Bye-Bye, Expos

When a transfer is worse than a death

Wikimedia Commons by Eric Molina

Man, how depressing was this? A Google search for “Washington Nationals” some twenty years ago revealed their official site with an address of *www.montrealexpos.com. Even when I was trying to forget my old team, they still *managed to electronically pop up from the grave.

This was not how I hoped it would be. With the fall 2004 announcement of the death of Nos Amours, I figured I’d grieve awhile and then get on with my life. After all, it’s not like I was a devoted fan. I think the last game I attended was fifteen years ago.

But then March arrived, and the papers were full of stories of the beginning of spring training. You know the drill. Hope springs eternal. Every team has an equal chance. The boys of summer are back.

Well, my boys of summer weren’t back. They were gone forever. Or at least they had moved to Washington, D. C., which, in my mind, was even worse.

You see, if the franchise had just died, it wouldn’t have been so bad. After a few months, there would have been no traces of the Expos. They would have quickly disappeared from our collective memory.

But just as I thought I had gotten over them, I had to listen to the reports from Viera, Florida, about the Washington Nationals’ spring training camp. Frank Robinson had been hired as manager. The pitchers and catchers had already arrived at camp. The season was just around the corner.

All this was just too painful. It was kind of like re-living the death of a loved one over and over. I figured the previous fall’s announcement of the demise of the Expos would bring some closure. But like the spring burial that follows the winter death, there always seems to be one more reminder of the loss.

I thought that I’d already gone through the five stages of grief. After all, I’d been denying the inevitable demise of the Expos for years and blaming everyone and everything from the owners to the fans to the stadium.

When the end was near, I bargained for just one more chance, even promising to whatever baseball gods there may be that I would absolutely, definitely, positively go to an Expos home game if they were given one more reprieve. Then came the depression of realizing the plug had really been pulled.

According to Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, the fifth and final stage is acceptance. Well, I’ve got news for the good doctor; she was wrong. Acceptance may be the last stage when it comes to loved ones and pets. But when it comes to a favorite team transferred to another city, there’s a sixth, painful, never-ending stage called agony.

Just when one thinks they’ve let go of the memories and accepted the end, there’s another newspaper article or news broadcast about the Washington Nationals, formerly the Montreal Expos. And check out their roster: Will Cordero, Jose Vidro, Brad Wilkerson, Tony Armas, Livan Hernandez. Sound familiar? Yes, but they’re not Expos anymore; they’re Nationals.

Think about the pain you feel when one of your favorite players is traded to another team. Now multiply that pain by thirty. Then double it since you don’t get anybody in return, not even a player to be named later.

I tried surfing the official site of the Washington Nationals, but it was just too painful. Their history is the history of the Montreal Expos. Their past is my past, except they haven’t lived it. For once, I wished that some Big Brother of baseball had simply rewritten history and wiped the slate clean.

In fairness, I don’t think Dr. Kubler-Ross anticipated a situation like this. After all, she was just dealing with human beings, not sports franchises. I don’t think she had an answer for the death by transfer of a professional sports franchise.

As far as I could see, there would be no end to my suffering. Every spring training report from the Nationals’ camp would remind me of what used to be. And every Opening Day game, instead of rekindling my faith in what might be, would instead remind me of what now is never going to happen.

About the best I could hope for was that the Nationals would turn out to be perennial cellar dwellers, the clowns of the National League. Then I could at least console myself in the knowledge that the World Series championship the Expos never won was always a lost cause.

But what if the Nationals actually won games? What if they went on to win their division and then the pennant and then the World Series, which they did in 2019? Every step of their championship drive was a painful reminder of what might have, could have, should have been.

I’d like to be a good sport about it and wish the Nationals and their fans the best of luck. But I don’t think I’d be sincere. Instead, I’d like to extend them my heartfelt wish for a season of dropped balls, wild pitches and doubleheader losses. After all, if there’s one thing that baseball has taught me, it’s that misery loves company.

Thanks for reading my story.

[embed]Personal Sports-Team Allegiances The psychology of fandommedium.com