Alou

by Felipe Alou

  Being fired I could deal with and move on from. It’s the disappointment and sadness I feel for the people of Montreal that still linger with me.

  It’s been said that Major League Baseball was never the same after the 1994 strike. Neither were the Montreal Expos. The difference is that Major League Baseball is still around. The Montreal Expos are not.

  I saw the demise—the slow death—coming. I believed the only chance Montreal had to keep the Expos was to build a stadium. Not a new stadium, because to build a new stadium you have to have built an old stadium. Montreal never built a stadium for the Expos. The franchise originally played its first eight seasons in Jarry Park, which existed before the Expos came into existence. Then, after the 1976 Montreal Olympics, the Expos moved into Olympic Stadium. It was time for Montreal to finally build the Expos a stadium, and I believed for that to happen it was imperative that the 1994 team get to the World Series. When the latter did not happen, neither did the former.

  It would have helped if there were owners who wanted to keep the Expos in Montreal. But I don’t believe Claude Brochu and later Jeffrey Loria had that in mind. Especially Loria.

  With Brochu it wasn’t that I was suspicious of his motives. It was more that I was dubious of his judgment. As for Loria it didn’t take long after he became the Expos’ managing general partner in 1999 for me to see that he had no interest in keeping the franchise in Montreal. To borrow a French phrase—au contraire.

  The Expos’ slow decline started after the strike ended in the spring of 1995, when the organization did not even offer pending free agent Larry Walker arbitration. It dismayed and disappointed me. In addition to being our best player, Walker was at the time the greatest everyday player to come out of Canada. He still might be the best ever, although some could now make a strong argument for Joey Votto.

  Walker loved playing in Montreal. Had Brochu offered Walker arbitration and Walker refused and opted for free agency, we could at least have gotten a first-round compensation pick in the amateur draft. But I’m convinced Brochu didn’t do that because he was afraid Walker would accept and he would have to pay him for a one-year contract, as if that would have been so terrible. I did not understand that logic, that judgment. Normal teams with normal owners would have jumped at the chance to keep their best player for a relatively cheap one-year contract. But relatively cheap never seemed to be cheap enough for the Expos. Brochu let Walker walk, without getting anything in return. Walker has gone on record as saying the Expos never even contacted him after the 1994 season ended.

  Sadly, Walker wasn’t the only star player we lost from that 1994 team. Immediately after the strike was over, Brochu butchered the team, gutting it of three star players.

  What set everything in motion was a March 31, 1995, ruling from a district court judge named Sonia Sotomayor, who would later become a U.S. Supreme Court justice. Sotomayor issued an injunction against MLB’s owners, barring them from using replacement players in regular-season games. It effectively ended the strike. It also began the fire sale.

  With the strike over Brochu ordered our new general manager, Kevin Malone, to trade away the heart of our team. And just like that, on April 5 and 6, we dealt our staff ace Ken Hill to the St. Louis Cardinals, our closer John Wetteland to the New York Yankees, and our center fielder Marquis Grissom to the Atlanta Braves. The dust hadn’t even settled when, on April 8, Larry Walker signed as an unrestricted free agent with the Colorado Rockies.

  The effect on us was immediately detrimental. Just look at what Grissom, Wetteland, and Walker went on to accomplish:

  That year Grissom batted .524 in the National League Division Series and .360 in the World Series to help the Braves win their first championship in Atlanta.

  In 1996 Wetteland led the American League in saves and won the Rolaids Relief Man Award. He was also named the World Series MVP when he helped the Yankees win their first championship in eighteen years (over Grissom’s Braves, despite Marquis hitting .444).

  In 1997 Walker was the NL MVP, and in 1998, 1999, and 2001 he also won the NL’s batting titles, hitting .363, .379, and .350.

  As for us, in return for trading Hill, Wetteland, and Grissom we received Kirk Bullinger, Bryan Eversgerd, DaRond Stovall, Fernando Seguignol, Roberto Kelly, Tony Tarasco, Esteban Yan, and a toe tag for the franchise. I don’t mean to disparage those players, but it’s safe to say we woefully got the short end of the stick on every trade.

