Northern Expos-ure

In their final year at Jarry Parc Le Expos regressed from the modest progress that they made over the course of the first six years since expansion.  In 1969 the Montreal Expos began play in the National League as the final wave of expansion agreed upon by MLB's owners back in the early 60's designed to keep the ill fated Continental League from competing with MLB.  For over 60 years baseball remained a tight little club featuring 16 franchises.  In 1961 the American League added 2 teams and in 1962 the NL did the same.  In 1969 both leagues added 2 additional teams to bring MLB's total to 24.  Being part of the last round of expansion ensured that the Expos would receive the bottom of the barrel when it came to talent, but that didn't matter one bit to the baseball crazy fans in Quebec.

The Expos started out with a bang by beating the Mets 11-10 at Shea Stadium for their first ever game.  For those keeping score at home, the Mets would go on to rebound nicely and shock the baseball world by becoming the improbable World Champions that season.  The Expos on the other hand were to finish dead last in the newly christened NL East.  In fact the Expos would go on to lose 110 games that season, but nobody would care because this was their honeymoon period.  Gene Mauch was tapped to manage the team.  In retrospect, Mauch was probably the wrong man to lead an expansion team that was going to go through extensive growing pains.  Mauch, the author of the 1964 Phillies collapse, came to win and not to build.  That translated into 2 sixth place finishes, 2 fifth place finishes and 2 fourth place finishes.  The team played hard and had modest improvement, which included back to back season of finishing 3 and 4 games under .500.  Still, the team wasn't on the right path to make the next step, so ownership decided to go with a rebuilding program after regressing to 75-87 in 1975.

1974 All Topps Rookie Team

1976 would be the year that the Expos went with youth.  The immediate hit was 107 losses and the loss of their new manager Karl Kuel by the latter part of the season.  Charlie Fox would be brought on for the final 6 weeks, but he wasn't able to do much better.  Still the talent was there...albeit young, raw and directionless.  1976 saw the Expos realize that Gary Carter was going to be their catcher of the future, not the pedestrian Barry Foote.  Larry Parrish showed signs of a power bat at the hot corner and future HOF'er Andre Dawson, who arrived as a late season call up showed glimpses of what type of stud player he was going to become.  Steve Rogers, who spent 1976 pitching his heart out without much run support, firmly put his grip on being the team's ace starter.

The foundation was there for this team to grow steadily into one of the top teams in the NL during the late 70's and early 80's.

My goal here is to chronicle the growing pains of 1976 and to try as hard as I can to not lose 100 games.  It's going to be tough, but it's going to be a lot of fun, because I can see the "light at the end of the tunnel".