-flight players and then part with them.

The roster of the departed is as dazzling is it is dispiriting.

• Pedro Martinez, 2015 Hall of Fame inductee, traded after winning the 1997 National League Cy Young to the Boston Red Sox for the oft-injured Carl Pavano;
• Five-tool right fielder Vladimir Guerrero, who arrived in 1996, quickly became a perennial MVP candidate and finally won the award in 2005, his first season with the then-Anaheim Angels;
• Oufielder Larry Walker graduated to the club in 1989, batted .322 in 1994, then left for a 10-year stint with the Colorado Rockies, where he won three batting titles and the 1997 MVP award;
• Closer John Wetteland left after '94, then saved 74 games for the New York Yankees over the next two years, the second of which was a championship season;
• plus '94 All-Star pitcher Ken Hill and All-Star outfielder Marquis Grissom and, later, All-Star outfielder Moises Alou; 
• and after the 2004 season, the entire franchise, removed to Washington as the Nationals.

La serie soulement.

It wasn't always that way. There was a time when the Expos were a rising force in the National League with a roster that included ratified Hall of Famers Gary Carter and Andre Dawson, the Hall-worthy Tim Raines and ace reliever Jeff Reardon, a/k/a "The Terminator."

Their high-water mark was the strike-torn 1981 season. A microcosm of Expos' history, it ended sadly.

Though treading water for much of the 1970s, the team was accumulating talented players, starter Steve Rogers arrived in '73, Carter in '74, rifle-armed right fielder Ellis Valentine in '75, outfielder Warren Cromartie for keeps in '76, NL Rookie of the Year Dawson in '77, versatile Tim Wallach in '80 and Raines in '81, the year they dealt Valentine to the New York Mets for Reardon.

After finishing 10 games below. 500 in 1978, they burst into the upper echelon of the NL East, winning 95 games the next year and finishing two back of the eventual World Champion Pittsburg Pirates. Attendance at their cavernous concrete saucer, Olympic Stadium, jumped too, from 1.4 million to 2.1 million. 

While winning just 90 games the next season, they edged closer, finishing a game behind the eventual World Champion Philadelphia Phillies as 2.2 million came to watch.

Finally, amid the rubble of the '81 split season, the Expos finished first in its second half and then beat the Phillies in the first and last NL East Division Series for the right to play the Los Angeles Dodgers for the flag.

Maintenant!

Opening the best-of-five round in L.A., the more experienced Dodgers won game 1, then dropped contests 2 and 3. The Expos now had two chances to win Canada's first pennant and do it in Montreal.

Game 4 was still 1-1 in the eighth when L.A. left fielder Dusty Baker singled and Dodger ironman Steve Garvey followed with a home run. The visitors tallied four more times in the ninth to put the game away, 7-1, and even the series at two wins a piece. 

Game 5, for both sides, would be win-or-go-home.

Rookie sensation Fernando Valenzuela started for the Dodgers. His opponent was journeyman Ray Burris, who'd out pitched the phenom in game 2, shutting out L.A., 3-0. Each allowed only allowed a single run scored on a ground ball out. After eight innings, the score stood 1-1.

Expos rookie manager Jim Fanning summoned Rogers, a starter who'd gone 12-8 during the abbreviated campaign, to pitch the ninth. He retired Garvey on a first-pitch pop up, then third-sacker Ron Cey on a deep fly to left.

What happened next may have been the first domino in the long chain of events that destroyed the Expos.

Rogers fell behind Rick Monday, 3-1, then left a pitch up and out over the plate. The Dodger right fielder crushed it. Dawson chased the ball as far as the field would let him, stopping only at a fence too high for heroics, and watched it sail out of sight. A half inning later, L.A. would win 2-1.

Saison finis.

Blue Monday, they called it. To this day, it remains the closest the Expos and their lineal descendants, the Nationals, have ever gotten to the World Series.

Attendance climbed to 2.3 million in '82 and '83, but the team's performance slipped, triggering an era of rebuilding. Carter departed, as did Dawson and Raines, but eventually new heroes arrived. Another strike, in '94, ended the season at mid-year with the Expos holding a suddenly worthless 74-40 record, the best in baseball. 

