Dispatches from the Sporting Life (25 page)

It was 1928 when George Tweedy “Miracle Man” Stallings bought the then defunct Syracuse franchise and built Delormier Downs, a stadium with a capacity of 22,000, at the corner of Ontario and DeLorimier Streets. An overflow crowd of 22,500, among them Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis, was at the opening game. The Royals won, defeating the fearsome Reading Keystones, 7–4. A year later Stallings died. In 1929, the Royals finished fourth. Two years later, Delormier Downs, like just about everything, was in deep trouble. There were tax arrears and a heavy bank debt to be settled. The original sponsors resigned.

In the autumn of 1931 a new company was formed by a triumvirate that included a man who had made millions in gas stations, the rambunctious, poker-playing J. Charles-Emile Trudeau, father of the prime minister. Another associate of the newly found club, Frank “Shag” Shaughnessy, cunningly introduced the playoff system in 1933, and two years later became the club’s general manager. In 1935, fielding a team that included Fresco Thompson, Jimmy Ripple, and Del Bissonnette, the
Royals won their first pennant since 1898. However, they finished poorly in ’37 and ’38, and the following year Mr. Rickey surfaced, sending in Burleigh Grimes to look after his interests.

Redemption was at hand.

Bruno Betzel came in to manage the team in 1944, the year the nefarious Branch Rickey bought the Royals outright, building it into the most profitable club in all of minor league baseball, its fans loyal but understandably resentful of the head office’s appetite, praying that this summer the Dodgers wouldn’t falter in the stretch, reaching down for fresh bats and strong arms, just when we needed them most.

The Royals finished first in 1945, and in ’46 and ’48 they won both the pennant and the Little World Series. They were to win the pennant again in ’51 and ’52, under Clay Hopper, and the Little World Series in ’53, when they were managed by Walter Alston. If memory serves, the Royals fielded their greatest team in 1948, the summer young Duke Snider played here, going to bat seventy-seven times before he was snatched by Mr. Rickey.

Sammy Jethro was here in 1949, and two years later, Junior Gilliam was at third as George Shuba hit twenty home runs. In 1952, our star pitcher was southpaw Tommy Lasorda, the self-styled Bob Feller of the International League. Lasorda pitched his last game for the Royals on July 4, 1960, against Rochester, which seemed to be hitting him at will. Reminiscing recently, Lasorda recalled, “I knew I was in trouble when I saw our manager’s foot on the top of the dugout step. If the next guy gets on base, I’m
going to be out of there. I turned my back on the hitter and looked up toward the sky. Lord, I said, this is my last game. Get me out of this jam. I make the next pitch and the guy at the plate hits the damnedest line drive you ever saw. Our third baseman, George Risley, gets the tips of his fingers on it but can’t hang on. The ball bloops over his hand and our shortstop, Gerry Snyder, grabs it. He fires it to Harry Shewman at second base, who relays it to Jimmy Korada at first. Triple play.”

A year later the Royals were dissolved, and in 1971, Delormier Downs was razed to make way for the Pierre Dupuy School.

On weekday afternoons kids were admitted free into the left-field bleachers, and by the third inning the more intrepid had worked their way down as far as the first-base line. Ziggy, Yossel, and I would sit out there in the sun, cracking peanuts, nudging each other if a ball struck the Miss Sweet Caporal sign hitting the young lady you know where. Another diversion was a porthole in the outfield wall. If a batter hit a ball through it, he was entitled to a two-year supply of Pal Blades.

Sunday afternoons the Royals usually attracted capacity crowds, but come the Little World Series, fans also lined up on the roof of the adjoining Grover Knit-to-Fit Building, and temporary stands were set up and roped off in centre field. Ziggy, who used to sit out there, liked to boast, “If I get hit on the head, it’s a ground-rule home run.”

In 1945, the Royals acquired one of ours, their first Jewish player, Kermit Kitman, a William and Mary scholarship boy. Our loyalty to the team redoubled. Kitman was a centre fielder. On opening day, a story in
La Presse
declared,
“Trois des meilleurs porte-couleurs de Montréal depuis l’ouverture de la saison ont été ses joueurs de champ: Gladu, Kitman et Yeager. Kitman a exécuté un catch sensationnel encore hier après-midi sur le long coup de Torres à la 8e manche. On les verra tous trois à l’oeuvre cet après-midi contre le Jersey-City lors du programme double de la ‘Victoire’ au stade de la rue DeLorimier.”

