Jonah Keri is on top of the world these days.
Just ask him.
The 39-year-old Montreal native and Grantland writer is riding of wave of emotion, nostalgia – and yes, hope – with the release of his second book, the highly-anticipated Up, Up, and Away: The Kid, the Hawk, Rock, Vladi, Pedro, le Grand Orange, Youppi!, the Crazy Business of Baseball, and the Ill-fated but Unforgettable Montreal Expos.
Keri’s first book – 2011’s The Extra 2%: How Wall Street Strategies Took a Major League Baseball Team from Worst to First – was a New York Times bestseller. His work at Grantland has seen Keri rise to become one of the most popular and respected baseball writers in North America. His unabashed love of all things Expos – just check his Twitter timeline for evidence — continues to endear himself to baseball fans north of the border and in the eyes of many made him the perfect choice to take on what some might consider to be a rather daunting responsibility: writing the definitive history of your favourite baseball team.
At 400-plus pages, Up, Up, and Away isn’t a quick read, but it’s an easy one for anyone with even a mild interest in the game or the dozens of colourful characters and great players that came to define Nos Amours during their 35-year existence. Those familiar with Keri’s previous work won’t be surprised by the amount of detail and research (he conducted nearly 130 interviews for the book) presented, but given his emotional ties to the subject matter they may be surprised to find the book is short on first-person narratives.
Readers who are 35 and under – like me – and whose memories of the team largely consist of the ’94 strike team, Pedro Martinez, Vlad Guerrero and the franchise’s slow march to extinction will come away with a new appreciation of the club’s glory days in the early ‘80s and a greater sense of what Major League Baseball looked and felt like in Montreal when it worked.
During a press tour in Toronto last week, Keri sat down with me to discuss the book, why Montreal fans should give Bud Selig a break and why he thinks he was "stupid" to once suggest the return of Major League Baseball to Montreal is impossible.
Sportsnet.ca: Was the book your idea? If so, how long had you been thinking about writing it?
Keri: In 2007 I get an email from someone at Random House. This person tells me they used to post on the same Expos message board as me back in the late ‘90s, and then followed my career. He said, ‘come write a book for me, which ended up being the Rays book. But he also said, "One day we’re going to do an Expos book." While doing promotion for the Rays book in Toronto in 2011, he again pitched the Expos book but I said ‘I’m really burnt out, right now, I don’t know." He then hinted he might look for another author, so I signed on.
Sportsnet.ca: A lot of people who are aware that you’re an Expos fan might be surprised that the book doesn’t include more first person narratives. Was that a deliberate decision on your part?
Keri: I just felt (first-person) would be too self-indulgent and I didn’t want to assume that I would have enough cachet to carry the book. (My publisher) Paul said you need to inject some of yourself in the book, but I did very little. I talk about the rivalry with the Mets in the ‘80s—and because I was a horrible child—I threw strawberries at Darryl Strawberry. Silly little stories like that, just enough to keep it lighter and keep it slightly more personal. But even though I’m a big fan who has obvious biases, I was going to make a big point of reporting it as a journalist.
My goal with the early part of the book about the origins of the franchise was to go do the reporting and learn things and then bring people along with me. I could talk about Vladimir Guerrero forever. I’m really happy with the early part of the book. I probably needed to try hardest with that part and I think it went really well.
Sportsnet.ca: The Expos have been in the news a lot during the past three years since you started writing the book and you’ll be in Montreal for the Jays-Mets exhibition series at the Big O. You have to admit the timing of the book couldn’t be better.
Keri: The events that have happened the last three years: Gary Carter dying, the ’81 reunion, the ’94 reunion, Warren Cromartie trying to bring a team back, the fact that there’s going to be exhibition games at the Big O… this has all come out of nowhere. I mean, the book is coming out three days before there’s 40,000 people at the Big O watching a baseball game? It’s bananas.
Sportsnet.ca: Given how close you are to the subject matter, the hype surrounding it and what it will likely mean to your fellow Expos fans, did you feel any pressure writing the book?