Caught short by the resulting new economics of baseball, they never recovered.

-- Follow me on Twitter @paperboyarchive

Upstart Brewers Take the Yankees to the Brink - Remembering the First A.L. East Division Series

THEY RODE IN FROM THE MIDLANDS, unshaven, unkempt and unproven. Upstarts who'd never before appeared in the post season, the Milwaukee Brewers came to challenge the coiffed, corporate, pinstriped enterprise known as the New York Yankees.

One hundred Octobers after Ike Clanton's cowboys faced off against Marshal Wyatt Earp, his brothers and Doc Holliday at Tombstone, AZ's OK Corral, a new gang of have-nots arose to challenge an established order. The setting for this showdown was Yankee Stadium, a place hallowed not by tombstones, but monuments.

The once-in-a-lifetime intra-division playoff

Each faction had pushed the other to the edge.

It was the fifth and deciding game of the American League Eastern Division Series, a one-of-a-kind play-off round necessitated by a work stoppage that gutted the middle of the 1981 Major League Baseball season.

The strike had forced the Powers That Be to conjure a plan to rekindle pennant races in a season with too few games left to allow most teams to make up necessary ground.

It would be a split season. Those in first when play stopped -- including the defending division champ Yankees -- would be credited with winning half of that title. Whomever sat atop the same pile in October, got the other half.

Possession of the divisional crowns would be decided in best-of-five series played out across the quadrants of baseball.

Oct. 11, 1981

The Yankees had won the AL East four times in the previous five years, but knocking at the penthouse door since '78, the Brewers were poised to barge in and evict their overlords. The Bombers won the' first two games, in Milwaukee. The Brewers fought back, winning the next pair in New York.

Their leader, fireman Rollie Fingers, would win the '81 Cy Young award as the AL's best pitcher plus its Most Valuable Player award and -- ultimately -- election to baseball's Hall of Fame. Behind him, unkempt 6'4" starter Pete Vuckovich won 14 games to lead the league. Behind them: scruffy, slugging centerfielder Gorman Thomas, future two-time MVP Robin Yount, plus hit-machine Paul Molitor -- both of them future 3,000-hit-club members and Hall inductees -- and perennial .300 hitter Cecil Cooper.

The Yankees boasted several stars of their own. Outfielders Reggie Jackson, a/k/a "Mr. October" and Dave Winfield were Hall-bound, as was reliever Rich "Goose" Gossage. Bolstering them: three-time 20-game winner Tommy John, eventual '81 Rookie of the Year Dave Righetti and that night's starter, '78 Cy Young winner Ron Guidry, a/k/a "Louisiana Lightening," a/a/k/a "Gator."

Moose Haas, a/k/a "Moose Haas" took the mound for Milwaukee.

From that night's program, a look at the man
behind baseball's most famous mustache..

Before a crowd of 47,505, Thomas opened the scoring with a homer off Guidry in the second. Cooper drove home a run in the third. Clantons 2, Earps 0.

The lawmen retaliated in the bottom of the fourth. Yankee shortstop Larry Milbourne singled. Haas then retired Winfield on a fly ball to right. It was the last out he'd get. Jackson homered to tie the score. Designated hitter Oscar Gamble did too, giving New York the lead.

The Moose was cooked. For the second time in the series, he'd not escape the fourth inning. Mike Caldwell, ordinarily a starter, came on in relief, but the man known as The Yankee Killer for his success against the Bronx Bombers, had none, yielding two more hits and a run before being lifted too.

Establishment 4, Upstarts 2.

Guidry gave way to Righetti in the fifth. He held the Brewers scoreless until the seventh when, with two outs, Yount tripled. Cooper's single drove him home. 4-3. Catcher Rick Cerone's homer in the bottom half restored the Yankees' cushion, 5-3.

Milwaukee threatened in the eighth, coaxing two walks from Gossage but could not plate a run. It was their last rally of the season.

In the bottom of the frame, Milbourne -- the Yankees' least famous starter -- led off with his third hit of the game, a single. Winfield, who team owner George Steinbrenner would later deride as "Mr. May", flied to center completing an 0-4 night. Mr. October singled, then pinch hitter Lou Piniella's double cleared the bases. New York 7, Milwaukee 3.

