Expos Can Think About Playoff Tickets

With a flick of the dial, the Montreal Expos were ushered into the National League East pennant race. Seconds earlier, the radio speaker atop the row of extra lockers in the visitors’ clubhouse was blaring oldies but goodies. Suddenly, the music was interrupted for an update from Chicago.

According to the live broadcast carried by WFAN, the Pirates were clinging to an 8-7 advantage in the ninth inning of a game they once led, 8-1. The Expos, who had joined the ranks of contenders virtually overnight, listened to the news with studied nonchalance late yesterday afternoon. They continued about their business -- playing cards, perusing the papers, studying their gloves -- while they waited, in vain, for the rain falling on Shea Stadium to cease.

One of the club’s veterans was perturbed by the intrusion. “Turn that off,” pitcher Dennis Martinez said to no one in particular. “Put some music on. We’ll find out soon enough on the scoreboard.”

But the sounds of the game continued to fill the room. The first two Cubs went out in order before Ryne Sandberg doubled. No one wearing an Expos blue road uniform looked up. Then again, none spoke, either. It might have been the first hint of pennant pressure for the outsiders from Canada.

Until this moment, they were nothing more than spoilers. They hadn’t been invited to participate in Monday’s coin flip for a possible one-game playoff at the end of the season. They hadn’t begun to print tickets for the National League championship series. They weren’t even included in that perennial late-season update -- Pennant Race at a Glance -- churned out by the wire services until they completed a weekend sweep of the Pirates. “It was just the other day,” Tim Raines said, “we found ourselves in that little box.”

He thought it was a blessing. “I think the lack of media attention helped this team,” the left fielder said. “The attention has been on the Pirates because they’ve been on top so long and on the Mets, as well. I think the majority of baseball people still think the Mets are going to win.”

A year ago, the focus was on the Expos. Finding themselves in the lead in midsummer, they decided to make the big push and traded three pitching prospects to Seattle for Mark Langston, the left-hander coveted by many major-league teams, including the Mets. It backfired. The offense failed and the pitching eventually crumbled. Montreal lost 17 of its last 24 games and 37 of 55 after Aug. 3 for a distant fourth-place finish.

“Last September was the longest month,” said Dave Dombrowski, the general manager. “It seemed to go on forever. You didn’t even want to talk about the future.”

There were those who considered the situation and decided there was no future. At season’s end, not only did Langston file for free agency and ride off into a Canadian sunset but so did two other starting pitchers, Bryn Smith and Pascual Perez, and the regular right fielder, Hubie Brooks.

“You read the papers and then look at what’s happening,” Raines recalled, “and you certainly can’t be optimistic. You lose three damn good pitchers and the starting right fielder, you’ve got to wonder.”

Much to their own surprise, the repatched Expos started fast this season with a sprinkling of rookies in the regular lineup and some discards, notably Zane Smith and Oil Can Boyd, in the starting rotation. Still, they trailed the Bucs by 10 games in early August, at which time they decided to concentrate on next season. Dombrowski traded the reconditioned Smith to Pittsburgh for three players, including two outstanding prospects.

Lo and behold, despite the promotion of more rookies, Montreal stepped up the pace. Still, the Expos were a long, long shot until they stifled Pittsburgh on nine hits over three games in Montreal last weekend. At the same time, they gained two games on the Mets, who won only one of three against the Phillies.

Quietly, they had sneaked into the pennant race. “It snuck up on us, too,” said Tim Wallach, the dependable third baseman. The timing couldn’t have been better. Fresh from beating the leaders, they came into New York for three games against the second-place team.

Were they legitimate contenders? Well, in the first game on Tuesday night, they carried a 3-0 lead into the eighth inning, were stunned by Darryl Strawberry’s three-run homer and squeezed out a run in the ninth against the foremost relief pitcher in the league, John Franco. That left the Expos 4 1/2 games behind Pittsburgh, four behind New York. Thursday’s doubleheader sweep of the Mets brought the Expos within two games of second place.

“There’s no reason to be tight when you’re 10 games out,” Wallach reasoned. “We could have been tight last night after what happened in the bottom of the eighth. When that happened this time of year (in past seasons), we packed it in.”

Not this year. “If we were going to fold,” he said, “Strawberry’s home run would have done it.”

Instead, this collection of overachievers rallied to win, 4-3. That performance was in sharp contrast to the tradition established by previous Expos clubs that tripped over their own expectations. A decade ago, they were billed as the team of the ‘80s. After only one division title, in the strike-interrupted season of 1981 no less, people took that to mean they could be counted on for 80-something victories a season, nothing more.

But now it is 1990 and the Expos are a team that cannot be dismissed. Although the team has been put up for sale by owner Charles Bronfman and no free agent wants to play in the European-accented city for diminished Canadian dollars, the Expos press on.

Before Sunday’s game, Dombrowski was asked by his own people when the organization was going to print playoff tickets. “I told them,” he recalled Wednesday evening, “‘Maybe if we win the next four.”’

Start the presses.