Tag: Danny Gallagher

Categories
Sports

Roy Halladay was a role model for Canadian pitchers

halladay
Graphic by @spooky_soda

Former Blue Jay goes into Hall of Fame as one of the greatest in franchise history

The 2019 Baseball Hall of Fame class was announced on Jan. 22. Among the legendary names that will be inducted in Cooperstown, New York in July, one name stands out to Canadian baseball fans.

The late Roy “Doc” Halladay (1977-2017) spent 11 of his 15 full seasons as a Toronto Blue Jay, winning 148 games. He also won a Cy Young Award as the American League’s best pitcher in 2003. He made an impact whether he was playing or not.

Jackson Morgan, a pitcher for the Concordia Stingers baseball team, looked up to Halladay. “He was a huge role model for me growing up,” Morgan said. “What made him a role model wasn’t necessarily his performance, but his [behaviour] on and off the field.”

On the field, Halladay was known for an assortment of pitches, and his command of the strike zone was one of his most notable skills. Growing up playing baseball, Morgan learned how to create more movement on his pitches by watching Halladay play. “I can remember watching him dominate and thinking to myself: ‘If I was a batter, I’d be helpless as well,’” Morgan said.

Halladay’s impact on Canadian baseball fans is in the same scope as former Blue Jays Joe Carter, Jimmy Key and fellow Hall of Fame member Roberto Alomar, who were the Blue Jays’s first stars. Danny Gallagher, a former reporter who covered the Montreal Expos, believes Halladay is one of the most successful Blue Jays of all-time. Like Morgan, Gallagher also believes Halladay had an impact on youth players in the country.
The Blue Jays weren’t a good team from 1998 to 2009, when Halladay was pitching for them. The Jays never made the playoffs, despite masterful performances from Halladay. Morgan wished that Halladay would have seen some better chances to win.

“I only wish they had a better supporting cast for Doc during his tenure with the Jays,” Morgan said. Halladay only played playoff baseball twice, in 2010 and in 2011, as a player for the Philadelphia Phillies. There, he continued to dominate, and in 2010 against the Cincinnati Reds, he became only the second pitcher after Don Larsen in 1956 to throw a no-hitter in the playoffs.   
Players inducted into the baseball Hall of Fame choose which of their former team’s logos is inscribed on the cap of their plaque. Halladay’s family requested to not have a logo on his plaque. Despite this, Gallagher said he will be forever linked with Toronto baseball.

“The Blue Jays will always consider Doc one of the greats in franchise history,” Gallagher said. Even without the Blue Jays logo on Halladay’s plaque, his legacy as a Blue Jay will remain on the minds of all Canadian baseball fans.

The same was echoed by Morgan, as what he saw from Halladay’s play as a young baseball player will be forever remembered. “His legacy will live on forever. I’m thankful he played for a Canadian team and young Canadian pitchers like myself had exposure to such an influential and important baseball figure,” Morgan said.

Main graphic by @spooky_soda.

Categories
Sports

Blue Monday preserves rich Expos history

Danny Gallagher holds his new book, Blue Monday, which will be published Oct. 13. Photo courtesy of Danny Gallagher.

Author Danny Gallagher explores how 1981 team came close to history

The history of the Montreal Expos is filled with hope, triumph and heartbreak. In the 35 years that the Expos called Montreal home, they only made the playoffs once, in 1981. In Blue Monday: The Expos, the Dodgers, and the Home Run That Changed Everything, author Danny Gallagher tells the story of one of the most infamous days in Canadian baseball history, a moment that set the course of the Expos franchise for years to come.

On Monday, Oct. 19, 1981, in the final game of the National League Championship Series (NLCS), Expos pitcher Steve Rogers gave up a ninth-inning home-run to Los Angeles Dodgers centre fielder Rick Monday, effectively winning the game and the NLCS. For Expos fans, this game, and that home run, is known as “Blue Monday.” The Expos franchise didn’t return to the playoffs until 2012, when they were the Washington Nationals.
For someone who wasn’t around to see that game in 1981, the term “Blue Monday” means almost nothing. But in his book, Gallagher portrays the emotion fans felt that day, seeing a heartbreak for the Expos and Canadian baseball.

The book starts during the 1977 off-season, when the Expos came very close to signing future baseball Hall of Famers Reggie Jackson and Jim “Catfish” Hunter. Gallagher traces the path of the Expos from that off-season, and explains how the 1978-80 Expos teams came up short making the playoffs. Reading how close the Expos came to qualifying every year only amplifies the heartbreak that unfolded on that October day.