The game as scored.

Molitor and Yount who collectively amassed 6,461 hits during their careers, could not muster one against Gossage in the ninth. Then Cooper, who'd driven in two of the three Brewer runs, popped out to Yankee third-baseman Graig Nettles.

Game over. Series over.

The Yankees would dispose of the Oakland A's, led by their once-and-future skipper Billy Martin, in the AL Championship Series, and then lose to the Los Angeles Dodgers in the World Series.

Era over.

The Bombers had a losing record in 1982 and didn't return to the post-season until 1995.

The Brewers would bounce back with aplomb. Sparked by Yount's MVP season, a Cy Young-award-winning year from Vuckovich, and an inspiring one-legged manager, Harvey Kuenn, the team nicknamed "Harvey's Wallbangers" won the '82 AL flag, but lost to the St. Louis Cardinals in a 7-game World Series.

To date, it's the only pennant they've won.

The Brewers moved to the National League in 1998.

Follow me on Twitter @paperboyarchive.

The Year Baseball Screwed the Cincinnati Reds

IF YOU GOOGLE the phrase "best record in baseball 1981," then click the "images" tab, the first picture you're likely see is this one:

http://cincinnati.reds.mlb.com/cin/images/hof/y2011/1981_630x200.jpg

Still housed on the Cincinnati Reds' website, it depicts a dour, sour grapes celebration, and like all pictures it tells a story. It goes like this:

Major League Baseball doesn't recognize regular season champions in the manner of, say, the National Hockey League. There's no official trophy and no flag. So this one is atypical. The best-record reward is, rather, home field advantage for the league playoffs.  Once having secured said best record, said team is ordinarily permitted to participate in said playoffs.

The 19-%$#@!-81 Reds Yearbook

And there was the rub for the '81 Reds.

Their prize for compiling baseball's best record 35 years ago was the knowledge of a job well done and and that disconsolate D.I.Y. pennant. They got to watch the playoffs -- all three rounds of them that year -- at home.

All of this because of the Baseball Strike of 1981, a labor/management dispute over compensation for teams losing players to other teams through free agency. What in retrospect seems little more than an asterisk in the history of MLB/MLBPA relations was casus belli that summer and -- spanning June 12 to July 31 -- it wiped out more a third of the MLB schedule.

The Reds played just 108 games that year, 54 less than in a standard season, and won 66, compiling a .611 winning percentage. The next-best NL record belonged to the St. Louis Cardinals, who played just 102 games and won 59, good for a .578 winning percentage. There would be no playoffs for them either.

When play resumed, the lords of baseball decreed the season would be split in two, giving even those teams near or at the bottom of the standings when play stopped a chance at the playoffs.

It was not a decision worthy of Solomon.

The four teams first place when the strike began were declared first-half "winners." Won/lost records were re-set to 0-0, and the races started anew. Second-half "winners" would play their first-half counterparts in big league baseball's first-ever division series.

George Foster, 1977 NL MVP, 1982 Reds Alumn

When play paused in June, the defending World Champion Philadelphia Phillies led the NL East, while the Los Angeles Dodgers perched atop the NL West. 

When the second half ended, they'd been supplanted by the Montreal Expos and Houston Astros. Guaranteed entry to the playoffs, the Phillies had slipped to third, 25-27, while the Dodgers, at 27-26, fell to fourth.

The consistent and unlucky Cardinals and Reds finished second in each half and -- in this pre-Wild Card era -- out of the dance. Uninvited. Montreal toppled Philly in the division series for their first and last NL East title. The Dodgers out dueled the Astros in the West, then extinguished the Expos, capturing the flag on foreign soil.

Fate proved more kind in the American League where the Milwaukee Brewers and Oakland A's, who had the best combined AL records, each managed a first-place finish too. The Brewers fell to the first-half winner Yankees in the east while the A's deposed the Royals out west. The defending AL champs had earned their berth by winning the second half despite of an overall losing record, 50-53.

Los Angeles beat New York in the series, four games to two.

