The Summer of 1981 was about many things for me. My Dad was a salesman at the time, and his runs took him all over Eastern Ontario (here in Canada). All during that summer I was allowed to accompany him on his sales runs, boy, did I feel important.
That summer was also about the strike in baseball. Talk about weird. How could there be no baseball during the summer months ? When there *was* baseball, that summer was also about Fernando Valenzuela. A guy that sure didn't look like a great pitcher, he had one doozy of a rookie season for the Dodgers. I still have an old dog-eared July '82 issue of Baseball Digest with him on the front cover.
And most of all, that summer was about what happened in the autumn. Montreal made it to the National League Championship Series and were a game away from making it to the World Series against the Yankees. Until Jim Fanning made that goofy move of bringing in Steve Rogers to face Rick Monday.
Watching the clip on YouTube, years later, the same sad emotions come back. I feel like I'm an 11-year old boy, all over again. I can almost feel myself sitting on the couch in my parents' living room, having rushed home early from school to see the last half of the ballgame.
Well, all past nostalgia aside, this project is all about erasing and obliterating that home run, at least in my own mind. The 1982 season was a season of great, great expectations for Les Expos. The All-Star Game was going to be in Montreal, and heck, the Expos even had AL OLIVER starting at first base ! Having come as close as they did, and having the talent that they did, they were expected to make yet another run for it all, and this time they were supposed to pull it off. But, they didn't.
This is my chance to brush Jim Fanning aside, and to make it right.
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