Expos Era in Montreal Ends With 9-1 Loss
MONTREAL - The Expos era in Montreal ended with a 9-1 loss to Florida on Wednesday night, a game delayed for 10 minutes when players were pulled off the field after a fan threw a golf ball that landed near second base.
Hours after baseball announced that the 36-year-old franchise will be moved next season to Washington, D.C., a crowd of 31,395 showed up at Olympic Stadium for its final chance to say farewell.
It was the largest crowd of the year and about four times the season average. Fans were warned in the third inning that the game would be forfeited if anything else was thrown onto the field.
Three plastic bottles were tossed into left field in the sixth, one near Florida's Miguel Cabrera. But the teams remained on the field and no announcement was made. The game was delayed just a couple minutes as the bottles were retrieved by a ball boy.
With two outs in the ninth, a fan jumped onto the field near Florida's on-deck circle and was quickly escorted off by two security guards.
After Terrmel Sledge popped up for the final out, Marlins coach Perry Hill took the ball from third baseman Mike Mordecai and tossed it across the field to Expos manager Frank Robinson.
Montreal coach Claude Raymond stood alone on the field before he was joined by all the Expos as they waved goodbye to fans.
The crowd began standing when the Marlins came to bat in the top of the ninth. Fans, some with tears in their eyes, waved Canadian flags and held up signs. Some were still lingering in the stands 15 minutes after the game ended.
Peter McStravick, an Ottawa native and lifelong Expos fan now living in Boston, held a sign with pictures of commissioner Bud Selig, former team president Claude Brochu and Florida owner Jeffrey Loria, who sold the franchise to the other 29 teams to purchase the Marlins in 2002.
"Expos Hall of Shame," read the sign, "Merci de Rien (Thanks for Nothing.)"
"It's a funeral," said McStravick, who made a five-hour drive to attend the game.
Former Expo Carl Pavano (18-8) set a Marlins record for wins, and Cabrera hit his 32nd homer.
Sun-woo Kim (4-6) lasted only two-plus innings.
Montreal has three games remaining this season, in New York against the Mets. The Expos also played their first game at Shea Stadium in 1969.
With Florida's Jeff Conine at the plate in the third inning, Robinson came out of the dugout, summoned plate umpire Rick Reed and pointed out the golf ball.
Reed, the crew chief, waved all the players into the dugout as the crowd cheered. Security guards lined up along each baseline.
Drawing decent crowds was the problem for the Expos in recent years, prompting baseball to look for a new home.
The last major league team to move was the Washington Senators, who became the Texas Rangers for the 1972 season.
The Senators' final home game was forfeited on Sept. 30, 1971. Fans rushed onto the field with two outs in the ninth inning, upset over owner Bob Short's decision to move the team to Texas.
The Senators were leading the New York Yankees 7-5 when the game was declared a forfeit.
Fans were still streaming into Olympic Stadium during the second inning Wednesday night. The seldom-used upper deck was already filling with spectators as Kim threw the first pitch to Juan Pierre.
Wednesday night's game was the 2,786th for the last-place Expos in Montreal, according to the Elias Sports Bureau. That includes 641 at Jarry Park, where the team started play in 1969, and 2,145 at Olympic Stadium, where the Expos moved in 1977.
The 1994 Expos were honored in a pregame ceremony. That team was 74-40, the best record in baseball, and six games up in the NL East when major league players went on strike, a work stoppage that ultimately resulted in the cancellation of the playoffs and World Series.
Several members of the 1994 team — including current Montreal left-hander Joey Eischen, Florida's Wil Cordero, pitchers Ken Hill, Gil Heredia and Tim Scott — were on hand to sign autographs as fans were allowed to mill about the outfield before the game.
Usherettes Marie-Claude Girard and Dominique Duquette were red-eyed from crying unabashedly as fans filed past them on and off the field.
Many fans brought gloves and played catch on the field, others sat or sprawled on the field's artificial turf. Security was increased, but the crowd cleared the field without any problems when the autograph session ended.
Recorded messages from former Expos Felipe Alou, who managed the team from 1992-01, Cubs slugger Moises Alou and San Francisco's Kirk Rueter and Marquis Grissom, were played on the video scoreboard.
The small group of players were introduced to the crowd before they walked to the outfield wall in left-center field, where they unveiled a banner with the Expos' logo reading, "1994 Meilleure Equipe du Baseball — Best Team in Baseball."
Kim Richardson's rendition of "The Star-Spangled Banner" was initially greeted with boos. Applause soon drowned out the jeers.
Montreal's Tony Batista took an extended curtain call after he came out of the game following the fifth inning. Batista, whose 32 home runs set a team record for third basemen, stepped out of the dugout and thrust both arms up high to the delight of the crowd.
The fans also gave ace Livan Hernandez a loud ovation, as well as the team's English and French broadcasters when they were shown on the video scoreboard during the game.
Farrelly Brothers Film at Fenway Park
BOSTON - It's been a long time since the Boston Red Sox had a Hollywood ending — 86 years, to be exact. The team's history has played more like a horror flick, or considering Bill Buckner, perhaps a comedy of errors. Lately, though, Fenway Park has been the location for a different kind of comedy.
Lifelong Sox fans Peter and Bobby Farrelly have spent the past few weeks here shooting "Fever Pitch," about a guy (Jimmy Fallon) who's torn between the woman he loves (Drew Barrymore) and the baseball team he adores.
The Farrellys, directors of movies including "There's Something About Mary" and "Dumb & Dumber" and natives of Cumberland, R.I., received unprecedented access to Fenway for what they call "the ultimate Red Sox movie."
"I feel like I'm in my childhood now, just being here every day. It's been magical, it really has," 46-year-old Bobby said, sitting along the first-base line during batting practice before a recent showdown between the Sox and the hated New York Yankees.