The Cardinals rebounded from their strike-year disappointment to win the 1982 World Series, beating the then AL champ Brewers in seven en route to becoming an NL power. St. Louis would return to the series again in 1985 and 87.

But for Cincinnati's mighty Big Red Machine, this was the end. The team that had finished first six times in the 70s, won four pennants and two world championships, vanished from the post-season for an entire decade.

Ken Griffey Sr. left the Reds for New York after 1981.
In 1988, he came back.

That winter their starting outfield left for New York: George Foster via trade to the Mets, while Ken Griffey Sr. and Dave Collins were acquired by the Yankees.

In 1982, the Reds finished last for the first time since 1937. They finished last again in '83.

The strike year also marked a turning point for Reds ace Tom Seaver, who posted a 14-2 record. Though his .875 winning percentage was baseball's best, the NL Cy Young Award went to Dodgers rookie phenom Fernando Valenzuela, who finished 13-7.

It was Seaver's last year as an elite pitcher. After slumping to 5-13 in '82, he was dealt to the Mets for whom he'd once starred. After just a single season there, in which he went 9-14, the man known to New York fans as "The Franchise" was left unprotected from the free-agent compensation pool fought over in 1981 and was claimed by the Chicago White Sox, who'd lost a pitcher to the Blue Jays.

After 1985, the use of Major League players as free agent compensation was scrapped in favor of amateur draft picks, the system still in use today.

-- Follow me on Twitter @paperboyarchive

When Gary Rajsich Rescued Baseball

GARY RAJSICH ROCKED the summer of 1981. Alright, half of it. But he rocked it really well.

"Who the hell is Gary Rajsich?" you ask?

Short answer: He was, for a brief time, the best home run hitter in professional baseball.

Our hero, from the Mets' 1982 Team Photo Album

The somewhat longer explanation is as follows:

Rajsich (it's pronounced RAY-sitch) was a sixth year minor-league ballplayer who had his best pro season just as Major League Baseball's players went on strike. From June 12 to Aug. 8, big league ballparks sat empty and unused as labor and management duked it out over the now somewhat arcane issue of free agent compensation.

Darkness descended. Gary Rajsich shined in the void.

It was his good fortune to play for the Tidewater Tides, AAA affiliate of the then not-significantly-better New York Mets, who acquired him at the end of spring training from the Houston Astros. With big league baseball on the blink, ESPN, the Sporting News and those who made their living covering the art of hitting a round ball with a round bat squarely needed a story.

They found it in Norfolk, Virginia where our hero was quietly slugging away. By mid-June, Rajsich had 20 homers, more than anybody in baseball.

At just that moment, the Tides were set to play the Columbus Clippers, who just happened to be the top farm club of New York Yankees, setting up the International League equivalent of a subway series (in an era when inter-league play was something reserved for the World Series). In the absence of major league programming, the mid-June contests would be broadcast back to New York by the teams' big league announcers.

Suddenly Rajsich -- a virtual unknown when the MLB strike began -- was the biggest baseball story in the land.

The '81 Clippers were stocked with future Yankees: burly slugging first-baseman Steve "Bye-bye" Balboni, slick shortstop Andre Robertson and -- for seven starts -- that season's American League Rookie of the Year, Dave Righetti.

The Tides had, well, Rajsich, plus future Minnesota Twins manager Ron Gardenhire, future San Francisco Giants manager Bruce Bochy, future Pittsburgh Pirates pitching coach Ray Searage (what is it they say about those who can't do?), plus Mike Howard, whose 1983 opening day start in right field for the Mets, behind the returning Tom Seaver no less, would be his last major league appearance.

Rajsich did his part in a June 22 contest won by the Tides, 8-7, clubbing a three-run homer, his 21st on the year.

He would crack just three more before his season of wonder abruptly ended nearly a month later with a broken wrist sustained in a home plate collision. Rajsich's stats to that point: 74 games, 253 at bats, 70 hits, 11 doubles, 1 triple, 24 homers and 56 RBIs. Not bad for a half-season's work. Balboni would win the IL's home run crown. He and Rajsich would make the league's All Star team.

