| 20 July 2010
We've got another guest post for you today, this time from Jeff Polman. Jeff runs "Play that Funky Baseball", a Strat-O-Matic replay of the 1977 season, where I manage the 1977 Dodgers. It's home to some of the most inventive writing on the web. He is currently running the 1977 Funky All-Star Challenge, a contest to predict the 1977 Funky All-Star Game winners. Go check it out. And thanks, Jeff!
In one of my former lives, I was the Arts Editor and Sports Feature Writer for the first five years of the Vermont Vanguard Press, a scrappy alternative weekly located in Burlington, Vermont. Rents and salaries were cheap up there, winters went from October to Memorial Day, but one of the perks was that Montreal, Canada was a mere two hour drive up Interstate 89. This produced two frequent events: trips over the border to bring back 12-packs of high-octane Molson Brador, and visits to Olympic Stadium to see some of the best Expos teams of all time.
Thus in 1981 I was fortunate to cover the three final NLCS games at the "Big O" against the Dodgers, after the teams had split the first two meetings in L.A. (it was a best-of-5 series then). What follows is an excerpted account of that thrilling weekend, first published in the Vanguard Press, October 23-30, 1981. Boule de jeu!
* * *
Larry Parrish, garbed in rust-colored leather jacket, blue jeans, boots, and western hat, moves through the exit turnstile in the Metro's Pie-IX station, on his way to work. His walk is casual but proud, and his boots click loudly on the tiled floor of the sloping ramp that leads up and into Olympic Stadium. The third playoff game against the Dodgers won't start for another four hours, but even though there are already clusters of fans milling about the entrance to the stadium, few of them recognize the Expos' third baseman as he strolls toward the side door, spitting streams of reddish-brown tobacco juice into every other trash basket he passes.
Parrish, a strong but often clumsy player with one superlative season (1979) to his credit, epitomizes the Expos in this final weekend of the playoffs. Trying to shake a local reputation as a goat, his bat came alive in Los Angeles, and like his team, he finally has a chance to put years of mediocrity behind him.
(Click "Read More" to continue reading.)
Dozens and dozens of baseball writers from around the country surround the batting cage before tonight's game, trading rumors and jockeying for quotes. Roger Angell from The New Yorker and a woman* from the Washington Post (*Is that lame or what? I didn't even get her name.) take the initiative repeatedly, asking for a few words from Andre Dawson and Steve Garvey, but within minutes, hordes of reporters make rings around them. Some of the writers even suck quotes from TV interviews, where Tom Seaver (NBC) and Vin Scully (CBS radio) are asking managers Tom Lasorda and Jim Fanning about the cold weather.
The Canadian climate, in the mid-40s but comfortably dry and windless, has no effect on the game this evening, won by the Expos 4-1 when Jerry White catapults a Jerry Reuss pitch over the left field fence with two runners aboard in the sixth inning. Steve Rogers pitches his fourth consecutive complete game masterpiece, and the 54,372 fans go ape, chucking toilet paper rolls out of the upper decks, dancing and clapping to "The Happy Wanderer" and quaffing O'Keefes regularly to stay warm.
Montreal fans tend to do everything with gusto. When their team is losing the place sounds like a library, but when they have a reason to cheer, or the organist gets them going, hold your ears. After Friday's victory, it is almost as if they won the pennant. As late as 2 a.m., fans are cruising St. Catherine Street, honking horns, waving pennants and Canadian flags and shouting "EX-POS! EX-POS!" It is safe to assume that not one person in the city of Montreal tonight thinks the Dodgers will make it to the World Series.
* * *
Saturday's game is a tight 1-1 battle for seven innings, with the Dodgers' Burt Hooton pitching masterfully and the Expos' Bill Gullickson in and out of constant danger. For reasons unbeknownst to North America, Fanning lets Gullickson bat for himself with one out in the 7th when Montreal is clearly in need of offensive inspiration. He strikes out quickly, and in the top of the 8th, gives up a one-out single to Dusty Baker. Fanning has nobody warming up when the inning starts but now puts two people out there. Too late. Garvey puts the next pitch into the bleachers, and the game is gone.
Afterwards, in the downstairs interview room, Lasorda finds religion. This morning it was one profanity after another, and now, Garvey hands him a selection from the Bible (Romans chapter 5, verse 1) about perseverance to read to the press. But the Expos, stripped of their momentum and due to face Fernando Valenzuela again, may need it more.
* * *
Ray Burris, the journeyman pitcher who threw the best games of his career in the second half of the season, is on the hill for Game 5 against Valenzuela, trying to beat him for the second time in a week, and as the game goes on, it actually looks possible. In the first six innings, Burris is ahead of nearly every hitter, going 0-2 eight times and falling behind 2-0 only once.
But for all intents and purposes, the season is over for the Expos after the first inning. Tim Raines greets Valenzuela with a wall double, Rodney Scott is safe on a blown fielder's choice, and Montreal has the amazing Fernando in deep trouble. Men are on first and third with no one out, and Carter, Parrish and White coming up next. Unfortunately Dawson is at the plate, and he hits the first pitch into a double play. A run scores, Valenzuela is home free, and from here on the man is untouchable.
With two outs in the top of the 9th, still tied 1-1, the Expos are an out away from making their next run a game-winner, when Rick Monday leans back for a 3-1 offering from reliever Steve Rogers. WHOCK! Silence. Sportswriters all over the press box drop their pens. Various Dodgers bounce around on the turf in front of their dugout and run out to hug Monday as he reaches home plate. Slowly, over 36,000 hearts start up again, along with the "EX-POS!" chant and a final, desperate rendition of "The Happy Wanderer," but it's purely wishful thinking.
Nevertheless, Carter works out a walk from Valenzuela with two outs, and with the count 0-2 on Parrish, Larry miraculously takes four straight pitches for balls. Here we go, folks. Fernando's gone, Welch is in, surely the Ralph Branca of 1981 in this 30th anniversary year of Bobby Thomson's home run. Jerry White is the obvious man to hit it, to blow the sort-of roof off this homely concrete abyss of a ballpark.
So why does he ground out to Davey Lopes on the first pitch? Because the Expos just aren't good or mean enough to win it yet. They lack the killer instinct of a team like Los Angeles or the Yankees, who tie up the game and then pulverize you until you can't stand up.
* * *
It's likely that people watching today's heartbreaker on television take it harder than the fans at the park. The Bavarian Beer Garden on the stadium's first level is packed with drinking and dancing revelers hours after the game, with most of their fans still convinced their team is the better one.
The Dodger clubhouse is your basic champagne bath, but even in defeat, the Expos have more class. While Steve Yeager and Bobby Castillo spray each other and sing their own mock rendition of "The Happy Wanderer," Ray Burris enters the party and shakes the hand of every Dodger he can find, pausing to give old friend Reggie Smith a bear hug.
Chris Speier and Warren Cromartie were crying on the bench after the final out, but now they calmly answer reporter questions in their clubhouse. The most moving sight may be the row of coaches-Vern Rapp, Galen Cisco and Ozzie Virgil-sitting back in chairs and facing their lockers like three old men on a southern porch, with one sipping a beer, another drawing on a cigarette, another chewing a toothpick. They have nothing to say about why their boys lost, but they sure look like they think they're responsible.
Jeff Polman's fictional replay blog of the 1977 season-where the Wezen-managed Dodgers are still a major factor in the National League race-can be followed at http://funkyball.wordpress.com.
