Up, Up, and Away Quotes

“Felipe Alou once told me a story that crystallized the state of Expos baseball, and of Olympic Stadium, in the late '90s.

"I have a friend from the Dominican Republic who's a team owner there," said Alou. "My friend is a very successful man in business and baseball, a very rich man. One year he came to Montreal to talk with me and to see the Expos' operations. He came with some friends from the Dominican Republic and stayed at the hotel downtown, the Queen Elizabeth. He told me that he went around the city to see if he could buy an Expos hat. He couldn't find a store downtown that would sell him one. Then, he and his two friends took a taxi to go to Olympic Stadium. When they arrived, the driver knew where Olympic Stadium was, but didn't know where the entrance was.

"He told me that for the one week he was in town, he never saw one person with an Expos hat. The day he went to see a game the first time, we had 12,000 fans. He told me those 12,000 fans had to be the best fans in the world. When he arrived at the stadium-let's say we were playing the Cincinnati Reds-he and his friends got out of the taxi and walked around the stadium, and there were no signs anywhere that said, 'Tonight, the Expos play Cincinnati.' How could they even get 12,000 fans, he wanted to know, if he couldn't find a hat, he doesn't see a store downtown that sells hats, and when he comes to the ballpark, you can't find the door, and there are no signs advertising the game? My friend said, 'No wonder they don't have any fans here!”
― Jonah Keri, 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

“Baseball was Expos' play-by-play man Dave Van Horne's livelihood, and he had to press on. He got back to work when play resumed, though he did stage a kind of silent protest. Van Horne carefully wrote the names of the entire 25-man roster on a little index card, then placed that card in his wallet, where it would sit through the harsh winter that followed the '94 disaster, into 1995 and onward.

Ask him about it today and Van Horne will pull out that card, read through the names, and flash a sad smile. Twenty years after baseball sabotaged the best team in Expos history, he remembers what might have been. That card-that incredible roll call-will sit in his pocket for as long as he lives, a reminder of a dream destroyed.”
― Jonah Keri, 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

“In the end, the Expos needed a champion, someone with money and power who could run the team through the harsh 1990s, then reap the benefits in the next decade when an explosion in national and local TV deals and a vastly expanded revenue-sharing program made even the poorest teams prosperous and relatively secure. No one ever showed up. That, more than anything, is why baseball didn't work in Montreal. In the league's eyes, Montreal had failed baseball. The cold, hard truth was that for the most part, this was absolutely right.”
― Jonah Keri, 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