Baseball: Au Jeu!

It was enough to excite the coolest gérant. Right off Mack Jones, the slugging voltigeur, hit a circuit. A few but sur balles later, he collected his fourth and fifth points produits with his second straight coup sur. But then John Bateman let a faux ballon pop out of his mitaine de receveur and the trouble began. An erreur here, a simple there and Dan McGinn, the ace lanceur de relève, was rushed to the rescue. But by then it was a whole new joute.

So it went last week as the Montreal Expos and the St. Louis Cardinals played the first major league baseball game outside the U.S. If the bilingual announcer in Montreal's Jarry Park sounded slightly strange to the American players, it was no less so for the Canadian spectators. Before the game the loudspeakers repeatedly boomed in English and French: "If your seat has not been installed, please be patient."

Trouble was, the $3,000,000 program to increase the seating in the park from 3,000 to 30,000 seats is still not complete, and right up until game time Expo General Manager Jim Fanning and a squad of ushers were frantically setting up 6,000 folding chairs. They should have given one to the catchers. Mired in muck up to their ankles, their position was the sloppiest on a field that had been turned into a lumpy, bumpy pasture by the spring thaw. During the day the pitcher's mound sank by a good five inches. Expo Catcher Bateman only half kiddingly suggested that he and the pitchers "wear elevator shoes to stay above ground."

Sign Wavers. Though the field was sinking, the spirit of the Montreal fans was not. Wearing the gaudy red, white and blue souvenir cap of the Expos, they turned out 29,184-strong for the historic opening day. But then, neither baseball nor big crowds are new to Montreal. Back in 1948, when it was the home of the top farm team of the Brooklyn Dodgers, the Montreal Royals drew 477,664, eclipsing the gate of at least one major league team that year. Even so, last week's game had all the aura of a new and extraordinary happening. As Mayor Jean Drapeau posed to throw the ball, local photographers shouted to him: "Shoot the puck!"

From the first cry of "au jeu" (play ball), the game was in fact extraordinary. For one thing, the Expos managed to set some kind of freak record by committing three errors on three balls hit by the same player in the same inning.* For another, they came from behind and defeated the Cardinals 8 to 7. The resulting delirium was just too much for one group of fans who excitedly waved a sign that read: EXPOS—WORLD SERIES OR BUST!