  At the very least, Brochu should have kept the team intact until the midseason trade deadline, giving the new GM, Malone, some time to assess the landscape and deal those players for Minor League prospects and young MLB players who could help us restock. Instead, Brochu ordered him to gut the team within hours of the strike ending. Everyone knew we were unloading, so everyone took advantage of us.

  The other option was to keep the team intact and see if we could again have the best record in baseball by the trade deadline. If anything, we proved in 1994 that our brand of baseball captured the attention of the city. Night after night we were packing Olympic Stadium with delirious fans. But Brochu was always overly conservative. Rather than spend money to make money, Brochu chose to save money. But in saving money the eventual result is Montreal lost the Expos.

  They’ve had reunions for the 1994 team. At one of those reunions Cliff Floyd told Jonah Keri for his book Up, Up, & Away that he “ran into Claude Brochu” and that Brochu “brought up everything that happened. You just look at him, and you go, ‘You could have had a dynasty. You could have hung your hat on this team for all time.’”

  Instead, we went from being baseball’s best team in 1994 to finishing last in the NL East in 1995, twenty-four games behind an Atlanta Braves team—with Grissom—that pitcher Tom Glavine told me several months earlier wasn’t as good as we were.

  Our farm system gave us an influx of young talent—players like Mark Grudzielanek—and our GM, Malone, made some shrewd trades, especially acquiring Henry Rodríguez from the Dodgers, that helped us finish second in the NL East in 1996.

  But year after year it was the same old story. We would develop players from our farm system, or prospects we acquired from another team, only to trade them away before we could fully benefit from them. Sometimes I sit back and think about all the talent that passed through the Expos organization in the franchise’s history: Gary Carter, Andre Dawson, Tim Raines, Randy Johnson, Pedro Martínez, Dennis Martínez, Vladimir Guerrero, Larry Walker, Marquis Grissom, Andrés Galarraga, Moisés Alou, Mel Rojas, Ellis Valentine, Wil Cordero, Steve Kline, Ugueth Urbina, Warren Cromartie, John Wetteland, Larry Parrish, Rusty Staub, Tim Wallach, Steve Rogers, Jeff Reardon, Cliff Floyd, Steve Rogers, Bill Gullickson, Scott Sanderson, Jeff Shaw, Ken Singleton, Jeff Fassero, Bryn Smith, Ken Hill, José Vidro, Orlando Cabrera, Bob Bailey, Javier Vázquez, Tim Burke, Tim Foli, and on and on and on.

  Four of those guys were developed through the system and became Hall of Famers—Carter, Dawson, Raines, and Johnson—but none of them spent their entire careers in Montreal. Part of me also wants to put another Hall of Famer, Pedro Martínez, in that group, because although Pedro came to us from the Dodgers, he developed into a great pitcher with the Expos.

  Not to make it sound like sour grapes, but during my eight years managing the Expos these were some of the players traded or allowed to leave as free agents: Dennis Martínez, Pedro Martínez, Ken Hill, Larry Walker, Marquis Grissom, John Wetteland, Cliff Lloyd, Mel Rojas, Jeff Fassero, Jeff Shaw, Rondell White, David Segui, Mike Lansing, and my son Moisés. Just to name a handful.

  In 1998, after failing to get the Expos a stadium, Brochu agreed to sell his ownership shares to New York art dealer Jeffrey Loria. Initially, I was impressed with Loria. He spent two days asking me questions about the franchise, our attendance, the team. A lot of his questions were intelligent. But I soon found out that some weren’t.

  Loria cornered me one day pregame in the Milwaukee Brewers’ visiting dugout. “How come you put the lineup card here?�
� he asked, pointing to where it was on the dugout wall.

  At first, I did not know if he was joking. He wasn’t. “I put it here because this is where the bat rack is,” I said. “This way a player, when he’s getting his bat, can see if I’ve made any changes.”

  “You should switch it up,” Loria said. “You’re too routine. Move it around to different spots, especially when the team is on a losing streak.”

  Once again I wondered if Loria was joking. He wasn’t. I showed him the tape residue from where every manager put their lineup cards in the exact same spot. I don’t think I convinced him.

  At the same time, it didn’t take me long to be convinced that Loria was conning people into believing he had Montreal’s best interest at heart. Little by little, Loria took financial control of the Expos from the other partners. I could see what he was doing: he was maneuvering things to take the team out of Canada.

