I and 5,442 other souls watched the Expos play the Braves on May 21, 2002, at Olympic Stadium in Montreal. Two more quiet, bitter years would pass before the Canadian franchise would move south to the banks of the Potomac, but even in '02--the year I graduated from college--there was little to flutter a pennant over, save for a few strong players who would soon get to play in a ballpark that wasn't as quiet as a Bloomington, Indiana tavern on a Sunday morning.
The most prominent of those players was Vladimir Guerrero, the Dominican-born dynamo, for whom the province of Quebec seemed a strange place to land. The collective baseball community yearned to see his unbelievable ability in some other context. Javier Vazquez, whose talent outweighed his output for years, also played in Montreal. As did Bartolo Colon: the poor Expos traded away Grady Sizemore, Cliff Lee and Brandon Phillips for a half-season of Colon's stellar pitching and a distant second place finish behind their May 21 opponent, the Braves.
Four of the 5,441 at Olympic Stadium were my teammates: the Middlebury College baseball seniors--two pitchers, an outfielder and a shorstop. We were on an outing, with our head coach, Bob Smith. Our final season ended awkwardly, with a screaming match between two of the seniors present in Montreal, and an uninspired loss to Bowdoin College in the sad town of Lewiston, Maine (the attendance in the record book is listed as an optimistic 100, though there may have been 10). The whole season was of the mediocre variety that offered no hopes for post-season tournaments nor any epic fiasco-style losing. In 2002, I batted .222.
Montreal was a three hour van ride, and we had a good time of it. We sat three rows up from the Braves' dugout, having our pick of vacant seats better placed than those assigned us. I had never to that point sat closer to the field at a baseball game, even at Middlebury.
Several rows ahead of us, there were two men who looked bitter about the Expos predicament, the negligence, the abandonment. One looked as if he had his faced mashed in buy a mallet in the past. The other was a quiet lackey who chuckled at his bellicose friend's unending stream of loud, garbled trash-talking from the first inning on.
Good, honest heckling is not easy to pull off. It should be funny, a little cutting, precise. The heckler carried none of this off. Instead, he yelled insults and nonsense, groaning some of them out. His voice carried easily over the dugout, it being only a few feet away, and he had no competition from anyone else.
"Maddux," he cried, like a drunk calling to a pack of friends he'd fallen behind. Greg Maddux was in the on deck circle. "Maddux! You pitch like your brother [Mike]! You are teeeerrrible, Maddux! You are just like your brother!"
Maddux turned to the heckler with a bat on his shoulder, disassembling the fourth wall, and said, "I've got more hair."
It was unpleasant, and I was fixated, watching the way I watch episodes of Cops. Ultimately Gary Sheffield summoned security to quiet the heckler, and for that he earned another twenty minutes to hear his own name bellowed with a hint of French.
Javier Vazquez pitched brilliantly. He had a fine change-up, which I could see from our seats, and he pitched eight innings against a pennant-winning lineup with Sheffield and Chipper and Andruw Jones. Greg Maddux is always more difficult to appreciate in person, rather than from the catbird seat of television. He threw six good innings.
Vlad Guerrero hit a single up the middle late in the game that I'd like to think I remember. What I definitely remember is his size (massive) and his swings at the plate (also massive).
The hero of the day, however, was not a star waiting for a bigger audience, but a sub happy for any. Endy Chavez--who would find later fame with an over-the-wall catch in the playoffs for the Mets--came in to play center field late in the tenth-inning, after pinch-running for Michael Barrett in the bottom of the ninth. With men on first and second in the top of the tenth, utility man Jesse Garcia hit a single up the middle. Chavez gathered the grounder, wound up and put all of his 135 pounds behind a throw to the plate, where the runner was eliminated. The Expos scored a run in the bottom of the inning to win the game.
I haven't played an organized game of baseball since, Vlad Guerrero moved on to Los Angeles, and after a good fun night of mildly civil sportsmanship, Olympic Stadium fell quiet(er).
Lineup - The Favorites
C - Mike Piazza
1B - Lance Berkman
2B - Craig Biggio
3B - Scott Rolen
SS - Adam Everett
LF - Manny Ramirez
CF - Ichiro Suzuki
RF - Vladimir Guerrero
SP -
RP -
Manager -
0 comments:
Post a Comment