The Bookshelf Conversations #194: Robbie Hart

If you’d asked me a few years ago about my favorite teams, I definitely would have said the Mets, followed by the Montreal Expos. But now? It just might be the reverse, since I’ve been living in the past lately.

I spent many a happy summer in Montreal, where the maternal side of my family lived. My mother had moved to the U.S. after marrying my father, but her two brothers and a sister played host to our visits.

A few weeks ago, it was Danny Gallagher, author of several volumes on the Expos. The next Conversation will be with Terry Mosher, aka Aislin, a political cartoonist for the Montreal Gazette who seems happier to have drawn caricatures of hundreds of people connected with the team since 1969. And after that comes Curtis Pride, the deaf player who made his Major League debut with the Expos in 1993 (as part of a 23-year professional career) and who recently released his memoirs, I Felt the Cheers: The Remarkable Silent Life of Curtis Pride.

But Robbie Hart — whom I learned was not one of my charges when I worked at a sleep-away camp in the Laurentians, an hour’s drive from Montreal — brought back some happy (and not so happy) memories of those long-ago visits with his new project, Nos Amours: The Saga of the Montreal Expos.

His documentary about the beloved but ill-fated team reminded me of the frustration of watching the franchise going down the tubes because of conditions both internal and external. But that love remain some twenty years after the Expos relocated to Washington, DC, and the efforts of Montrealers in getting another chance in the next round of expansion are heartening.

Despite I pride myself on a basic knowledge of the team’s history, I learned a great deal during our chat. Hart countered my suggestion that a major for the Expos’ demise due to flagging attendance was because their home venue, Olympic Stadium, was not conveniently located. The next ballpark, however, will be in the heart of the city.

Fingers crossed.