Keri: No. I can only do one thing. I famously joked that I can do only one thing and that if I had to change a tire, I can’t do it. (Writing) is the only thing that I can do. This whole thing is absolutely emotional and cool. I’m a very effusive guy, so it’s already like that. It’s just even more so now. Honestly, I’m just so grateful. Wow — who am I to have had this opportunity? This is unreal. I am over the moon happy right now. I went on Twitter recently and said if you ever want to borrow $1,000 from me, or paint your house, I’ll do it for you. I’m ecstatic and I hope it sells well, but I think the quality of the product is good and this whole celebration thing is good and so everything else is gravy for me.
Sportsnet.ca: How important was it for you in the book to make readers fully appreciate the good days of the franchise?
Keri: Yeah, it’s important to me in two ways. One, as a fan, and two as a journalist. It’s not just the crowd, but it was the nature of the crowds. I went to Habs games like everybody else. A Habs game in the ‘80s was women in fur coats, men in three-piece suits. It was a serious to-do. And when you went to an Expos game… I was a little boy then, you go in ’81-’82… and it was women in fur coats too. It really had this, this-is-the-place-to-be vibe to it. Expos games were very much the chic Montreal thing to do. Montreal is a party town, it’s a trends town, maybe more so than Toronto or other places.
Sportsnet.ca: Are there any other untruths about the team that you wanted to dispel in the book?
Keri: I think the whole idea of the boogeyman was a big thing. Not just Jeffrey Loria, but also Bud Selig. It might not be the case in all of Canada, but it’s certainly in Quebec where there’s an ‘us vs them’ kind of thing. Loria comes in, he’s American and that doesn’t work. Then there’s Selig and this perception that he masterminded the execution of the Expos. At the end, of course they wanted the Expos gone, because they are gone. But to say that this was all a grand plan that existed for years and years… I don’t really buy that.
(Fans) want a scapegoat and a lot of what happened is this nebulous thing that you can’t blame on anybody. Humans are programmed to want easy explanations for things. The reason the Expos moved is basically because they didn’t have a billionaire owner who was committed to the team and would do just anything. And even then in the ‘90s the Canadian dollar sucked and the Quebec economy so bad hospitals were closing. It was the worst time possible. If the Expos existed now, I don’t know if they’d be in first place or have a big payroll, but they’d be fine. They’d be the Tampa Bay Rays or whatever. Everybody makes money now because the system is totally changed due to revenue sharing.
But it’s much more satisfying as a fan to say "Selig effed us. Loria effed us."
Sportsnet.ca: You interviewed close to 130 people for the book. Is there anyone you didn’t get?
Keri: The only person who flat out said no was Randy Johnson for some reason. He only played one year with the Expos so it wouldn’t have been that great of an interview. He was involved in a big trade though and is one of the five best pitchers of all-time. I love that trade (for Mark Langston in 1989). It’s the one time, other than the Bartolo Colon trade in 2002. They went for it! And the Expos never went for it. There were years that they were in the race but they traded for a backup second baseman or a relief pitcher. But they traded for Mark Langston who was amazing, a stud, in his walk year before free agency. Maybe they were going to sign him, maybe not. But who the hell cares, let’s just go for it. I’m totally fine with it. I’d do that trade 100 more times.
Sportsnet.ca: What did you learn about the team that you found fascinating or surprising?
Keri: At the beginning of the ‘80s, in ’79 they almost won and then going into ’80, I mean everyone… Canadian media, Sports Illustrated was saying that this is the team of the ‘80s. Why didn’t they succeed? The reason was because the supporting cast behind Raines, Dawson, Carter, Larry Parrish, Steve Rogers, sucked. My favourite stat that I uncovered in the whole book was that the primary second baseman—whoever had the most at-bats at the position that season—from ’80-’84 had zero home runs. Zero! Something like 2,500 at-bats. Zero home runs. That’s bananas. It’s impossible. I’ve told people about it who are statsy people and they’re like, you’re wrong. Bill James wrote about it at the time. The supporting cast wasn’t good enough and they didn’t go out and make an effort to make it better.
Sportsnet.ca: How has being a fan of baseball changed with your team no longer in existence?
Keri: It’s not the same. I root for Tampa Bay a little bit, but it’s not the same. (The Expos) was like a living and dying situation and the reason that I am so emotional about it is because it’s related to your family. I’m not going to pass down a love of Ben Zobrist to my son. It’s just not going to happen. I think the visceral part of it is lost. I can watch and enjoy a team, but I can’t feel the way I did before.
