Alou

by Felipe Alou

  “You’re retired,” I told Gary. “You are retired.”

  “Okay, skip,” he said. “I’m retired.”

  He never called me again, and he didn’t attempt a comeback.

  The game is hard. It’s hard on both players and managers. Managing takes its toll. You’re always thinking about the game. There is always an urgency to come up with the right solutions. There are losing streaks to contend with. Dealing with the general manager. Meeting with the media at least twice a day. Sending players down. And at least for me I always felt something more, an extra responsibility. When I started managing in Montreal, I believed I was representing a city, an organization, and also two countries—Canada and the Dominican Republic. And perhaps most important, I was representing my family’s name.

  I knew I had a lot of managing left in me. But after the 1993 season ended I looked in the mirror one day and immediately thought of Sparky Anderson’s words when I took over the team early in the 1992 season. For the first time in my life I had more gray hairs than black hairs.

  25

  1994

  A lot was lost because of the baseball strike of 1994 that stretched all the way into 1995. The game lost an immeasurable number of fans who never returned. Owners and players lost a lot of money—an estimated $580 million for the owners and $230 million for the players. People whose livelihoods depended on Major League Baseball lost vital income. Baseball forever lost 948 games that were canceled, which led to losing the World Series—marking the first time since 1904 that it wasn’t played.

  Nobody, though, lost more than Montreal. The city lost the best shot it ever had at winning a World Series title. Because of that Montreal lost any hope of getting a new stadium, which resulted in the city losing the Expos.

  If you look at Major League Baseball in the decade of the ’90s, this is what you’ll see:

  The 1998 New York Yankees, managed by my friend and old roommate Joe Torre, finished with the decade’s best winning percentage: .704.

  The 1995 Cleveland Indians finished with the decade’s second-best winning percentage: .694.

  The 1998 Atlanta Braves finished with the decade’s third-best winning percentage: .654.

  And then there was us, the 1994 Montreal Expos, who finished with the fourth-best winning percentage: .649.

  The only difference with us is that while we finished with a .649 winning percentage, we didn’t have an opportunity to finish the season. The 1998 Yankees did, and they won the World Series. The 1995 Indians did, and they won the American League pennant for the first time since 1954. The 1998 Braves did, and they won the National League East.

  Not once in the twenty-five years since the Expos became a franchise in 1969 had they ever finished in first place. But baseball lost its season, people lost money, many fans lost interest in the game, and we lost our one chance to finish first for the first time. Those were a lot of losses for one summer.

  For me, though, the worst loss was losing my father.

  As irony—or maybe fate—would have it, my father was born in 1905, the year that began eighty-nine years of continuous World Series play. Eighty-nine was also my father’s age when he died. My father, José Rojas, had a full life, and he made the most of the opportunities he had in his lifetime.

  The 1994 Expos were a young, vibrant team, but they were denied the opportunity of a lifetime.

  I knew we were going to be a great team. I knew it toward the end of the 1993 season, then in the offseason, when we acquired a young Pedro Martínez from the Los Angeles Dodgers, and finally in spring training, when I could see this team coming together with the kind of chemistry that gives a team a single heartbeat.

  We had it all—pitching, bullpen, speed, power, defense, base running, bench players, grinders, energy, hunger, cohesiveness, confidence. This was not only a team built to win the World Series, but a team built to last, a dynasty in its infancy.

  Because of being a small-market franchise, the Expos historically had to be smart in finding and developing talent. We had great guys with great eyes for that—hardworking scouts and talent evaluators like Gary Hughes, Jim Fleming, and Fred “the Shark” Ferreira, who tirelessly ran our Latin American operations. We also knew the young talent in other organizations, because if you’re the Expos, you’re often trading an established player who is reaching his prime earning years for prospects.

  In November 1993 our general manager, Dan Duquette, approached me about a one-on-one trade. The Dodgers wanted our second baseman Delino DeShields, and they were offering us a twenty-two-year-old pitcher whom they hadn’t figured out yet—Pedro Martínez.

