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Tag Archives: Montreal Expos
End of a Streak
Michael Lorenzen‘s no-hitter marked the end of an era:
The last no-hitter thrown against the Nationals was David Cone‘s perfect game with the New York Yankees on July 18, 1999. The franchise had not been no-hit since moving to Washington in 2005, and had the longest active streak of any franchise without being no-hit.
ESPN.com
No mention that the team Cone no-hit was called the Expos.
The Last Expo
Bartolo Colon stands as the last person who played for the Montreal Expos:
Just when you thought you couldn’t love the 42-year-old any more, he goes out and surprises everyone once again. With Maizer Izturis’ retirement Friday, Colon becomes the last active major leaguer to have played for the Montreal Expos.
It’s quite the accomplishment for a number of reasons. Colon played for the Expos back in 2002. He tossed 117 innings with the club, posting a 3.31 ERA as a 29-year-old. Izturis played for the club two years later, and is seven years younger than Colon.
Considering Colon was out of baseball for the entire 2010 season, selecting him to take home this honor would have looked insane just a few years ago. It highlights just how incredible Colon’s late-career resurgence has been, and speaks to his incredible talent. Reaching this milestone was a long shot.
I still wish they called the Nationals the Exposé. 🙂
Lacking Walk Offs
Two teams experienced walk off wins on Saturday as Jimmy Rollins hit a home run in the tenth inning, the Phillies beating the Marlins 3-2, while David Lough singled home the winning run in the 12th inning after a Steve Lombardozzi triple as the Orioles beat the Blue Jays 2-1. I started doing a little historical research into walk-off wins, and noticed that in the 40 years the Day by Day Database covers, only two teams went the entire season without a walk-off win. The 1978 Cardinals went 0-43 in games in which they batted in the bottom of the ninth, and the 1995 Expos went 0-41. I actually went through the boxscores and checked to see if there was a bug in my coding, and indeed, these numbers hold up. The Expos at least had the excuse of playing a shorter season. The Cardinals were not very good, going 69-93, while the Expos went 66-78 after the sell-off due to the 1994 strike wiping out their chance at a World Championship.
Baseball in Montreal
Via The Book Blog, the 1981 Montreal Expos reunite to try to bring back professional baseball to the city. They realize it will be a tough process, but I hope they succeed.
I wonder if a Canadian professional league would work? There could be eight teams in four western and four eastern cities, made up of Canadian players not taken by the US draft. Actually, since it’s Canada, they don’t need to recognize the US anti-trust exemption, and they can just compete for any good international players. They could sign AAAA players from the US, and it might be a lot of fun to watch. The Canadians would be free to experiment with rule changes, robot umpires, replays, etc. A Toronto team could even try going head-to-head with the Blue Jays!
MLB could use a little competition, and if six teams survive, the majors could go to six six team divisions, making an imbalanced schedule a bit easier to plan.
Baseball In Montreal?
An Expos (now Nationals) fan sends this article about a possible return of Major League Baseball to Montreal:
A small groundswell of support for baseball has been building in Montreal since last July, with the Hall of Fame induction of former Expo Andre Dawson, which attracted a busload of Montreal fans to Cooperstown, N.Y. Local hip-hop artist and fervent Expos fan Annakin Slayd’s 2010 Expos YouTube tribute, Remember, is approaching 100,000 views, and members of the 1994 Expos attracted a sellout crowd of more than 650 to the annual Montreal Sports Celebrity Breakfast in March.
According to the article, the Oakland Athletics would be the most likely team to move. Eastward moves are rare, but the Braves moved east to Atlanta after going west to Milwaukee, the Pilots moved east to Milwaukee after Bud Selig stole them from Seattle, and the St. Louis Browns moved east to Baltimore when every one else was moving west in the 1950s.