Up, Up, and Away: The Kid, the Hawk, Rock, Vladi, Pedro, le Grand Orange, Youppi!, the Crazy Business of Baseball, and the Ill-fated but Unforgettable Montreal Expos by Jonah KeriMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
I thought it was a great book. I'm not Canadian or an Expos fan, just a guy who grew up in the 80's and 90's a baseball fan who had some familiarity with the Expos' almost-but-not-quite success during that era.
The history of the Montreal Expos provides a unique subject matter in that there are very few baseball clubs for which you can write a beginning-to-end story. As the first Canadian entrant into major U.S. professional sports, the Expos entered the National League as an expansion franchise in 1969 and played 36 seasons in Montreal before departing for Washington, D.C. in 2005 and taking upon themselves the dreadful moniker of "Nationals". Montreal remains the only MLB team to lose their team in the last 45 years.
Jonah Keri takes you from their humble beginnings playing in Jarry Park (a supposed short-term solution which wound up hosting the team for nearly a decade), through their prosperous years in the 1980s and 1990s, and on through their ultimate demise in the early part of the century. Throughout the book, he provides various reasons for the Expos' failure which prove that although fielding a talented ballclub is an important element, it doesn't necessarily guarantee success. A successful franchise needs political support, investment from the business community, and a thriving fan base. When the Expos didn't have any of the three, it was time to go. A little luck also helps, and the Expos certainly didn't have much of that, as proved by the 1994 team which most certainly would have won the World Series, if only it had been played. . .
Keri is not an impartial party to this tale - he grew up an Expos fan and in many cases inserts his first-person accounts of the proceedings. I felt like his fan's perspective made the book come alive. Written by anyone else, it may have just been a dull retelling of news accounts.
The book is more interesting than you would expect for a team that never won anything. If nothing else, you'll learn what the story is behind that mysterious "lb" logo. I had been wondering about that for years.
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