  “Do it,” I told Duquette. “That’s a no-brainer. Make the trade.”

  I liked DeShields. But I knew we had Mike Lansing coming up as a second baseman. I also knew we were letting Dennis Martínez leave as a free agent, and we were going to need another starter. Replacing one Martínez for another seemed like a good idea. Most important, I knew Pedro Martínez, a fellow Dominican countryman, and I knew he was going to be special. I managed Pedro a year earlier in the Caribbean Series, when I would kid him about his dad, with whom I played amateur baseball many moons earlier. I would needle Pedro that his dad threw harder than him. But in reality nobody threw like Pedro. Not even his older brother Ramón, who by 1993 was an established big leaguer who had gone 20-6 in 1990. When I was managing the West Palm Beach Expos, Ramón told me before a Minor League game in Vero Beach, Florida, that he had a kid brother who was going to be better than him. He was right.

  “Make the trade,” I implored Duquette, and he did. On November 19, 1993, we exchanged Delino DeShields for a future three-time Cy Young Award winner and Hall of Famer.

  The question mark the Dodgers had with Pedro was whether he was a starter or reliever, but I knew he was a starter with ace potential. Since we were so good going into 1994, I tabbed Pedro as a back-of-the-rotation starter, which is what I told him the first day of spring when I called him into my office.

  “You’re my number-four starter,” I said, as Pedro stood there wide-eyed. “But I want you to know that you’re my number one whenever you take the ball.”

  I could see it gave him confidence, which Pedro needed. I could also see he was going to be a handful. Pedro was headstrong. We had a very good pitching coach in Joe Kerrigan, but I also knew Joe was hard on pitchers. I should have anticipated that a hardheaded pitcher and a pitching coach who was hard on pitchers were not going to be a good combination. Sure enough, almost from the first day, the two did not get along.

  Pedro was still learning how to command the inside fastball, which fed into his reputation as a headhunter. To help him learn to pitch inside without hitting so many guys, Kerrigan got a mannequin-type of dummy and propped it up in our bullpen. He stationed it at home plate, mimicking a batter. Pedro zeroed in on its head and destroyed the mannequin with a pitch. Actually, it was probably more than one pitch. Kerrigan thought Pedro did it on purpose, using the mannequin for target practice, and I didn’t disagree with him. I saw it all unfold from a distance, as I sat in the dugout. Suddenly, I saw Kerrigan storming toward me. Arriving in the dugout, he angrily tossed some paperwork at where I was sitting.

  “I’m done with him!” he barked. “He won’t listen! He’s all yours!”

  That was Pedro—he could aggravate you. But I was sure happy to have him on our side, and I’m sure Kerrigan was, too. He was such a talent.

  In his first regular-season start for us, Pedro pitched six strong innings, striking out 8 while surrendering only 3 hits, 1 walk, and 1 earned run. But we didn’t hit that game, and we lost 4–0. In fact, we lost 9 of our first 13 games. It’s curious how that sometimes happens. In 1998, when the Yankees won 114 regular-season games, they started the season 1-4 before taking off. After our slow start we also took off, winning 11 of our next 12 games.

  We had some hiccups after that, but as the season progressed we accelerated, gaining momentum and getting better. This was a young team with an
average age of 26.2, so some setbacks were to be expected. Among our everyday position players, our oldest starter was our 28-year-old third baseman, Sean Berry, who was in only his second season as an everyday player.

  Not only was our outfield young, but I also believe it was the best outfield in baseball that season. Marquis Grissom, 27, manned center field, hitting .288, with 36 stolen bases. In right field was Larry Walker, 27, a native Canadian, who had freakish hand-eye coordination. Walker hit .322 that season. And in left field was my son Moisés, 27, who rebounded from his horrific leg injury to hit .339 with 22 home runs.

