The strike that killed ball in Montreal

By Ben Raby

WASHINGTON— It’s been 15 years since Major League Baseball’s 1994 player strike wiped out the Montreal Expos best chance at a World Series. But ask the long-time radio voice of the Expos Dave Van Horne about that team and you’d think he called one of their games yesterday.

Van Horne can recite the statistical leaders of that team without missing a beat. He knows that the team was 74-40 on Aug. 12, 1994, and had a six game lead on Atlanta in the National League East. The Expos play-by-play man for 32 years says few days go by where he doesn’t think of that ‘94 team. He can’t help it. A piece of that team is literally with him each time he leaves the house.

“When that season was over,” Van Horne said last week from Nationals Park in Washington, D.C., “I put the names and statistics of all the players from that team on a piece of paper, about two inches by two inches and I’ve carried it in my wallet ever since.”

Van Horne has been the Florida Marlins radio voice since 2001 and was in Washington last week. An ironic setting to strike up a conversation about arguably the Expos greatest team.
 “It’s a great lesson in never taking anything for granted in life,” he said. “Anytime that I feel like I’m taking something for granted, I get that little piece of paper out and I look at a team that I thought would go on to a World Series.”

The ‘94 Expos owned baseball’s lowest earned run average, and staff ace Ken Hill (16-5, 3.32 ERA) led the NL in wins.

“We had pitching, we had speed, and we had power,” said Marquis Grissom, the Expos gold glove center fielder that season and now the Washington Nationals first base coach. “I don’t think anything would have stopped us in ‘94. I just don’t believe that.”

Grissom was part of a large contingent of ‘94 Expos that had come up through the organization’s farm system that included Larry Walker, Cliff Floyd, Mel Rojas and the double-play tandem of Wil Cordero and Mike Lansing. “We had a ball,” Grissom said, “because we knew what we had. We knew that we had a real good ball club and that we were capable of winning every day we stepped on the field.”

Felipe Alou was the NL’s Manager of the Year in 1994 and made good on his reputation for grooming young players.

The ‘94 Expos had five all-stars, and Pedro Martinez, Larry Walker and John Wetteland weren’t among them. Years later Martinez would win three Cy Young Awards, Walker a National League MVP, and Wetteland a World Series MVP.

That ‘yeah but’ you’re hearing from long-suffering Expos fans is that few of those great careers were played out in Montreal. Within a week of the strike’s end in April 1995, Grissom, Hill and Wetteland were all traded, while Walker left Montreal via free agency.

Take away the leadoff hitter, clean-up hitter, ace pitcher and closer from any World Series contender and you’re taking away whatever shot they had at winning. The ‘95 Expos finished last in the NL East. Baseball in Montreal was never the same.

Van Horne can’t help but wonder how things could have played out differently.

“Had the Expos gotten to the World Series, whether they won or not, I think they had a good chance that year to get the downtown stadium project done and rolling. And had that happened, I think it would have rescued the franchise.”