From the Mets' 1982 yearbook, a tale of promise

More importantly, the outburst put him on the team's radar and merited a promotion to varsity the next year, joining a perennially-rebuilding roster that included Dave Kingman, George Foster, Ellis Valentine and Mookie Wilson. There, the 27-year-old rookie struck just two home-runs, one of which came in the same game as a highlight-reel catch. By 1983, he'd back at Norfolk, stroking 28 more round trippers while being passed on the organizational depth chart by Darryl Strawberry.

He'd hit just one more big-league homer for the Mets -- and for his career -- before being sold the St. Louis Cardinals in 1984, then shipped to the Giants the following year as part of a package exchanged for slugger Jack Clark.

Today, Rajsich is scouting director for the Baltimore Orioles. But for a brief shining moment 35 years ago -- during the ruined Major League Summer of 1981 -- he was The Man.

-- Follow me on Twitter @paperboyarchive

The All Star Game That Nearly Wasn't

THEY RIPPED THE HEART right out of the baseball season. You'd think more people would remember.

Memory is a funny thing. Collective memory even more so. Bigger events often overwhelm their smaller, yet significant, antecedents. And so it was that the Major League Baseball job action that destroyed the entirety of the 1994 season came to eclipse the previously unprecedented strike of 1981.

The Late Summer Classic

But, 35 years ago, coming off a thrilling 1980 season that saw the Philadelphia Phillies win their first World Series -- the image of reliever Tug McGraw exultant after fanning the Royal's Willie Wilson for the final out still vivid -- the dark clouds of labor discord gathered.

Free agency was a mere five seasons old. Owners tiring of losing top stars for no return whatsoever demanded some form of compensation. The players' union, sensing a backdoor means of impeding their hard won player movement, refused to go along.

On June 12, 1981, they walked out. Baseball's cathedrals went dark, empty and unused, while standings and stats sat frozen in time.

Billy Martin's Oakland A's led the American League West, the New York Yankees characteristically ruled the A.L. East. Their National League nemeses, the Los Angeles Dodgers, aided by the brilliant rookie left-hander Fernando Valenzuela, ruled the West, while the defending champion Phillies sat atop the East. And sat. And sat. And sat.

The All Star Game, set for July 14 in Cleveland was postponed indefinitely and still the parties remained at loggerheads. More than seven hundred games went unplayed before peace prevailed on July 31, with a limited form of compensation for loss of upper-echelon players.

Those four teams in first place when the walkout began were declared first-half winners, the won-loss records were reset to 0-0 for an unprecedented second-half. But where to begin?

Cleveland, site of the All Star game now rescheduled for Aug. 9, with the regular season to resume the next day.

Team rosters were stocked with players worthy of the contest.

The N.L.'s starting nine featured three future members of the National Baseball Hall of Fame: Philly's Mike Schmidt at third base, the Montreal Expos' outfielder Andre Dawson and catcher Gary Carter, plus baseball's all-time hits leader, Pete Rose. Among the senior circuit reserves, hall inductees Nolan Ryan, Tom Seaver and Bruce Sutter.

Some of those on the NL ballot...

... and their AL counterparts.

The A.L. lineup was just as good, boasting Boston Red Sox catcher Carlton Fisk, California Angels' first baseman Rod Carew, Royals third baseman George Brett and Yankees outfielders Reggie Jackson and Dave Winfield, backed by Hall members Eddie Murray, Rollie Fingers and others.

A nip-and-tuck affair, the game saw the A.L. lose leads of 1-0 and 4-2 before succumbing 5-4 before more than 72,000 fans at the antiquated, cavernous Cleveland Municipal Stadium.

Carter blasted two homers, but Schmidt's two-run shot off Fingers proved to be the game winner. The Baltimore Orioles' Ken Singleton had the lone junior circuit clout. Fingers took the loss. The San Francisco Giants' Vida Blue got credit for the win and Sutter, then toiling for the St. Louis Cardinals got the save.

Baseball was back. Sort of. The split season's second half would bear hope, heartbreak, injustice and -- unlike the catastrophic events of 1994 -- at least a championship.