Gallagher interviewed Expos players such as Rogers and third baseman Larry Parrish, as well as former owner Charles Bronfman. He tells the story through their voices, and thus provides an in-depth look that peaks the interest of any baseball fan, not just of the Expos. Blue Monday showcases how a baseball team builds itself, through the drafting and development of young stars such as future Hall of Famers Gary Carter and Tim Raines. You see how management impacts a team, and the decisions that can make or break them.

Blue Monday is a triumph in preserving the history of the Expos, and tells the story of how a team muddled in mediocrity for the vast majority of its history came inches away from baseball glory. Gallagher maintains that, if Montreal beat Los Angeles, the eventual 1981 World Series champions, they would have beaten the New York Yankees in the World Series. Any baseball fan should add this to their book collection.

Main photo courtesy of Danny Gallagher.

Categories
Sports

Danny Gallagher: sports journalism hasn’t changed

Danny Gallagher holds his new book, Blue Monday, which will be published Oct. 13. Photo courtesy of Danny Gallagher.

Former Expos reporter talks new book set to be released Oct. 13

The Montreal Expos remain a prominent team in the rich history of Canadian baseball. They were was once regarded as Canada’s team—from their first season in 1969 until the Toronto Blue Jays joined the MLB in 1977. The Expos left Montreal in 2004 for Washington, D.C. and significantly changed the way Montrealers viewed baseball for years to come.

While the Expos still called Olympic Stadium home, Danny Gallagher was one of the people behind the team’s media coverage as a beat writer for the Montreal Daily News. Once the Expos became the Washington Nationals, he remained an active figure in the preservation of the team’s history. Gallagher has written five books about the Expos, including his most recent project Blue Monday: The Expos, The Dodgers and the Home Run That Changed Everything.
Gallagher grew up in Douglas, Ont., and played adult baseball for the team, appropriately named the “Douglas Expos.” He began to see what having a competitive MLB team in Canada in the late 1970s did for the sport.

“In 1979, that’s when baseball fever in Montreal really started to [pick up steam],” Gallagher said. “Fans started to realize they had a good team to cheer for.”

When it was all but confirmed that the Expos would leave, Gallagher said Montreal entered a period of serious disinterest in the sport from 2004 to 2012. When Expos Hall of Fame catcher Gary Carter died in 2012, it brought attention to the team again. Gallagher credits Warren Cromartie, an Expos outfielder from 1974-83, for reigniting interest after Carter’s death.

“[Cromartie] grabbed the bull by the horns,” Gallagher said. In 2012, Cromartie created the Montreal Baseball Project, a group aiming to bring a team back to Montreal, and held alumni events for the 1981 and 1994 Expos teams. The 1981 Expos were the only team in franchise history to make the playoffs, finishing in second place in the division, while the 1994 team had a league-best 74-40 record before the MLB shut down the rest of the season for a strike.

“Without Cromartie, I don’t think that [a possible return of Montreal baseball] would be that significant,” Gallagher added.
Gallagher covered the Expos when newspapers were still prominent. When asked if he thought that the way sports writers cover games has changed since his time, he had a simple answer. “I don’t think so.” However, he said the digital age has impacted sports journalism in some way.

“Sports writers and broadcasters use social media a lot to break their stories,” Gallagher said. “In 1988, there was no such thing as social media, and no internet […] I can’t honestly say [the way writers cover the game] has changed.”

Having covered the Expos from 1988 until they left in 2004, Gallagher witnessed everything the Expos went through. He saw their best season in 1994, and their downfall just 10 years later. Gallagher said there were a number of factors that led to the Expos leaving, from trading most of their stars in 1995 following the lock-out, to the incredibly poor ownership group in the late 1990s, and the refusal to build a new ballpark when one was desperately needed in 1998. Even though the Expos’s attendance fell below 15,000 fans per game in its final years, Gallagher said the team didn’t leave because of a lack of fans: “[Major League Baseball] gave up on Montreal, rather than the opposite.”
Despite an uncertainty of baseball returning to Montreal, Gallagher still maintains that Canadian baseball is going strong, and that is because of the Blue Jays remaining in Toronto.

Danny Gallagher’s latest book, Blue Monday: The Expos, the Dodgers, and the Home Run That Changed Everything, hits stores on Oct. 13. Gallagher will be signing copies that day at McLean’s Pub, and at Indigo on St-Catherine St. the following day.

Main photo courtesy of Danny Gallagher.

Exit mobile version