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Out the door this morning, heading to the ballpark, wearing my de rigueur Montreal Expos T-shirt. I snared the last available seat on the media bus to the Main Press Centre. After sitting down, I noticed a large beefy fellow opposite staring at me. Finally, he said, in a thick Slavic accent: “Are you a fan of the Montreal Expos?” Somewhat taken aback, I admitted that yes I was. He held out a paw-like hand: “Hello. I am the only Montreal Expos fan in Bulgaria.”
Talk about your bizarre. As if in a scene from The Twilight Zone, while Beijing whizzed by, we proceeded to reconstruct the Expos' line-up of 1979. Carter, Staub (we got that wrong), Scott, Speir, Parrish, plus that wonderful outfield of Cromartie, Dawson and Valentine.
“And who was that pitcher? A left-hander. He won 20 games. I liked him,” wondered the man from Sofia. “Grimsley?” I ventured. “Yes, that's it. Ross Grimsley.”
I then pointed to my Expos heart, broken for the first time that year when the lads just missed beating Pittsburgh Pirates for the division title.
“Yes,” my Bulgarian friend agreed. “I have the book: The Year the Expos Almost Won the Pennant.”
A true Expos fan, indeed. Who was my new-found commiserator? Meet Georgi Banov, a reporter with one of his country's biggest newspapers, 24 Chasa. He learned to love the Expos during a stint in Ottawa during the late 1970's, before heading back to Bulgaria.
I didn't have the heart to tell him about Rick Monday.
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