In his very first at-bat in that opening game against the Skeeters, Kitman belted a homer, something he would not manage again until August. Alas, in the later innings he also got doubled off second. After the game, when he ventured into a barbershop at the corner of St. Catherine and St. Urbain, a man in another chair studied him intently. “Aren’t you Kermit Kitman?” he asked.

“Yeah,” he allowed, grinning, remembering his homer.

“You son of a bitch, you got doubled off second. It cost me five hundred bucks.”

The lineup for that 1945 team, which was to win the pennant, included Eddie Stevens, 1b; Salty Parker, 2b; Stan Bréard, ss; Stan Powalski, 3b; and Al Todd, c. Jean-Pierre Roy, Honest John Gabbard, and Jack Banta were the pitchers, and the others in the outfield were Red Durrett and Roland Gladu. “If I could hit pitchers like Gladu, I wouldn’t be in the needle trade today,” Kitman said.

He’s an engaging man, a prospering partner in
Leslie Fay Originals, Pretty Talk Fashions, and Fancy That. Fifty-four years old when I talked to him in 1978, somewhat chunky, he tried to take in at least one game in every Expo series and still can remember his own box scores as if it were yesterday. In 1946, he recalled, Dodgers with a certain seniority were released from the armed forces: Furillo, Olmo, Snider. Kitman didn’t get to move up, as he had hoped, but was slated for the Royals again. And out there in Daytona, where they trained, a raw young man was seen to knock ball after ball into the wilderness.

“What can you do besides catch, son?” Leo Durocher asked him.

“I can play third base,” Gil Hodges said. There was yet another change in the summer of 1946. After scouting the Negro leagues for more than a year, Mr. Rickey brought the first black player into organized baseball. So that spring the Royals could not train in the regular park in Daytona, which was segregated, but had to work out in Kelly Field instead.

Actually, Jackie Robinson had been signed on October 23, 1945, in the offices of the Royals at Delormier Downs, club president Hector Racine saying, “Robinson is a good ball player and comes highly recommended by the Brooklyn Dodgers. We paid him a good bonus to sign with our club.”

The bonus was $3,500 and Robinson’s salary was $600 monthly.

“One afternoon in Daytona,” Kitman told me, “I was leadoff hitter and quickly singled. Robinson came up next, laying down a sacrifice bunt and running to first. Stanky, covering the sack, tagged him
hard and jock-high. Robinson went down, taking a fist in the balls. He was mad as hell, you could see that, but Rickey had warned him no fights. After the game, when he was resting, Stanky came over to apologize. He had been testing Robinson’s temper, under orders from Rickey.”

Kitman, a good glove man, was an inadequate hitter. Brooklyn-born, he never got to play there. Following the 1946 season, he was offered a place on the roster of another team in the Dodger farm system but wisely elected to quit the game instead.

The 1946 season opened for the Royals on April 18, with a game in Jersey City. The AP dispatch for that day, printed in the Montreal
Gazette,
ran: “The first man of his race to play in modern organized baseball smashed a three-run homer that carried 333 feet and added three singles to the Royals’ winning 14–1 margin over Jersey City. Just to make it a full day’s work, Robinson stole two bases, scored four times and batted in three runs. He was also charged with an error.”

Robinson’s.349 average led International League hitters that year. He hit three home runs, batted in sixty-six runs, stole forty bases, scored 113 runs, and fielded.985 at second base. And, furthermore, Montreal adored him, as no other ball player who has been there before or since. No sooner did Robinson reach first base, on a hit or a walk, than the fans roared with joy and hope, our hearts going out to him as he danced up and down the base path, taunting the opposing pitcher with his astonishing speed.

We won the pennant that year and met the Louisville Colonels, another Dodger farm club, in the
Little World Series. The series opened in Louisville, where Robinson endured a constant run of crude racial insults from the Colonels’ dugout and was held to a mere single in two games. Montreal evened the series at home and returned to Delormier Downs for the seventh and deciding game. “When they won it,” Dick Bacon recently wrote, recalling that game in the two-hundredth-anniversary issue of the
Gazette,
“Jackie was accorded an emotional sendoff unseen before or since in this city.”

First they serenaded him in true French-Canadian spirit with “il
a gagné ses épaulettes,”
and then clamoured for his reappearance on the field.

When he finally came out for a curtain call, the fans mobbed him. They hugged him, kissed him, cried, cheered, and pulled and tore his uniform while parading him around the infield on their shoulders.

With tears streaming down his face, Robinson finally begged off in order to shower, dress, and catch a plane to the States. But the riot of joy wasn’t over yet.

