Baseball’s Forbidding City : A Player Can Get Lost in Montreal--and That’s What Some Want

You remember Mike Aldrete. He was an outfielder, a Stanford graduate who once played for his hometown San Francisco Giants.

He hit .325 for the Giants during their 1987 division championship year. He did even better with his smile and good looks.

He was voted the Bay Area’s most eligible bachelor. He drew standing ovations in department stores. He was one of the most popular players on a very popular team.

Sure, you remember Mike Aldrete. You ever wonder where he is?

If you haven’t looked lately, it’s because nobody has.

Aldrete has moved to where the fans who don’t cheer him, in a town where few talk to him, while he pays extra taxes for the privilege.

He has not earned one cent in promotional money, which netted him nearly $30,000 a year in San Francisco. In his new home, there is not a big market for players who can’t speak French. He has lost his glove and shoe contracts, basic for most big-leaguers. The manufacturers figure, why advertise to people who don’t buy many baseball gloves or shoes?

His young wife has lost her cool, once leaving $100 worth of groceries on a counter because the store manager wouldn’t accept her mixed currency. Together they could be in danger of losing their good credit rating because a shipment of bills from California recently took two weeks to clear customs.

Mike Aldrete has become unknown and seemingly unloved. He has gone through a career change without changing careers. And why?

The answer, as any baseball player who understands no-trade clauses will tell you, can be found in a word:

Montreal.

The city whose name evokes images of romance and excitement reminds baseball players of two other words:

Minor leagues.

“This is actually something I think more ballplayers should go through,” Aldrete said. “I think all of us could use a little humility.”

Aldrete emphasized that he does not want to criticize the town. But among baseball players, he is one of the few who do not.

There may be more jokes about playing in Cleveland or Seattle or for George Steinbrenner. But Montreal is baseball’s true forbidding city.

Top free agents refuse to play there. Some of the Expos’ top players have refused to stay there. Others put clauses in their contract so they can’t be traded there.

Those who remain belong to that rare breed of athletes who do not crave bright lights and publicity.

“I like Montreal because people see me, know me and then say, ‘big deal,’ ” said reliever Tim Burke, who is a celebrity in his off-season home of Omaha, Neb. “I get tugged at so much in Omaha, I actually go to Montreal during the winter to get away.

“Funny, huh? Most players leave their team’s towns to escape the pressure, I go there to escape it.”

Burke joins Tim Raines, Tim Wallach, Andres Galarraga, Spike Owen and Dennis Martinez as regulars who have signed long-term deals with the Expos because of love of privacy mixed with loyalty.

But recently it has been hard to convince any other stars to stay. Over the winter Montreal lost outfielder Hubie Brooks to the Dodgers, pitcher Mark Langston to the Angels, pitcher Pascual Perez to the New York Yankees and pitcher Bryn Smith to the St. Louis Cardinals.

This has made for continued mediocrity. There has been no National League pennant in any of the club’s 21 seasons. The Expos won the National League East once, in the strike-torn 1981 season, but lost the championship series against the Dodgers on Rick Monday’s memorable home run.

In seven of the eight years since then, they have finished either third or fourth. The team they will bring to Dodger Stadium tonight, less than a week after sweeping the Dodgers in Montreal, is tied for in second place, 4 1/2 games behind first-place Pittsburgh.

But it will take much to stay there. In tonight’s lineup, the Expos are expected to have rookie Delino DeShields playing second base, rookie Marquis Grissom in center field and rookie Larry Walker in right field. In the bullpen will be three other guys who weren’t with the team last year. There is also a one new starter.

“Every spring training, I’ve got a new club,” Manager Buck Rodgers said. “That makes it tough.”

Added third baseman Wallach: “It gets harder every year. It seems like it’s not until July or August when we finally know what kind of team we have.”

And then the following winter, that team changes again.

Last season the Expos replaced those lost free agents with Boston free agent pitcher Oil Can Boyd.

“If other teams need to have a certain hole filled, like at pitcher or third base, they just snap their fingers and they get it filled with a free agent,” Rodgers said. “We can’t do that. We have to go to our farm system and start all over again.”

All agree, the problem lies not in in the foreign streets and accents of Montreal, but in the dark corners of the baseball mind.

The modern baseball player is traditionally as adventuresome as the pinstripe suit he wears and the suburb where he lives. He does not want the hassle of a foreign experience. Montreal hits him in the helmet with one.

--None of the current players speak French, the language of 70% of their fans and four out of every five people in the province of Quebec.

The players can’t easily tell if the biggest newspaper in town is insulting them. They can’t easily tell if their fans are cursing them.

Likewise, the fans can’t easily ask for autographs or handshakes and small talk.

