Noting the importance of baseball in Montreal, Toronto Blue Jays catcher Russell Martin said ‘My models were the Expos, my dream of playing in this stadium comes from them. If the Expos hadn’t been there, maybe I would have had a different dream.’Paul Chiasson/The Canadian Press
There is a strange comfort in sameness.
For a big-leaguer who used to watch baseball games at Olympic Stadium as an awestruck kid, very little has changed. The Metro station under the park looks the same, the old team store – shuttered when the Expos shipped out to D.C. just over 10 years ago – is in its familiar spot, and the ticket windows are essentially identical to those that first opened for the 1976 Summer Olympics.
There's still way too much concrete; it's the same old dowdy monolith.
And Toronto Blue Jays catcher Russell Martin isn't sure he's ever seen anything so beautiful. "It's kind of surreal – I still remember being 12 years old and being a fan, and here I am wearing a big-league uniform," said Martin, who spent his formative years in Montreal.
There was an element of pilgrimage to Martin's return to the Big O. He took the Metro, like he used to with his father Russell Sr., jumping on at the Snowdon stop in the west-side Notre-Dame-de-Grâce neighbourhood for the trek east. (Read the game recap here)
"My first real memories of baseball were really just taking the Metro with my dad … he'd fill my head with stories and scenarios, you know, bottom of the ninth, 3-2 count, you're at the plate, that stuff," Martin said. "He's the one who made me believe the dream could become reality."
Most kids entertain sporting fantasies of one sort or another – basically every professional athlete is embodying their dream (or their parents').
Somehow that doesn't make it any less special when it actually happens. Martin was visibly overjoyed at finding himself in the bowels of the old ballpark, talking to a massive throng of cameras and reporters in both official languages.
"My models were the Expos, my dream of playing in this stadium comes from them. If the Expos hadn't been there, maybe I would have had a different dream," he said.
There has been a marked resurgence in Expos nostalgia over the past three or four years, spurred primarily by the still quixotic efforts of the Montreal Baseball Project, fronted by former Expo Warren Cromartie, to bring the sport back to the city. They can be easy to miss in the ocean of Habs gear, but if you squinted a little, you could see the baseballistas on Montreal's sun-flooded sidewalks on Friday.
Ball caps, throwback jerseys, hoodies – vestiges of the dear, departed Expos and their stylized red-white-and-blue logo.
Until recently, Martin would have been among them.
"I cleaned out my closets not that long ago, so I don't know how much stuff I have left," he said. "I have pictures, though. There's one of me when I'm really little, maybe two or three, and I'm wearing a cheap little plastic catcher's skull-cap – you know, the kind that breaks when you drop it. I think they used to serve the large ice creams in them. In the picture, I'm wearing one of those and I'm swinging a bat. I don't know where that hat's gotten to, I'd love to find it."
The spring resurgence of baseball swag on Montreal streets is in danger of becoming an annual tradition. After drawing a total of 96,000 fans to watch a pair of exhibitions between the Toronto Blue Jays and New York Mets a year ago, a similar number is expected to attend this year's two-gamer between the Jays and Cincinnati Reds.
Baseball loves its myth-making narratives, so of course the elder Martin, a musician, was on hand at the ballpark Friday night – he played the pregame national anthem on his sax.
The rest of Martin's contingent – his mother, his step-sister and various relatives and friends (including his personal barber, brought in to sharpen up his teammates' 'do's) – was in attendance too.
But the evening's symbolism extended beyond the social circle of one of its native sons.
Those who continue to entertain the dream of Major League Baseball returning to Montreal couldn't have lucked into more inspiring standard-bearers than Martin and fellow Canadian Joey Votto, the Reds' star ("I never got to play against the Montreal Expos, but this is the next best thing," said the beaming Toronto native).
Though the obstacles remain daunting – no one has yet stepped forward with the $1-billion or so it will take to build a new stadium and acquire a team – Cromartie and his clutch of true believers soldier on. They held a well-attended gala during the week, and with the Blue Jays' continuing efforts to brand themselves as Canada's team by staging exhibition games here, it will keep the city on the MLB radar.
It will help that baseball's new commissioner Rob Manfred, in an interview with The Canadian Press, made encouraging noises concerning a Montreal candidacy this week – although the essential barrier, the promise of a new stadium, is a tricky one to overcome.
Martin and several teammates were loudly cheered when the Bell Centre scoreboard camera turned to them during Thursday's NHL tilt between the Montreal Canadiens and Washington Capitals. Then the crowd went into a minor frenzy when former Expos slugger Vladimir Guerrero was introduced.
The Olympic Stadium welcome for Guerrero – feted alongside former teammate Orlando Cabrera before Friday's game – was also rapturous.
So there's measurable interest in baseball this week in Montreal. Even if the prospects are dim, it's fun to nourish the dream.
Martin said the fact most Jays' games this season will be carried on the French-language TVA Sports channel this summer should spur interest in the game at the grassroots level. And that's really the point of the enterprise: More players mean more fans and more fans mean more selling points to present to baseball's bigwigs.
"There's still a passion for baseball in this city," Martin said, adding: "The beautiful thing about baseball is it creates emotions, whether you're playing on the field or a fan. It's something you can share with friends, it can be a father-son moment. They become stories, and life is all about the stories you can pass on."