Montreal Expos

by Topps Co, Larry Schwartz

Topps Softcover, copyright 1989 - Expos - Every card of the Expos from 1952 to 1988 is included in this book. A treat for young fans and older collectors alike. It's all 1. The players and cards you remember 2. A year by year review 3. Batting and Pitching statistics 4. A section on team leaders..Plus..A Collector's Corner with values and interesting facts about the cards.

Paperback

First published October 13, 1989

Reviews

[C. John Kerry · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this as part of the Canadian Reading Challenge. Although published in the US it concerns Les Expos and hence qualifies as Canadian, at least the last time I looked Montreal was still part of Canada. The beginning of the book has a list of the various team leaders in various categories. At the back is a list of all the players, with pitchers in one group and position players in another, and their statistics. There are also a couple of pages on notes on the various Topps Baseball card sets through the years. However the meat of the book is between these two sets of pages. There is a section of usually three pages for each year of the team's existence from 1969 to 1988. With the exception of 1988 the section starts off with a half-page summary of the team's season. This is followed by the cards for each player from the main card set produced by Topps that year. Not only are the players' regular cards included but if they were an All-Star, Record Breaker of any of the other subsets Topps produced as part of its regular set that card is included as well. Even the cards from Topps 1974 and 1976 Traded sets are included. There are two anomalies with the book however. One is that for some reason the 1985 Traded cards are included in the 1986 section. The other is that there is no write-up for the 988 season, just the card pictures.
Looking through this book is an interesting experience. Of course there are the pictures of the players you remember and who spent a number of years with the team. Then there are those who only were with the Expos for a single season, or less (anyone recall when Pete Rose was an Expo). And of course there are the players who you look at and think, who the hell is this guy. Another intriguing card is Gene Mauch's card in the 1969 set. It may say Expos on the front but that sure isn't the Expos uniform he is shown wearing. Obviously someone in production forgot to airbrush this one.
In conclusion I would say this is an excellent item for either fans of Les Expos de Montreal (I had to throw the French name for the team in here somewhere) or for those with an interest in baseball cards. I did mention that the pictures of the cards were in colour, didn't I.