Twenty years on, Darrin Fletcher still periodically thinks about the 1994 Montreal Expos and wonders what might have been. At 74-40 when the players’ strike that eventually killed the season hit, they had the best record in the majors, led the Atlanta Braves by six games in the National League East, and it was a time to dream. The post-season drought dating back to 1981 was sure to end. People confidently predicted a first trip to the World Series. A more stable future seemed realistically attainable.
Then, poof, the opportunity was gone, and suddenly the franchise’s long, gut-wrenching death march to Washington was underway.
“For anyone that was doing well that season it’s unfinished business, and we were playing so well,” Fletcher says during an interview this week. “As it turned out, I didn’t play in one playoff game my whole career, and my best chance would have been with the ’94 Expos, but we all know what happened.
“I don’t think there’s any doubt that we were going to be in the playoffs. It’s tough to say whether you’re going to be in the World Series or not, but I thought we were the best team in the National League at the time, for sure.”
The lingering what-ifs are sure to resonate a bit deeper this weekend, when Major League Baseball returns to Montreal for the first time since the Expos left in 2004 with a pair of exhibition games between the Toronto Blue Jays and New York Mets at Olympic Stadium.
The late Gary Carter will be honoured prior to Friday’s contest, and Fletcher will be among those on hand for a special tribute to the ’94 team ahead of Saturday’s matchup. The two ceremonies will provide Expos fans with an opportunity for nostalgia and while there’s no substitute for actually feting a post-season run or memorializing a lost icon, it’s the best they can do in lieu of proper celebrations.
That goes for the players, as well, who had their own grand visions dashed by the strike.
At an average age of 26.2, according to baseball-reference.com, the ’94 Expos were the youngest team in baseball and featured a dynamic lineup, deep starting rotation and overpowering bullpen. An outfield of Larry Walker, Marquis Grisson and Moises Alou was the envy of baseball. Starters Ken Hill, Pedro Martinez, Jeff Fassero, Butch Henry and Kirk Rueter regularly put opponents on their heels. Relievers John Wetteland, Mel Rojas, Tim Scott, Gil Heredia and Jeff Shaw shortened the game.
Maybe if the team won big, the players thought, the consortium of 14 owners fronted by managing general partner Claude Brochu would spend to keep the core together for years to come. Maybe, they were the start of something special.
“You know what they say, if my aunt had balls she’d be my uncle, you just never know, but I don’t think that team was a flash in the pan,” says Fletcher, an all-star catcher that year. “If Montreal would have been able to find the money to keep everybody, I don’t see why we couldn’t have been a consistent winner.”
Instead the Expos were gutted after the strike ended in the spring of 1995, when a federal judge’s temporary injunction kept baseball owners from rewriting the game’s rules in the absence of a collective bargaining agreement (they had planned to open the season with replacement players).
Walker left for the Colorado Rockies as a free agent, while general manager Kevin Malone was forced to deal Grissom to Atlanta for Roberto Kelly, Tony Tarasco and Esteban Yan, Hill to St. Louis for Kirk Bullinger, Bryan Eversgerd and DaRond Stovall and Wetteland to the Yankees for Fernando Seguignol and cash.
Unsurprisingly the Expos plummeted to last in the NL East at 66-78, fans seethed and players wondered about ownership’s motivations.
“The feeling to me was that there was still a lot of resentment between ownership and players because there really wasn’t any resolution as far as the (CBA) was concerned, it was just an injunction that got us back playing again,” explains Fletcher. “It felt to me like, ‘You players didn’t give in, and this is part of the deal, and since we’re not ever going to make any money or move the team, we’re just going to gut it.’ …
“I just remember being a little bit soured by the whole thing.”
While the general feeling was that Walker would leave no matter what, it was the trades of Grissom, Hill and Wetteland that particularly hurt, especially given that the Expos got so little in return. Grissom helped the Braves win the World Series in ’95 against Hill and the Cleveland Indians (who acquired him mid-season from the Cardinals for Pepe McNeal, David Bell and Rick Heiserman), while Wetteland was the World Series MVP in ’96.
“I remember to this day what Kevin Malone said when he had to trade Marquis Grissom to Atlanta,” recalls Fletcher. “He said, ‘I probably traded Atlanta the World Series,’ and I’ll be damned if he wasn’t right, and Marquis was a big part of it.
“Malone is a good guy, he didn’t want to trade those guys, he got his marching orders from up top. I’m sure it was gut-wrenching for him to do that.”
Fletcher remained with the Expos through the 1997 season before leaving for the Blue Jays as a free agent. The only members of the ’94 squad still on the team then were second baseman Mike Lansing and ace Pedro Martinez, who was dealt to the Boston Red Sox for Carl Pavano and Tony Armas not long after winning the NL Cy Young Award.
Little wonder that he says playing for the Expos, “felt transient, definitely, almost like it was college, where if you put in your three or four years you were going to go. It was a stepping stone. … There’s no doubt the players in the organization felt like it was a place where you can get your feet wet in Major League Baseball, and then more than likely you were moving on to another spot.”
Still, Fletcher loved Montreal the city and remains grateful to the Expos for giving him a chance to establish himself in the big-leagues. The Los Angeles Dodgers selected him in the sixth round of the 1987 draft but he was dealt to the Philadelphia Phillies who traded him to Montreal (with cash for Barry Jones), where he spent six years before closing out his career with five years in Toronto.
“There are three seasons that stand out for me, when I just had a really great time: ’94 is No. 1, we were playing so well; ’97, I just had a really good time in Montreal, knowing I was going to leave in free agency, but I was at peace with it; and then the ’99 season in Toronto, we had a great time, with Shawn Green, Carlos Delgado and all the guys.
“But ’94 was the most fun because we were winning all the time and it was a young group, it was an up and coming team. We held on hope that we could stay together and make a run in ’95, but it all got blown up.”
That it did, which is why as the flood of good memories flow this weekend when the Blue Jays and Mets clash at Olympic Stadium, and linger throughout this milestone anniversary year for both the ’94 Expos and the franchise’s 2004 departure to Washington, hurt and sorrow will remain nostalgia’s unwanted companion.