  Our rotation was solid, with Ken Hill, 28; Jeff Fassero, 31; Kirk Rueter, 23; Pedro Martínez, 22; and Butch Henry, 25. In reality, because our bullpen was so good, my starters needed to give us only six innings. John Wetteland was our lockdown closer, and my nephew Mel Rojas was our eighth-inning arm who could also close games when we needed him to. Jeff Shaw, who later became the Dodgers’ closer, could shut teams down in the seventh inning. Then there was Tim “Country” Scott, who could come in and throw 100 mph heat and throw multiple innings, too. All four were only 27 years old, and all four helped turn nine-inning games into five-inning games.

  We had a 21-year-old Cliff Floyd and a 22-year-old Wil Cordero playing first base and shortstop, respectively.

  Off the bench were guys like Rondell White, 22, and Lou Frazier, 29, who stole 20 bases as a part-time player in a truncated season. Our old veteran, 32-year-old Randy Milligan, was the kind of bench player who was always encouraging, patting guys on the back, keeping things fun and loose and upbeat in the dugout and clubhouse.

  Everything clicked. Even when things went wrong, they went right.

  Once, with Moisés at the plate and Grissom on third, I signaled for a squeeze play. Moisés missed the bunt, and I thought Grissom would be dead at home. But he jumped over the tag and scored, essentially stealing home. You know things are going your way when sure disaster turns into triumph.

  In his book Up, Up, & Away, author and Montreal native Jonah Keri quoted Cliff Floyd saying this about that team: “We were a one-heartbeat type team. We stood up for one another. Our energy level was high. There was no thinking that we were going to lose. We knew we were going to win every night. We knew no one could beat us. If we lost tonight we knew we were going to win tomorrow night.”

  And from Larry Walker: “Most of my career, you’d go to the park that night, and hope you were going to win it. In ’94, we pretty much knew we were going to win it. Losing wasn’t part of the equation.”

  One day a sportswriter asked me, “Who’s the toughest team?” He wanted to know who I thought our stiffest competition was. My answer surprised him.

  “The Expos,” I said. “The only team that can beat us is ourselves.”

  Even I, someone who had been in the game so long, was amazed at how that group of men performed together. It was incredible. Everybody on that team was a contributor.

  Five of our players made the All-Star Game that season—Ken Hill, Wil Cordero, Marquis Grissom, Moisés Alou, and our catcher Darrin Fletcher. But for whatever reason, immediately after the All-Star break, we came out of the second-half gate losing four straight at home to the San Francisco Giants. After that fourth loss I gathered the team together in the clubhouse for a quick comment. “Guys, this is nothing,” I said. “We can lose ten straight and still win this. We are going to kick some ass.”

  And we did. We went on a tear, winning fourteen of our next fifteen games. On August 3, on the last day of that streak, with the Montreal Expos holding the best record in Major League Baseball, I got a phone call from my brother Jesús in the Dominican Republic.

  “Papá died,” he said.

  My father had gone to bed the night before, and he didn’t wake up the next morning, his body cold when they checked on him. I took a flight home for the funeral, but I wouldn’t allow Moisés to go.

  “The Expos can get by without one Alou,” I told the media, “but not two.”

  I felt the same way about my father’s other grandson Mel Rojas, and I also told Mel to stay with the team.

  I flew from Montreal to Newark to Santo Domingo, and just as when my son died twenty-eight years earlier I went straight from the airport to the funeral home. The whole town, hundreds of people, gathered for my father’s funeral. To the day he died people called my dad Don Abundio. In Spanish Don is an honorific title, and Abundio means “abundance.” That was my dad. He was an honorable man who in so many ways lived an abundant life. He was also a humble man. José Rojas—this Don Abundio—never came to the United States to see either his three sons or two grandsons play, but he would listen to our games on a transistor radio.

  After burying my father and being gone for two days, I returned to an Expos team that did not miss a beat. Winning fourteen of fifteen was just a precursor. The guys quickly stretched that streak to twenty wins in twenty-three games. By then not only was our 74-40 record and .649 winning percentage the best in baseball, but we also were the hottest team.

  Hot? We were en fuego.

  But the threatening storm clouds of a work stoppage that had hovered over the 1994 season not only rained on our potential parade but also produced the worst rainout in MLB history. Unable to reach a new collective-bargaining agreement, which had expired on December 31, the players walked out. The strike lasted from August 12, 1994, to April 2, 1995, making it the longest and most devastating work stoppage in MLB history.

