Raines Makes Return to Montreal

Tim Raines wasn’t prepared for the deafening cheers from the usually quiet crowd when he stepped to the plate in his first game back in Montreal.

For Raines, it was like being in the World Series and batting with two outs in the bottom of the ninth and the winning run on base.

“It was that type of ovation,” said Raines, who spent his first 12 seasons with the Expos before returning this year at age 41.

Raines has been in the World Series, winning it twice with the New York Yankees. But his comeback from lupus might be an even more impressive feat for one of the best leadoff hitters in baseball history.

And the thunderous reception in Montreal last week might have been the most gratifying moment for the man known as The Rock.

“I had tears in my eyes,” said his wife, Virginia. “I knew I was going to get goosebumps, I had those, but then I started crying. It was unbelievable, is what it was. It was fantastic.”

The cheers continued throughout Raines’ first at-bat. New York Mets third baseman Robin Ventura, Raines’ former teammate with the Chicago White Sox, gestured to him to tip his cap to the crowd to settle things down.

“But I didn’t want to take my hat off,” Raines said. “I didn’t want them to stop doing it because I felt that it was a part of the game where we needed a lift.”

That’s what the Expos got as Raines drew a four-pitch walk, spurring a Montreal comeback that began a four-game winning streak.

Although Raines is one of the friendliest and happiest ballplayers in the majors, his will and determination are what truly distinguish his career.

And Raines needed all the willpower he could muster after missing 1 1/2 years recovering from lupus.

“Mentally you have to be a giant to do what he did, and what he’s doing now,” said Expos manager Felipe Alou, who was Montreal’s third-base coach when Raines made his debut in 1979. “There’s an incredible loss of skills when you’re out of the game as long as he was. And he didn’t stop playing because of an injury. He was sick.”

Indeed, Raines’ career appeared to have ended on July 19, 1999, when the Oakland Athletics placed him on the disabled list with a kidney inflammation. He was subsequently diagnosed with lupus, a potentially deadly immune disease.

“Lupus took me away from the game, and I wasn’t ready to give it up,” Raines said. “That drove me back.”

Nobody, other than Raines, understood the odds against him better than his wife.

“He didn’t have any muscle and he was up to about 225 pounds from the lupus,” Virginia Raines said. “With all the medication he was taking, his body was so weak that he couldn’t do much.”

Gradually, Raines was able to reduce his medication to the point where he now just takes three pills a day, along with vitamin supplements.

Raines tried to come back in the spring of 2000 with the New York Yankees, with whom he had won World Series titles in 1996 and 1998. He retired, however, after injuring his foot during camp.

He also tried out for the U.S. Olympic team, only to be cut at the last minute.

Raines’ playing days appeared to be over last August as he flew to Montreal to be inducted into the team’s hall of fame.

That’s when he approached the Expos about a possible comeback.

“This is where I learned how to play the game of baseball,” Raines said. “I felt that I owed it to myself and to the fans here in Montreal that if I had a chance, this would be the place that I’d come back.”

In his second go-round with the Expos, Raines quickly made new friends, taking young outfielders Milton Bradley and Peter Bergeron under his wing.

Bradley’s first memories of Raines--the ballplayer--are those of “a guy with a jerry-curl sliding at home for the Yankees that I’ve got on a baseball card.” Bergeron’s recollections reach back a little further.

“I don’t want to make him sound old or anything, but when I was younger and growing up in Massachusetts I made a couple of trips to Montreal, and I remember watching him play,” Bergeron said.

Three months ago Virginia Raines wouldn’t have bet on her husband making it, but Tim’s dedication ultimately convinced her.

“He put his mind to it and sure enough, it happened,” she said. “When I saw him get up at 6 o’clock in the morning--Tim never gets up at 6 o’clock in the morning!--to go and work out, I knew that he could do it.”

Having proved he still belongs in the majors, Raines hopes there’s enough left in him to stay until son Tim Jr., a Baltimore prospect, makes it, too.

“That is the one special thing in his heart because he talks about it all the time,” Virginia Raines said.

Raines knows that he might have to stick around more than one season to play in the majors at the same time as his son.

“Well, if I have to, so be it,” Raines said, his face bursting into his trademark grin. “Right now, I’m hoping that he can get there this year, just in case.”