-- Follow me on Twitter @paperboyarchive

FernandoMania Meets the Mets

IN THE SPRING OF 1981 -- nearly 20 years after BeatleMania and and an almost equal number before basketball fans experienced LinSanity -- a chubby, Mexican screwball-tossing phenom named Fernando Valenzuela arrived at New York's Shea Stadium with his Los Angeles Dodgers entourage and the press corps trailing in their wake.

From the '81 Dodgers yearbook

Valenzuela, 20, had been a late season call-up as the Dodgers unsuccessfully battled the Houston Astros for the NL West title the prior season. In 17.2 innings, he'd fanned 16 batters, won two games and saved another.

The Dodgers made him their opening day starter for the 1981 campaign.

Fernando responded by out-pitching Astros 20-game winner Joe Niekro and silencing the division title holders, 2-0. It was only the beginning.

Five days later, he'd defeat the San Francisco Giants and their ace, Vida Blue, 7-1. Next, came a 2-0 shut out of the San Diego Padres, besting veteran Rick Wise and then a complete game 1-0 whitewashing of the Astros and ex-Dodger hurler Don Sutton.

On April 27, Valenzuela pitched another 9-inning shut out. One month into the baseball season, he was 5-0, had thrown five complete games and had four shutouts. Over his first 45 innings pitched, he'd allowed just a single run.

A star was born. It was Fernandomania and it was headed east: first to Montreal, where he beat the Expos and then on to New York to face the Mets.

There was something
in the air that night...

As good as the Dodgers were, already 18-8 and in ensconced first place, the Mets weren't. They were just 7-14 and though they'd beaten the Giants, 3-2, snapping a two-game losing streak on May 7, they'd done so before just 5,653 fans.

Friday, May 8, 1981 -- already 35 years ago -- would be different. A crowd of 39,848 would make it so.

As the Swedish pop group Abba once sang, there was something in the air that night.

To be sure, although they were in the midst of a losing season, their fifth in a string of seven, the Mets roster was already dotted with players who would play key roles in their eventual emergence as an NL power, some by staying and some by being traded away. Among the retainees were outfielder Mookie Wilson, infielder Wally Backman, reliever Jesse Orosco and the briefly exiled Lee Mazzilli. Those destined to be dealt away included infielder Hubie Brooks, relievers Neil Allen and Jeff Reardon and that night's starter, Mike Scott.

Not yet the Cy Young Award winner and Mets' tormentor he'd become just five years later, Scott, 26, pitched valiantly for seven innings. His efforts would be immediately undermined by shortstop du jour Bob Bailor, whose first inning error led to an unearned run. It would be all Valenzuela would need, but not before the Mets would mount their greatest threat.

Phenoms and firemen

Mazzilli led off the Mets half of the first with a hit and then stole second. Bailor struck out, but catcher John Stearns walked as did right fielder Joel Youngblood, loading the bases for slugger Dave Kingman.

Shea Stadium buzzed with anticipation. The underdogs had the phenom in a jam.

Over the course of his 16-year career, the man called Kong played for seven big league teams, clouted 442 home runs and struck out 1,816 times. Valenzuela would fan him three times that night. But not this time.

The often all-or-nothing Kingman made contact of the worst kind, grounding into a 5-4-3 double play extinguishing the Mets' rally. It was as close as they'd get to a run.

Valenzuela scattered seven hits and four walks while striking out 11 over his now customary nine innings for yet another shutout. His record: a spotless 7-0. Scott would yield just four hits, walk one and strike out six, but take the loss on that unearned run, dropping him to 1-3 on the young season. Jeff Reardon held L.A. bats in check for the final two frames.

Along the way, Mets manager Joe Torre was ejected.

Valenzuela would win just six more games in a season remembered mostly for a mid-year strike that cleaved the schedule, produced first-half and second-half division winners which played each other for the right to duel in the league championship series.

The scorecard.

The Dodgers would go on to defeat the New York Yankees in the World Series. Fernando, though his record sagged to 13-7, won the NL's Cy Young and Rookie of the Year awards.

Scott, traded to the Astros in December 1982 for outfielder Danny Heep, would blossom into a dominating pitcher and claim his own Cy Young and NLCS most valuable player honors in 1986, though that year's championship would be won by his former team, the Mets.

-- Follow me on Twitter @paperboyarchive