When shortstop Owen went on a winter publicity tour with a couple of teammates after being here in the winter of 1988, the outgoing Texan was amazed at what he didn’t find.

“It was like nobody could talk to us,” Owen said. “We would be asked a question through a translator, and we would answer it through a translator. We didn’t really get to know anybody.”

Olympic Stadium is the only park in the country where the home team can’t read everything on the scoreboard, or even leave the clubhouse and easily order something from the concession stands.

Anyone for a bag of “ arachides en ecales ?” How about some nice “ poutine ?”

The club offers French lessons during trips, during which players could learn enough to order potato chips and french fries with cheese without asking the vendor. But as the season wears on, with many players wondering if they will return for another summer, class attendance decreases.

“I think that if I lived in a foreign country, I would try to speak their language so I knew what people thought of me,” said Jacques Doucet, an Expo radio announcer who gives the lessons. “But the players just don’t seem to have the time.”

Said Dave Dombrowski, the club’s young general manager: “If a player ever learned to speak French, I guarantee you that the promotional opportunities for him would be limitless.”

Currently, any promotional opportunities are rare, mostly because of the language barrier. Including everything from the standard car given to players by a local dealership, to extra money for wearing a certain batting glove, the players lose money by joining the Expos.

“Players are actors, hams,” Rodgers said. “They respond to applause. We’ve been starring for the public all our lives. It’s hard to be used to suddenly not being in the spotlight.”

--Players and fans also do not speak the same baseball language.

“Our fans are beyond dead, they are frozen solid,” said rookie outfielder Walker, a native of British Columbia.

Translated, Expo fans often sit quietly until a home run or a big strikeout. There is infrequent cheering for little things that players appreciate, such as ground balls that advance a runner or hard slides that break up a double play.

“They watch the ballgame like it was a hockey game,” said Ken Singleton, a former Expo player and one of their television broadcasters. “They wait for something to happen, and then they cheer. There is no sense of anticipation, no rumbling when the 3-4-5 hitters are coming to the plate, nothing like that. And you can bet the players notice it.”

Even Rodgers, who sometimes takes the subway to the stadium and loves the town after spending the last five summers here, said he can feel the fans’ chill.

“The fans have no sense of anticipation, because they don’t know what to anticipate,” Rodgers said. “I will have a guy intentionally walk somebody, and I’ll be booed because the fans don’t know why.”

--Players are daunted by the weather and the hockey.

The winter weather stops many players from living in Montreal year-round. Thus, they spend their summers here never quite feeling at home.

Owen remembers that final stop on that winter publicity tour, in a town called Chicoutimi.

“I wake up in the morning and look out the window and I can’t believe it,” Owen said. “It’s snowing, but it ain’t just snowing, it’s snowing sideways . I still pack up my stuff and go to the hotel lobby and this guy says, ‘You kidding me? We aren’t going anywhere. We are snowbound!’ I thought, ‘Spike, you’re not in Texas anymore.’ ”

Owen also saw his first National Hockey League game on that trip. It was delayed in the second period when the fans littered the ice with trash.

“I think they were mad at the official, or whatever you call him,” Owen said. “But I thought, ‘Man, are all the fans like this up here?’ ”

The players can never escape hockey’s presence. Newspaper and television stations give the Expos second billing until the hockey season ends. And just listen to the Expos’ only Canadian-born player.

“For 13 years, I ate, slept and dreamed hockey,” Walker said. “If I could have made it in hockey, I wouldn’t be here.”

Said Singleton: “Don’t you think it’s hard for the players to know they are playing second fiddle? I know it was hard for me.”

So what is the solution? Can the Expos ever fit in?

Management is certainly trying, mostly by making the current players happy. The Expos provide everything from assistance in paying the extra Canadian taxes to baby-sitting services and outings for the players’ wives.

“They have to work harder now to get players, but they know that, and things around here are changing,” Burke said.

But at least one former Expo who loves the city thinks things will never change.

“The consciousness of most players about Montreal is not going to change,” said Hubie Brooks, who left last season to return to his California home. “And the majority of people in Montreal, when they know you are not from there, their attitude toward you will also not change.

“I’ve never said one bad word about that town, and the people still booed me when I came back, so I know things will never change.”

Some might say the franchise should be moved, particularly since last winter it was offered for sale. But the club’s chairman, Charles Bronfman, has promised that it would stay in local hands.

“A championship, that’s how this thing will change,” Dombrowski said. “People will become much more receptive once we win once. We’ll have to win by taking chances on players, by having the strongest farm system possible. But we can do it.

“All of the little complaints people have about this place, they become big when you don’t win. Once you win, they will become small again. That’s what it will take. Just one championship.”