  By December 1999 the takeover by Loria and his stepson, David Samson, was complete. The following May I pulled Montreal Gazette sportswriter Jack Todd into the visiting manager’s office in San Francisco and shut the door. Todd was a journalist I trusted and respected. I warned him that Loria could not be trusted and that he had no intention of keeping the Expos in Montreal. This was at a time when a lot of people were still fooled by Loria, thinking he would be the savior for the Expos in Montreal. Todd never forgot that conversation and wrote about it years later when my prediction came to fruition.

  I, on the other hand, wanted to stay in Montreal and even turned down an opportunity to leave after the 1998 season, which was another rough year when we had too little talent to contend with. Following Brochu’s orders, Jim Beattie, who was yet another new general manager, flew to St. Louis to deliver some news. After a tough loss to the Cardinals, Beattie came to my office and told me another team was interested in my services, doing so within earshot of some of the media. It seemed bizarre but also obvious. Brochu wanted me to leave.

  I know Brochu to this day says that wasn’t the intent. But he sure seemed to be in a hurry to tell me another team was interested in me, sending his GM halfway across the country to do so. Couldn’t he wait until I got back to Montreal? And did I have to be informed after a tough loss?

  I knew what was going on. I was too popular and too powerful in Montreal. I had embraced the city, and the city had embraced me. I was also married to a French Canadian woman and made an effort to learn the language. All of that—and what I always considered to be a good working relationship with the media—put ownership in a bind. I was the last impediment standing in the way of moving the team. Firing me would be a public relations nightmare. Having me leave on my own volition would better serve their purposes.

  I soon learned it was the Los Angeles Dodgers who were interested in me, which didn’t surprise me, since our old general manager Kevin Malone was now the Dodgers’ general manager. With permission granted, Malone and Dodgers team president and chief operating officer Bob Graziano came to my South Florida home that offseason. They didn’t come to interview me. They came with a contract in hand and with plane tickets for Lucie and me to fly to Los Angeles for the press conference.

  The contract sat on our coffee table, which included buying me a home in Southern California. I was about to sign it when it was suggested we hold off and instead sign the contract in Los Angeles during the formal press conference introducing me. We all agreed it seemed like a good idea.

  Working in the background, though, were some of the Expos’ minority owners who wanted me to stay. Leading that brigade was Mark Routtenberg, who was the president of Guess Jeans in Canada. I had a solid relationship with Routtenberg, who was not only a smart businessman but also a passionate baseball fan who desperately wanted the Expos to stay in Montreal. Routtenberg saw my value to the franchise, and he once made me promise that if I ever thought of leaving the Expos, I would at least give him a chance to have a face-to-face discussion with him.

  Well, when Routtenberg heard the Dodgers were after me, he called my home and, with Malone and Graziano sitting in my living room, reminded me of my promise. He also told me he was in South Florida with the GM, Jim Beattie, and one of the team’s other minority owners, Jacques Ménard.

  “Can Jim Beattie and I come by and talk?” he asked.

  I knew I owed them at least the courtesy of a conversation. Malone and Graziano understood. They told me they were going to get a bite for lunch and would return a little later.

  When Routtenberg and Beattie came to my door, I greeted them with a smile. “You know,” I said, “my blood is already Dodger blue.”

  Routtenberg gave me a pained look as the color drained from his face, and I felt sorry I greeted him that way. We went to the living room and sat down, and Routtenberg got straight to the point. “If you leave now, the team is doomed to failure,” he said. “You’re the last source of credibility we have left.”

  As we chatted more, Routtenberg told me a new ownership group was coming in and Brochu would be gone. He promised me that with this change in ownership, a stadium was also coming. Routtenberg was so confident Brochu was going to be gone and a new owner coming in that he disregarded something Brochu told him when he granted Routtenberg permission to talk with me. Brochu told him he could attempt to convince me to stay, but he was not to negotiate with me. But negotiate he did.

  “What are the Dodgers offering?” Routtenberg asked.

  When I told him, his response was immediate. “We’ll match it.”

  And they did. Aside from offering me a house in Montreal, which I really didn’t need, they matched everything.

