Bryce Harper Wants To Win A World Series For The Baseball Fans In Montreal
The USA Today did a story on Bryce Harper yesterday, and there was a really interesting note in there about winning the World Series and wanting to win it for the fans in Montreal:
“I want to win it so bad, not just for the fans of D.C., but for the fans of Montreal as well,” Harper says. “That’s what people forget sometimes. It’s not just D.C., but the Expos organization (which relocated to Washington after the 2004 season).
“People forget how good those teams were in Montreal. Look at all of the studs they drafted that came through the organization. Randy Johnson. Cliff Lee. Delino DeShields. Marquis Grissom. It’s crazy to look back to see how good those teams were and what could have been.
“We’d love to win it for all of those people.”
I saw this quote, and my first reaction was, “Aw, that was really nice of him to say.” But I’m also not an Expos fan, so I took a step back and thought about how I would actually feel if I were an Expos fan. Not about Bryce Harper’s comments. I don’t think any Expos fans could be upset about anything that he said. His sentiments are obviously coming from a kind and thoughtful place. But if I were an Expos fan, would I even give a shit about the Washington Nationals winning a World Series?
In a way, I get it. The Expos became the Nationals after their departure from Montreal, but they’re just entirely different franchises. If I’m an Expos fan, I wouldn’t look at the Nationals as my team now. It’s just a completely different team, and everybody who was on that final Expos team in 2004 is now long gone, so there are no remaining pieces from what we once knew as the Expos. I don’t think that I would be bitter towards the Nationals, though. It’s not DC’s fault that they got a baseball team out of the sport failing in Montreal — good for them. But I also don’t think I could bring myself to support a new team with a new name in a new city just because they used to be my old team.
I asked Jonah Keri, the author of Up, Up, and Away: The Kid, the Hawk, Rock, Vladi, Pedro, le Grand Orange, Youppi!, the Crazy Business of Baseball, and the Ill-fated but Unforgettable Montreal Expos, how he felt about this, because he is quite literally the only Expos fan that I know.
Welp. There ya go. I get where Harper is coming from, though. The people in Montreal still care about baseball a LOT. The team has been gone for 13 years, and I still saw a ton of Expos gear up in Montreal when I was there this past December. But to Jonah’s point, I understand why Expos fans wouldn’t celebrate a Nationals World Series title. However, I think it was much different when Pedro Martinez won a World Series title in 2004 with the Boston Red Sox and said that he was sharing his ring with the people of Montreal, because he was theirs first.