"Just coming to work — we're in a hotel right around the corner — walk over here to the park every morning, it's great. The worst part is, I'm on the ballpark diet," he added. "It's nothing but hot dogs and peanuts every meal."
"Fever Pitch," based on the Nick Hornby book of the same name about a guy who's obsessed with an English soccer team, already was made into a 1997 movie starring Colin Firth. This new version, written by Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel ("A League of Their Own," "City Slickers"), is due out from 20th Century Fox in summer 2005.
"It was such a beautiful script and a great story and it was about the Red Sox," said Bobby, who usually co-writes the films he and his brother direct. "This one was made for us because we are, like, die-hard Red Sox fans. We wanted to get involved so we lobbied hard."
The strategy worked. Although Fenway is the major league's oldest ballpark — and one of its most fabled — very little has been shot here: a scene from "Field of Dreams," an episode of "The Practice." And with the shooting coinciding with the Sox' late-season charge into the playoffs, the vibe in Fenway is electric even without movie cameras.
Saying yes to the idea was easy, said Chuck Steedman, the Red Sox' senior director of business affairs: "It was the first script that I'd read that was really about us."
The organization had three guidelines for the filmmakers.
"No. 1 is, there's nothing more important to us than the pursuit of the playoffs here. That's paramount," Steedman said. "No. 2 is the integrity of the game — that we can't do anything that's going to screw with the game. And No. 3 is, our playing field is not the best in the world and we can't do anything that's going to tax that."
The Farrellys "were so respectful of that," he added.
"We don't want to interfere with any fans' enjoyment of the game, 'cause people come to watch baseball — they don't come to watch a movie being filmed," Bobby said. "And we didn't want to interfere with any of the players or any of the team or what they're focusing on. And it is a small, confining space, so that was the thing: to try to do it without being noticed."
So when they shot a climactic scene in which Barrymore runs across the outfield and jostles with center fielder Johnny Damon, they waited until after a game against the Tampa Bay Devil Rays.
"We'd been making announcements during the game, and as soon as it was over we asked people to stay for 15 minutes — almost everybody did — and then we shot it and it was a ball for everybody," Peter Farrelly said.
"It helped that they'd won that night. They won 11-1 or 11-2 or something," he said. (Actually, they won 11-4.) "And the fans were jacked up, so it worked great."
As for Damon, he was thrilled to be a part of the scene, as well — and the popular outfielder, who resembles Jim Caviezel in "The Passion of the Christ" with his long, dark hair and scruffy beard, hopes this could be the start of a side career in acting.
"I wish I had a bigger part, maybe a kissing part or something, but you know, I'll take it," Damon said. "I think everyone looks at movie stars as the upper echelon as far as what the best job may be. All the guys are studs, all the girls are beautiful. It'd be nice."
Although the Sox are hoping to win their first World Series since 1918, the Farrellys recently shot a scene that takes place on Opening Day.
Under blue skies and blinding sunshine, extras dressed in Manny Ramirez and Pokey Reese T-shirts milled around outside the Cask n' Flagon, the famous sports bar behind the Green Monster, while real fans dressed in Manny Ramirez and Pokey Reese T-shirts looked on. Between takes, trucks loaded with beer and soda for that evening's Yankees game rumbled along narrow Brookline Avenue.
In the middle of it all was Fallon, the former "Saturday Night Live" player, dressed in a navy blue pullover with the words Red Sox across his chest in red letters. The scene called for him to wait anxiously for Barrymore, who shows up straight from work in a gray business suit, carrying a black Prada bag.
Later in the day, Fallon — who's from Saugerties, N.Y., and a Yankees fan — said he had some idea about his character from working with a "Weekend Update" producer on "SNL" who would come to work in a bad mood the day after a Sox loss.
"They're, like, fans taken to the next level. They really are — they're, like, die-hard fans. And when the team loses, they lose. When the team wins, they win," Fallon said, sitting near the Sox dugout as the smell of fresh-cut grass wafted from the outfield and chalk was being laid along the base paths.
"We've been here two weeks now and I came to, like, every game. I've talked to the fans, watched fans, from batting practice on until after the games. I went to the bars. I actually got to see what it's like," he added.
So could the positive energy of "Fever Pitch" break the Curse of the Bambino, which allegedly has suffocated the Sox since they traded Babe Ruth to the Yankees in 1920?
"I would never, ever presume to break the curse," said Peter, 47. "If the curse is broken this year it's not 'cause of the movie. It's 'cause of the owners — the owners have a good vibe — and the players. There's a good vibe on this team. I would love to be around when they do break the curse. My grandfather didn't live to see it, and my father's 73 and he hasn't seen one."
"I don't think the movie will break the curse," Bobby Farrelly added. "If they were to break the curse, what's next year? How would the fans react? I don't even know what they'd do. They like their plight in life here, believe it or not."
Fallon, however, is far more optimistic. He's not from New England, so he lacks the gene that tells him to expect heartbreak.
"I think this movie will definitely break the curse, either this year or next year," he said. "It'll be the Blessing of the Farrellys."
Fox Orders Pilot Starring Barenaked Ladies
LOS ANGELES - Fox Broadcasting Co. has ordered a pilot for a variety show starring the Barenaked Ladies that will feature the playful rock group performing music and comedy skits along with guest actors.
The Canadian band, known for writing upbeat songs with quirky lyrics and engaging their audiences with onstage banter, will have plenty of leeway to ad-lib on the show, tentatively titled, "The Barenaked Ladies Variety Show."
All of the band members — Steven Page, Jim Creeggan, Ed Robertson, Kevin Hearn and Tyler Stewart — will perform.
"This is a natural expansion to their live experience," said co-executive producer John Ziffren. "We are trying to capture that energy and make it into a TV show."