ST. LOUIS — The road-trippers are hard to miss as they step onto the Busch Stadium field while the Cardinals take batting practice Tuesday afternoon. Three of the four in this fathers-and-sons group sport distinctive red-white-and-blue Montreal Expos caps, and one of the kids is wearing an Andre Dawson jersey.
In St. Louis. For a game between the Pirates and Cardinals.
From left: Steven White, Coby White, Max Kadanoff and Mitch Kadanoff (Ryan Fagan/SN)
MORE: 42 images of Jackie Robinson | Ranking caps from the '70s: Expos' is well-regarded
So, of course the question has to be asked: Why?
“We’re die-hard Expos fans who miss baseball,” says Mitch Kadanoff, who is there with his son, Max.
Kadanoff and his friend Steven White help coach the baseball team their sons play for in Montreal. “We try to keep the sport alive,” White says.
“Back-to-back championships,” Kadanoff adds with a grin.
But Montreal doesn’t have its Expos anymore, as you know, and hasn’t since the franchise moved to Washington, D.C., and became the Nationals before the 2005 season. So for these two baseball-loving fathers to give their 13-year-old sons the authentic baseball experience — the exhibition games the Blue Jays have played in Montreal don’t really count because they're not regular-season games — they have to do a bit of traveling.
And they’re on a pretty amazing road trip right now, a six-games-in-six-days journey that will take them to five different ballparks.
“It’s been great for them,” White says, looking at his son, Coby. “He’s been coming to the park every day, just praying for a baseball to come near him.”
Coby is wearing his Expos cap — with “COBY” stitched on the back — and the Dawson jersey he was given for his bar mitzvah. He is wearing his glove even while he's standing behind the batting cage, because you never know. He tells of the ball Max got at Wrigley Field a few days ago: “The ball hit off the roof and nobody saw it, and he was the only one in the stadium who saw it, so he reached down and got it.”
This trip is Coby’s first taste of major league baseball. A couple years ago, Mitch and Max did a baseball swing that included home contests for the Yankees, Phillies, Orioles and Nationals and a trip to the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y.
For this one, they had to find the right grouping of games between the boys’ camp in July and the start of school in September. The schedule worked out perfectly.
They flew into Chicago to start with a couple of games at Wrigley Field. The Friday and Saturday contests were intense matchups between the Cubs and the Giants, a series that will have big-time implications in the wild-card race; the Cubbies won both of them in that memorable setting. “Wrigley Field, to me, is the No. 1 baseball stadium in America,” Kadanoff says. “Fenway’s No. 2.”
On Sunday, they rented a car and drove up to Milwaukee for a game the host Brewers won in dramatic fashion against the Cardinals. On Monday, it was back to Chicago for an Angels-White Sox game at U.S. Cellular Field. Then, a train to St. Louis for Tuesday’s contest. On Wednesday, they’re taking the train to Kansas City to watch the Tigers and Royals play.
How great is that?
Talking with the dads, it’s obvious how much baseball means to them. White brings up Pedro Martinez’s near-perfect game in 1994, the unforgettable moment when Reggie Sanders charged the mound after Martinez hit him with a pitch that broke up his potential perfecto in the eighth inning.
“I was at that game. When (Sanders) charged the mound in a perfect game … That made no sense to me whatsoever,” White says. “I was also at the 'Blue Monday' game (Game 5 of the 1981 NLCS). Steve Rogers, in the ninth inning, against the Dodgers and Rick Monday came up and knocked us out of the one-game. I was a kid, 14 years old. I was their age.”
Kadanoff recalls a similarly devastating moment at the end of the 1980 season. The Expos were a game behind the Phillies with two to play against Philadelphia, and they led 4-3 going into the ninth inning of the season’s penultimate game. The Phillies tied the score on a Bob Boone single and won it in the 11th thanks to a two-run homer by Mike Schmidt.
“I was an 8-year-old boy, and I cried like a baby that night,” Kadanoff says, the pain still in his voice. “Schmidt was an Expos killer, and he did his thing.”
And they still get excited when talking about the great 1994 team.
“The ’94 team was one of the best teams in recent history. They were 74-40 when the strike hit, 34 games over .500,” says Kadanoff, who rattles off that record as quickly as he would his own birthday. “We were flying at the time.”
Of course, the strike ended any World Series dreams they had, and the franchise was never the same. All four are hoping that baseball will one day return to Montreal.
“Our mayor of Montreal, Denis Coderre, loves baseball,” Kadanoff says. “He just met with (MLB commissioner) Rob Manfred, met him at the All-Star Game and is really pushing for a team.”
In fact, they just met Tim Raines at a recent Bring Back the Expos event in Montreal.
“We’ve been attending those functions and contributing whatever we can,” White says.
Kadanoff adds: “We’re first in line for season tickets if it ever happens.”
