This article appeared in the July 12, 1982 edition of The Sporting News

Host City Once a Jewel of Minors

by Lowell Reidenbaugh, Senior Editor

On July 13 a stream of extraordinary baseball talent will flow northward and eastward to Montreal, site of the 53rd major league All-Star Game.

The direction of the flow will be in sharp contrast to that taken from 1947 to 1956, when the talent flow followed a steady southerly course, from Montreal to Brooklyn, home of all that was good and brassy and zany in baseball.

In that golden era, Montreal was a favored city on the baseball map. The metropolis housed the Dodgers’ International League farm club, and, as such, was a port of embarkation for the countless prodigies who contributed so handsomely to six Brooklyn pennants in that exhilarating decade.

Through the portals of Delorimier Stadium passed Jackie Robinson, Duke Snider, Carl Erskine, Roy Campanella, Don Newcombe and countless others immortalized by Roger Kahn in “Boys of Summer.”

Montreal was the beau ideal of minor league cities, a community with intense pride in its baseball team and a string of championships to reward the public’s enthusiasm.

Frequently, Montreal is remembered only as a minor league stronghold and currently as a National League citadel, with an Est Division title to its credit and a quality team that may well add a second consecutive championship this season. But there have been years that the populace would rather forget, starting in 1890 when the city acquired the Buffalo (International) franchise. After six games, three of them on the rod, the city was deemed unsuitable for professional baseball. The team was shifted to Grand Rapids, Mich.

Atwater Park remained unoccupied only a brief time, however. In late June, Montreal developed fresh appeal. The Hamilton (Ont.) club was transferred to Atwater Park, where it remained until the league collapsed on July 5.

The city returned to Organized Baseball in 1897 as a result of disaster elsewhere. When fire destroyed the park of the Rochester team in the Eastern League, forerunner of the International, the club shifted to Montreal. A enant followed in 1898, but by 1902 public apathy caused the team to be transferred to Worcester, Mass. By early August, club owners determined that Worcester was just as unprofitable. Suddenly, Montreal was back in the league.

A manpower shortage, created by World War I, forced suspension of the International League in 1917, but when the circuit resumed operations at the end of hostilities in Europe, Montreal was an absentee. The city remained out of Organized Baseball until 1928 when, with a new $1.5 million stadium, it rejoined the International League. The franchise was owned by George Stallings, who had managed the Miracle Boston Braves of 1914.

The Dodgers acquired the franchise in 1940. Six seasons later, with the end of World War II and with Branch Rickey dictating strategy from headquarters at Ebbets Field, Montreal entered its years of plenty.

Nobody contributed more to the Montreal success saga than Jackie Robinson. Signed by the Dodgers as the first black player in modern baseball, Robinson won quick acceptance in Montreal, where racial prejudice was almost nonexistent. Robinson made his home debut on May 1, 1946, receiving a thunderous welcome from 15,745 fans as he singled once, started two double plays and figured prominently in the Royals’ 12-9 victory over Jersey City.

Robinson won the league batting championship (.349) as well as most valuable player honors as the Royals won the pennant by 18 ½ games, captured the club’s first Governor’s Cup by defeating Syracuse and then won their first Junior World Series championship by eliminating Louisville of the American Association in six games.

Robinson was on his way to Brooklyn and a career that led to the Hall of Fame.

By 1947, Roy Campanella was capturing Montreal’s collective heart, leading the league’s catchers in putouts, assists and fielding percentage as he, like Robinson before him, laid the groundwork for an illustrious career that carried him into the Cooperstown shrine.

The postwar boom was in full flower by 1948 and the Royals’ attendance skyrocketed to 600,000. Don Newcombe won 17 games and Duke Snider, in 77 games, batted .327 with 17 home runs and 77 runs batted in.

As they had done two years earlier, the pennant-winning Royals brought the season to a smashing climax by defeating Rochester and Syracuse in the Shaughnessy playoffs before defeating St. Paul, four games to one, in the Junior World Series.

Carl Erskine made a brief stop in Montreal in 1950, just long enough to win 10 games before moving on to Brooklyn, where he piced up seven more victories before the close of the season.

The Royals, who had qualified for the Junior World Series in 1949 and ‘51, but bowed to Indianapolis and Milwaukee, respectively, annexed their final Junior Series crown in 1953, beating the Kansas City Blues, four games to one.

The winner of the third game was a 27-year-old lefthander who beat the Blues, 5-3. He will return to Montreal as the 54-year old manager of the National League All-Stars, Tommy Lasorda.

As Montreal baseball flourished, so did it founder. Attendance that once had been the envy of many major league clubs plunged to 111,000 in 1960 andd although league President Frank Shaughnessy vowed that “there will always be an International League club in Montreal,” Delorimier Stadium was dark when the 1961 season dawned. The city of 2,000,000 population was without Organized Baseball, replaced by Syracuse (pop. 300,000).

Analysts attributed the rapid fadeout to a variety of reasons. Some critics blamed television, some mediocre teams, others on inadequate parking facilities and still others on the slum areas that had encroached on the stadium.

Nor were the Dodgers faultless. Branch Rickey had moved on. The Dodgers were now based in Los Angeles and had transferred their Triple-A operation to Spokane of the Pacific Coast League. Delorimier Stadium had been sold.

The Montreal-Brooklyn baseball tradition was extinct and the Canadian city’s city civic pride lay framented like a dime store bat against a Nolan Ryan fastball.

But the city of the Robinsons and Sniders, the Campanellas and Newcombes was not irretrievably lost. By the summer of 1968 a new groundswell of enthusiasm was evident. National League directors awarded Montreal an expansion franchise provided a suitable playing site was available by the 1969 season. Initially, sentiment favored the Autostade, a remnant of the 1967 Exposition. The site was rejected when it was determined that additional seats and a dome would cost approximately $7 million.

As an 11th-hour substitute, Mayor Jean Drapeau suggested Jarry Park, a 3,000-seat field in a recreational complex. It did have certain advantages, however. It was in easy access of the subway, an expressway and a railroad. A guarantee that the park capacity would be increased to 30,000 by 1969 sealed the deal. The Montreal Expos, named for the 1967 Exposition, made their National League debut in April, 1969, beating the St. Louis Cardinals.

Although a modern stadium had been promised at an early date, the Expos performed in cramped Jarry Park for eight seasons. In 1977 they moved into Olympic Stadium, constructed for the international games of the previous year.

The stadium was about all that a major league could ask for, with one exception. The retractable, umbrella-like roof was missing.

Manufactured in France, the cover reposed in Lyons, piling up rental charges while the Province of Quebec searched for funds to import and install it.

But who needs a roof when a new baseball tradition is germinating in a 59,000-seat stadium? Old ties have been severed and old personalities replaced by such names as Gary Carter, Andre Dawson, Warren Cromartie and Steve Rogers.

The Expos barely missed division titles in 1979 and ‘80, but they succeeded in 1981, only to lose out in the National League Championship Series to, of all clubs, the Los Angeles Dodgers, managed by, of all people, a hero of Montreal’s 1953 champions, Tommy Lasorda.