Our Loves: The Saga of the Montreal Expos – A Documentary by Robbie Hart

baseball
May 2, 2024
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The documentary begins with a quote from the British poet Alfred Tennyson which captures the state of mind in which the entire film is immersed: “It is better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all. »

At the turn of the 2000s, Montreal filmmaker Robbie Hart had already devoted five years to making a first documentary simply titled Nos Amours, which followed the efforts that had then been made in vain to keep the Expos in Montreal. Twenty years after the baseball team moved to Washington, he is doing it again today with another documentary, this time entitled Nos Amours. The saga of the Montreal Expos. There followed another ten years of equally unsuccessful efforts to bring back even half a team.

Hope

This new story begins when a former star player of the team, Warren Cromartie, becomes the standard bearer for the return of the Expos starting in 2012. The expressive ex-outfielder will one day pass the baton to a group of people from business run by Stephen Bronfman, Charles’ son, who established the first major league baseball team outside the United States in Montreal in 1969.

It shows what the new stadium they dreamed of would have looked like downtown, at Peel Basin. We see how the comeback project seemed to gain momentum with the holding of pre-season matches in Montreal in a packed Olympic Stadium.

I don’t think there’s been a more unlucky team than the Expos

We also recall how we ended up being convinced by the idea of a team in shared custody with the city of Tampa Bay, in Florida, until the monks of major baseball killed it in 2022. And buried , once again, the hopes of Quebec supporters.

love

The 90-minute film reviews some of the highlights from the team’s 36 seasons. We see Rusty Staub, Gary Carter, the incredible team led by Felipe Alou, and Youppi in action again. We also find several former star players, such as Andre Dawson, Bill “Spaceman” Lee, John Wetteland, Larry Walker, Moise Alou and Cliff Floyd, who have aged, like the memory of their exploits.

They are accompanied by other actors in the drama, journalists, elected officials and simple supporters, who all have to tell at least one childhood memory, a precious moment or an anecdote which links them personally to the old baseball team.

It is also an opportunity to rekindle old wounds. The fateful ninth-inning home run by Dodgers player Rick Monday, which slammed the door to the World Series of baseball on the Expos in a decisive game in October 1981. The strike that forced the first cancellation of the history of this same World Series during a 1994 season until then dominated by Montreal. The incomprehensible sale of players from this dream team the day after this terrible twist of fate. The revenue sharing system that arrived too late in major league baseball. The duplicity of American businessman Jeffrey Loria and the naivety of his Quebec partners which led to the departure of the club.

“I don’t think there has been a more unlucky team than the Expos,” sports journalist Philippe Cantin says in the documentary. Our former colleague at Le Devoir Jean Dion spoke of a team apparently “doomed to come close”.

To nostalgia

We might have expected to see many more extracts of matches and spectacular plays in the film. Instead, we are often treated to images from different corners of the city and a multitude of testimonies, in English and French.

“I wanted to pay a cinematic tribute to Montreal. Because the story I wanted to tell was above all social,” says Robbie Hart, who has more than 60 documentary films to his credit. “It’s a love story that spans almost 40 years and shows the incredible unifying power of sport. And since, once you have loved, you can continue to love forever, it is normal that many people still remain attached to the Expos. »

Perhaps the memory of their exploits and the hope of their return are gradually fading, leaving only nostalgia behind. But it does not matter. “It’s something that will continue to live with us for a long time. »

The sixty-year-old cannot explain why the Expos still do not have “a park, or a square, or a street in their name in Montreal”. “They will at least have my film. »

Still hope

The documentary will be shown in the coming days in the Montreal region, in Guzzo cinemas as well as at the Musée and Beaubien cinemas. Its author also intends to be able to show it elsewhere in Quebec.

This is not the first time that the documentary maker has decided to make a second film on the same subject several years later to see what happened to his main characters. “You will tell me that, in the case of my stories on the Expos, I am already in two takes. But who knows? Perhaps one day I will make a third film, which will tell the story of the arrival in Montreal of a new professional minor league baseball team, like the Montreal Royals were in the time of Jackie Robinson or like the Rocket of Montreal in hockey today? Who knows what could happen? It’s not over until it’s over. »