On September 29, 2004, our Amours played their last game in Montreal. The diary offers you a series of reports on this sad twentieth anniversary of the departure of our Expos for Washington.

It may seem unthinkable to people who didn’t experience it. There was a time when the Expos were more popular than the Canadiens.

Quebec was just experiencing its best social and economic years when baseball arrived in Montreal in 1969.

The Canadiens formed a dynasty, but the birth of the Expos created a tremendous impact throughout Quebec.

We were part of the big leagues.

The great stars of the National League, such as Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, Bob Gibson, Roberto Clemente and others, whom we saw on the big screen of Radio-Canada on Saturday afternoon in the game of the week, met Gene Mauch’s troops in the small Jarry Stadium.

It was magical!

No hockey in summer

Our ““Love” filled our conversations even as the Canadian fought to win another Stanley Cup. During the summer, there was no mention of the Habs on the phone forums or in the media.

As the Expos rose to prominence among baseball’s top teams in the late 1970s, Olympic Stadium was home to the city’s best sporting spectacle. Fans were thrilled to see performances by young Gary Carter, Andre Dawson, Larry Parrish, Warren Cromartie, Tim Raines, Scott Sanderson, Bill Gullickson and David Palmer, all products of Phase II, which began in 1976.

This name referred to the renewal movement that the organization had given itself. It was time to build with young talent, recruited and developed within the organization’s network of subsidiaries.

The team’s creation in 1979 coincided with the end of the great Canadian dynasties.

More than two million viewers

From 1979 to 1983, the Expos were among the top four in the National League. From 1981 to 1983, the same was true of all of major baseball.

Apart from the 1981 season, which was marked by a seven-week break in work for the players, more than two million spectators streamed through the turnstiles of the large stadium every year during this period.

Photo credit: Le Journal de Montreal

Nobody complained about the stadium.

Montreal lived to the rhythm of the Expos!

Gary Carter, Larry Parrish, Andre Dawson and Ellis Valentine hit the long ball. Steve Rogers, Scott Sanderson, Bill Gullickson, David Palmer and Charlie Lea dominated the mound and performed miracles there.

In relief, there to put out the fires was Woodie Fryman, who in 1980, at age 40, compiled a record of seven wins against four losses while retaining 17 wins and maintaining a 2.25 earned run average per game.

We liked him, good old Woodie. We saw ourselves in him. He was a worker like any other. When fall came, he returned to grow tobacco and milk his cows on his Kentucky farm.

Ron LeFlore, Rodney Scott and Raines thrilled the crowd with their hectic runs on the trails.

The Expos could win either way. For those who appreciated its fundamentals and its subtleties, baseball was not boring.

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