  I think the only people happy about the strike was our ownership group, led by Claude Brochu. I believe Brochu was afraid of that 1994 Expos team. Had we gone to the World Series, and especially if we won it, there was going to be tremendous pressure to keep this young team intact and pay some big salaries. I don’t believe ownership wanted that, especially Brochu, who I suspected was already working behind the scenes to line up replacement players for the 1995 season. Brochu was heavily involved in the negotiations from the ownership side, and I never felt he had the Expos’ best interest at heart. I believe Brochu was hell-bent on beating the Players Association. Had he checked the history of these strikes and lockouts, he would have learned it never happens that way. The Players Association always wins.

  No matter how cheap the Expos could be, it always seemed as though they were looking for new ways to be cheaper. As it was, that 1994 Expos team—the team with the best record in baseball—had the second-lowest payroll. Ownership was paying our roster $18.8 million. Only the Pittsburgh Pirates, with a 53-61 record, had a smaller payroll, at $13.5 million.

  There was some hope during the early days of the strike that a new collective-bargaining agreement could be ironed out and the season salvaged. But on September 14 MLB commissioner Bud Selig pulled the plug, canceling the rest of the regular season, the postseason, and the World Series.

  I learned of the devastating news from Dan Duquette. It hurt. The only thing that could’ve possibly hurt more is if I committed a mistake—a managerial blunder—that prevented the team from getting to the World Series. Now that would be painful. I truly believe only an outside force, or a managerial mistake, could stop that 1994 team from winning the World Series. If we had maintained our 74-40 pace for the rest of the season, we would have won 105 games, the most since the 1986 World Series champion Mets. In fact, only two teams logged more single-season victories in the decade of the ’90s—the 1998 Yankees (114) and Braves (106). It’s why I felt so bad for the players. Fans were always giving me credit for how we were winning, and I would tell them no, no, no—it’s this team. Those guys were so talented. They could make so many plays and win in so many different ways—an inside-the-park home run, stealing home, striking out the side with the bases loaded, clutch home runs, diving catches, double steals, grinding at-bats.

  The media, the fans, the players . . . they’ve never forgotten that team. Not a week goes by when I’m not asked about the 1994 Montreal Expos. It still hurts. I hurt for the fans who were packing Olympic Stadium and turning it into a
madhouse. And I hurt for the players who deserved a better outcome. I was named NL Manager of the Year after the season, but to me it never felt legitimate. Why should I win something when the players didn’t have a chance to win anything?

  The day after the season was canceled I was home in South Florida. I stopped by our spring training facility in West Palm Beach, where I had stored some things. Atlanta shared the same complex, and as I was leaving I ran into Braves pitcher Tom Glavine in the parking lot.

  When the season ended the Braves were in second place, six games behind us in the NL East standings. Nobody else was even close. The New York Mets were in third place, eighteen and a half games behind; the Philadelphia Phillies in fourth place, twenty and a half games behind; and the Florida Marlins were in last, trailing us by twenty-three and a half games.

  The six-game lead we had over the Braves felt like a wider margin to us, and evidently it also did to Glavine. “I really feel bad for you guys, Felipe,” Glavine said, and I could read the sincerity in his eyes. “You have some kind of team.”

  And then, knowing there was still some hope the season would resume, Glavine, who was one of the main player reps, said something I’ve never forgotten and have always appreciated. “I don’t think we can overtake you,” he said. “Not with the team you have. It’s going to be tough for us. You guys have our number.”

  I believe he was right. But we’ll never know. The season that could have been never was. That 1994 MLB season lives in infamy. But the 1994 Montreal Expos achieved a measure of fame.

  We’re the most famous team that didn’t get to the World Series. Famous for being denied.

  26

  The Demise of the Expos and Me

  What’s worse—a slow death or an abrupt execution? Over my next seven years managing the Montreal Expos, I experienced both. There was the slow death of the franchise and my sudden execution as the manager.