Sportsnet.ca: We talked earlier about how much has happened since you started working on the book. How have the chances of MLB returning to Montreal changed since 2011?
Keri: Two years ago I would have said that it was impossible… and my mistake for saying that because you never say never about probabilities. You’re welcome to put this on the record: I was stupid. I was wrong. I still think it’s a longshot. Here’s the thing. There are two different axes that are going on right now. One, you need a billionaire to build a stadium and get a team. I actually think that the best theory right now is for Bell to own the team, because Rogers took away hockey and there’s a hole in their programming. Two, you have 30 teams, and it’s a $9 billion industry. Why would anyone want to share it with other teams? Expansion fees would have to be enormously high for the Yankees or even the Pirates to justify cutting it up another two ways.
Sportsnet.ca: What about relocation?
Keri: Relocation is in theory a better idea, but people talking about Tampa Bay moving… aside from the fact that literally nobody else could care about these two things more than I do… the stadium is a problem in Tampa because of the location. Sure, the Yankees would rather pay less revenue sharing money to a team that’s beating their ass in the standings every year, but as far as the Rays are concerned, they’re good every year and I don’t know if you could say Montreal would be a (revenue sharing) giver as opposed to a taker. It’s debatable. Tampa’s TV deal comes up in a couple of years. Maybe they’ll double their money. If I were the commissioner, I would not relocate the team.
Sportsnet.ca: Is there another project out there that could excite you as much as this one?
Keri: It would be very different. Grantland is a very cool job. I feel like I have the best job in America. My bosses are amazing and I have total autonomy to write about whatever I want. Something came across my desk recently that is pretty interesting. On a scope level it’s bigger than (the Expos book). I can’t really talk about it, but it would be different. Nothing could be as personal or as emotional (as this). I read a study that said intellectually you peak in your late-30s. So OK, I banged out this book, it’s good, it’s fine. If I die and someone says during my eulogy that I wrote a book, possibly the book about the Expos… cool. What else could I want?
Sportsnet.ca: You’ve often wrote and spoke about Felipe Alou with great reverence. Other than the fact he managed good teams, what makes him so special?
Keri: I didn’t own jerseys when I was growing up. The first jersey I owned, my girlfriend, now my wife, bought for me and it was a Felipe Alou jersey—the manager’s jersey. Do you own a Cito Gaston jersey? Of course not. Felipe simply has this aura about him. We’d be at games and he’d make a move and my friends and I would go like this (touches the side of his nose): "Felipe knows." I talked to a lot of the media about Felipe and you’d walk into his office and you knew he was going to hold court on something. It could be about how good Barry Bonds is, the nature of pithing injuries, it could be about fishing, anything, and people were just enraptured by this guy. He has a lot of charisma, he’s super smart and he commands a room.
I met him at spring training and I admit that I had some preconceived reverence – and I am not spiritual – but he’s talking about God and the nature of the universe – these really esoteric topics about family. And while listening to him talk about Vladimir Guerrero was interesting, it was the other things that I couldn’t believe. He was 79 and had a bad cold, but it was like talking to the Dalai Lama.
Sportsnet.ca: The epilogue closes things out on a very optimistic note in terms of a possible future with MLB returning to Montreal. What would the epilogue have looked like had you written it two years ago?
Keri: I could say it with more conviction now than I could in 2012. I still think that the chances (of MLB returning to Montreal) are unlikely, but I do not think it’s impossible and the thing is I really appreciate what Warren Cromartie is doing. It’s possible that nothing comes of this thing, but the fact that people care… it’s better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. In every aspect of my life, I love the anticipation; I don’t mind thinking something’s going to happen and then being disappointed. I can’t speak for other people but there are other people that feel that way too. And if this amounts to nothing but all kinds of hugs and kisses and good feelings about the Expos, then that’s awesome because we didn’t have that from 2004 or 2012 at all, and now we do.
If nothing comes of it, we had really great parties and 80,000 people showed up for two days at Olympic Stadium, I’m fine with that and I think a lot of other people would be too.