When he emerged from the clubhouse, he had to bull his way through the waiting crowd outside the stadium. The thousands of fans chased him down Ontario Street for several blocks, before he was rescued by a passing motorist and driven to his hotel.

As one Southern reporter from Louisville, Kentucky, was to write afterwards: “It’s probably the first time a white mob of rioters ever chased a Negro down the streets in love rather than hate.”

That was a long time ago.

I don’t know what ever became of Red Durrett. Roland Gladu, who got to start twenty-one games with the old Boston Braves, failed to sign the major league skies with his ability. Robinson died in 1972, and six years later a plaque to his memory was installed in the Big Owe. Jean-Pierre Roy now does the French-language broadcasts for the Expos, and a greying, rotund Duke Snider is also back, doing the colour commentary for the games on CBC-TV.

City councillor Gerry Snyder must be acknowledged as the trigger for major league baseball in Montreal. In December 1967 he put his case to NL President Warren Giles. Sure, Giles said, he would be happy to receive an expansion bid from Montreal, but it would have to be sweetened by a list of backers willing to plunk $10 million U.S. on the table and a guarantee of a domed stadium. Snyder hoped the Autostade, a prefabricated concrete stadium built for Expo, would do temporarily, if it was expanded to accommodate 37,500 fans. But the highly unpopular Autostade wasn’t on the subway line, and the parking situation there was nightmarish. Furthermore, the Autostade was right next to an abattoir, which would not be so life-enhancing on a steamy summer afternoon. Nevertheless, the indefatigable Snyder began to pursue backers, all of whom were willing to listen but not pledge. All except Charles Bronfman, whose father did so much to slake the thirst of Americans during Prohibition, the rock on which Mr. Sam founded one of the largest family fortunes in North America. Charles immediately promised he would come in for $1 million. Then Prime Minister Lester Pearson, who had
once played semi-pro ball and remained an ardent fan, undertook to write his friend Philip Wrigley, owner of the Chicago Cubs, to solicit support.

There were, as I mentioned earlier, other contenders for the two expansion spots. But Walter O’Malley, one member of the three-man expansion committee, remembered with considerable warmth how much money he had made with the Montreal Royals. Another committee member, Judge Julius Hoffheinz of Houston, had enjoyed himself at Expo. The third member, John Galbraith of Pittsburgh, also liked Montreal’s bid. So at a meeting in the Excelsior Hotel in Chicago in April 1968, it was ordained that San Diego would have one franchise and Montreal the other. Back in Snyder’s hotel room, Dick Young of the
New York Daily News
suggested, “Call ’em the Expos.”

Call ‘em whatever you like, but where was the $10 million and where were they going to play ball?

Snyder had promised the National League a domed stadium for the club by 1971, but the city, looking at the estimated cost—between $35 and $45 million—said no. It also said no to tarting up the Autostade for about $7 million. Everybody despaired but Mayor Drapeau. As potential investors faded, he got Bronfman to come in for another $4 million, some say much more, and he drove NL president Giles out to Jarry Park, then a three-thousand-seat junior baseball stadium. The public address announcer let it out that Giles was in the park, and he was given a standing ovation. He left the park with tears in his eyes. “For years right until he died,” Snyder has said, “he told me every time we met that this was the
greatest thing that had ever happened to him in his life—total strangers giving him a standing ovation.”

The federal government, though not moved to tears, came through with a huge tax write-off for multimillionaire Bronfman and the other investors, among them club president John McHale, and on August 14 a dry-eyed Giles returned to Montreal, endorsed the plans for a Jarry Park expanded to accommodate thirty thousand fans, and accepted a $1.1 million down payment on the franchise.

The Expos were born. October 14, 1968, was declared Baseball Day, and the plebs, ten thousand strong, filled the Place des Nations to greet visiting NL dignitaries. Les Grands Ballets Canadiens offered a choreographed version of “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.” Warren Giles beamed. Mayor Drapeau, outspoken as always, came right out and declared Montreal to be the greatest city in the world. Later in the day, at the Windsor Hotel, the NL owners got down to the real business. The draft. The rendering, on consideration of $10 million, of thirty bodies to each expansion team, thirty players who, hereafter (unless traded before opening day), would be flesh-and-blood Expos. “It’s only a day after [Canadian] Thanksgiving,” a sportswriter said, “and we’re being offered all the turkey.” Not so, another ventured, scrutinizing the list of command-generation players on offer from the league. “We could end up with the all-star team of 1954.”