Asked for Nothing and I Got It in Spades

I've felt unmotivated in my personal pursuits lately and have found any writing to be a huge chore to get through. I feel like it's in part due to me having finished my zine and printed it; my subconscious response to that is been to relax and not do anything because I've accomplished something. It's one of my worst tendencies. I was also so caught up in grant and PhD applications that they were the only thing I thought about when I was outside of work (or at work, for that matter). Since I'm done those now, I feel weird and unfocused. Instead of having a big, tangible goal to work towards, I have vaguer ones like "work on this story" or "work on songs". They're less urgent, so I feel less inclined to work on them and then my interest and skill in writing starts to nosedive.

Even though I got a few things out this month, I'm still feeling guilty about not devoting more time to writing in my spare time. That's good, because that nervousness is often the first step towards getting goals done. Today I was hoping to knock out a self-reflective post in which I could dig into some feelings I've been having, but nothing was coming to me, so instead I'm digging up a draft I have saved to see where an old idea gets me.

One such draft was me reminding myself to reflect on my love of the baseball player Vladimir Guerrero on the occasion that he was elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame. This happened last week, so I suppose I should indulge myself.

Fuckin' Vladdy

As a child, I felt significantly more pride about being Canadian than I do now. This Canadian Pride was enough for me to place an emotional interest in the Montréal Expos, simply because they were one of two Canadian teams in Major League Baseball, and the only team in the National League. Sadly though, my ascent as a ballfan coincided with the demise of Montréal's franchise. While it's debatable if the Expos ever truly experienced "good times", the last breathe of the team was especially sad.

In hindsight, the minor differences between being a baseball fan and a hockey fan in Toronto were funny. To Leafs fans, the Montréal Canadiens were and still are anathema, due to the long rivalry between the two teams. Blue Jays fans, at least more of them, instead felt a kinship with Montréal's oft-ignored baseball team. They were perpetual underdogs constantly fighting against the league and their own ownership. Of all the teams in the league, they were dealt the worst hand. You have to appreciate resilience and the later-year Montréal Expos displayed a tremendous amount of resilience in small batches.

Former Expos and then Marlins owner Jeff Loria is well-known among baseball fans for being a piece of shit. The Expos produced a seemingly endless parade of exciting players (Gary Carter, Andre Dawson, Randy Johnson, Tim Raines, Pedro Martinez, and now Vlad in the Hall of Fame, Larry Walker maybe on his way) and the only thing that kept up with that was the rate at which they sold them to other teams. The one year it looked like Montréal would finally put it all together and maybe win a World Series was also the last time baseball experienced a work stoppage, 1994.

Of all the Expos, the most exciting was by far their right fielder Vladimir Guerrero. He is a Dominican player who at the time was tall and thin, but still muscular, while having impossibly long legs. People like to apply labels like "unconventional" to athletes all the time, but Vlad really was unlike anyone else. He was a giant presence in the batter's box and never wore batting gloves. He hit a shitload of home runs and was one of the most fearsome power hitters of the era, but also swung at everything he saw. People love the image of him hitting a single after the pitch bounced, but I think more impressive is him being able to hit a pitch a foot off the plate in two directions out of the park. Early in his career he was speedy and stole 40 bases in a season, while also having a fucking hose.

It was hard to not like him and as a young boy he quickly became one of my favourite players in the league, Jays included. Every amazing play felt like a slap to Bud Selig's face. The bullshit announce team on the below video exemplifies that.

Forever etched into my mind, but for some reason impossible to find on the internet, is call of a Vladdy home run by the home town Montréal announcers in which one yells "VLADIMIIIIIR! VLADIMIIIIIR!" in a Québécois accent while he circled the bases in his typical gangly style. I thought it was one of the coolest things I had ever seen. 

Towards the end, things for the Expos got especially bad, with the cherry being them playing "home games" in Puerto Rico as an experiment. There were always whispers about how much longer the team would last and Montréal tried its best to support and save the team behind decent 2002 and 2003 teams. Most exciting to me was when they traded for a svelte, in-his-prime Bartolo Colon and made brief noise in the Wild Card race. I think that I wanted Montréal to get a revenge World Series more than a Blue Jays one.

When Major League Baseball announced that Montréal would be moving to Washington DC after the 2004 season, my family made a trip to the city that summer to catch a game at Olympic Stadium before that would be impossible. We spent a couple of days in the city and went to the game on the middle night of our stay. I believe this is the boxscore from that game. Somehow, we had chosen the one game that Vlad had an off-day. I was crushed that I wouldn't get to see him play. I eventually saw him many times as a member of the Los Angeles Angels, Texas Rangers, and Baltimore Orioles (sadly never as a Blue Jay, though I BADLY wanted them to call him up from the minors), but it never scratched the Expo itch that I had while younger. The game was exciting, our seats were close, and the small, but devoted, Montréal crowd was loud and engaged. By the end of the game, the city had won me over, and the memory of fans around me yelling at the field in heavy, throaty French will forever be my memory of what Expos baseball was. I'm fortunate to have that.

Something I like to do is look back on the things I liked a child and draw connections between them and myself now. As a preteen boy I only understood Vlad and the last stand of the Expos as "cool", but now as an adult I like to think that my fascination in them was part of a larger pattern of fighting against power and hating authority. The reason that everyone loves an underdog is because the overdog fucking sucks. Now the Expos are the Nationals now and that team is in the midst of a run of success, but I don't think any ballfans in Montréal take solace in that. I also don't think it will be the same as it was if a baseball team ever does come back to Montréal.

This all being said, the Expos are forever. I'll always hold a place in my heart for the team stuck around as long as they could against seemingly impossible odds and how inspiring I found that. A hearty congratulations to one of my very favourite players ever, Vladimir Guerrero, for making the Hall of Fame. I don't care what cap is on your plaque Vlad, you're an Expo for life.