  The phone rang. It was Jean-Claude Turcotte, a cardinal and the archbishop of Montreal’s Roman Catholic archdiocese. Ménard had arranged for the phone call. Turcotte pleaded with me to stay, telling me the city and the Expos needed me, that it was the only hope of keeping the Expos in Montreal. “Please don’t leave,” he kept saying, adding that he was praying for me to stay.

  When I got off the phone with him, the phone rang again. It was Jacques Demers, the former head coach of the National Hockey League’s Montreal Canadians. It was Routtenberg who arranged for Demers to call, and his message was the same: please consider staying.

  I was overwhelmed. I could also feel my blood returning to Expos blue from Dodgers blue.

  My mind rewound through my postplaying career. I had been with the Expos organization during that entire time, some twenty-five years. My roots, in more ways than one, were in Montreal. Not only was my wife French Canadian, but we lived with her parents in Laval, a city just north of Montreal. When the Expos hired me to manage the team, one of the newspaper headlines blared: “Expos Hire Laval Man.” Our oldest child, Valerie, was born in Canada. There were so many things that tied me to Montreal and to the franchise. I felt an overwhelming sense of loyalty.

  Naively, I thought I might be able to save the franchise. Maybe with a new owner things would change. Little did I know, though, that the next owner would be Jeffrey Loria and that he would be the worst thing to ever happen to baseball in Montreal.

  I told Routtenberg and Beattie I would stay. Later that day Ménard, who was at his South Florida home monitoring events, came by with a contract, which I signed.

  When Malone and Graziano returned and I told them I had changed my mind, they were devastated. I’ll never forget the looks on their faces. Total shock and disbelief. I felt terrible. I had given those two men my word, and now I had gone back on it. In the months that followed I had a hard time sleeping. Going back on my word weighed heavily on me then, and it still does to this day.

  Years later Brochu wrote a book, My Turn at Bat, which I understand was so popular it sold about fifty copies. It’s mostly Brochu’s revisionist history, his version of events in defense of himself. Regarding the meeting Routtenberg and Malone had with me, he wrote: “I didn’t for an instant imagine they intended to negotiate with him.”

  Brochu also wrote that, because the Expos were 80 percent finan
ced by MLB’s other clubs, Commissioner Bud Selig was livid and wanted to know why the franchise was paying me so much. Brochu said he didn’t learn about my new contract until after Selig called him and demanded: “What the hell is going on?”

  Brochu then slammed Ménard and Routtenberg in his book, calling what they did a blunder. Yes, a blunder.

  He’s entitled to his opinion, but now I’m entitled to mine. I think about all my years with the Expos organization, all the years before Brochu even arrived on the scene with the franchise, and how I had always been the loyal company man. When I think about my history and dedication to the Montreal Expos, and then Brochu’s, these questions come to mind.

  Where was Claude Brochu all those years I making $14,000 managing in the Minor Leagues?

  Where was Claude Brochu when I rode for hours and hours on buses?

  Where was Claude Brochu when I needed elbow surgery because of the thousands of batting-practice pitches I threw?

  Where was Claude Brochu when I was wearing a Montreal Expos uniform and heard the news that my firstborn son was killed in a swimming pool accident?

  I paid my dues. I worked hard. I found talent, developed talent, and sacrificed some of the best years of my life for the Montreal Expos. But now paying me the same salary that another franchise thought I was worth was a blunder? It was, and still is, insulting.

  But Brochu wasn’t done in his book. He also wrote, “Ménard and Routtenberg would come off as champion negotiators. They had managed to keep Alou, the media would proclaim. But at what cost? And on what conditions? Obviously, Ménard and Routtenberg didn’t live on the same planet as the other Major League Baseball executives.”

  To me, that doesn’t sound like somebody who wanted me to stay.

  And then it all got worse with Jeffrey Loria. Like Brochu before him, I became convinced Loria wanted me to leave. What especially convinced me was a move he made midway through the 2000 season, a move that made his bad intentions blatantly obvious. We were preparing to play a July 20 afternoon getaway game at Olympic Stadium when I was summoned to the front office. Waiting for me were Loria, Samson, and Beattie. Loria didn’t waste any time.