The 80s Expos and their cocaine use

Baseball is a heartbreaking game but Montreal fans had their hearts broken more than most other teams: we had our team taken away, we were deprived of our best-ever season with the 1994 strike and the great teams of the early 80s failed to bag a title because of their heavy cocaine usage.

  That final claim is one that has been repeated many times, including by manager Dick Williams whose autobiography relates his fear of players being caught smuggling cocaine over the border and even possibly stashing their supply in his luggage. 

   There's some counter argument to be made, however, that many players excelled throughout their careers by employing all sorts of amphetamines and stimulants. Hall of Fame outfielder Paul Molitor had a cocaine issue that did not slow him down and many other superstars such as Pete Rose and Willie Mays also gobbled greenies, or other uppers to enhance their performance. 

   There's also the fact that the teams competing against the Expos also had their share of cocaine addicts, many who were apparently snowed out on trips to our city, which supposedly had the most available cocaine in the entire league.

   In this rather informative article, St. Louis Manager Whitey Herzog said that the Expos had one player on the team that was not only a cocaine user, but a cocaine dealer. The article does not cite the name of the player but it says that he was still playing. The article lists three players, including Tim Raines.
   Another article quotes Herzog as saying that the cocaine-dealing Expo was a guy who changed teams many times, "teams keep giving him chances," he said. That description could fit many players, including the much-traveled Darrel Thomas, whose departure from the team was denounced as racist by local activist Bobby White. 

   Herzog said that in one game in Montreal his pitcher hit said cocaine dealer by accident, whereupon he was admonished by an infielder in an impromptu conference for endangering the team's chances of buying cocaine from that player after the game.  

  The Cards skipper also claimed that he would do his best to inspire his team to win the first game of a series in Montreal because by the second game the team would be so high on cocaine that they wouldn't perform well. 

  A quick glance at the 1983 results, however, did not suggest any real trend, however. Of the 26 home series hosted in Montreal the visitors won 13 games openers and the Expos won 13 games as well, which pretty much reflects the law of averages for a .500 team.

  Much has been said about a prominent West End personality who still lives in Montreal that has repeatedly been accused of supplying the team with drugs and was later banned from the stadium by Expos Publicist Rich Griffin. That person who was named in Warren Cromartie's autobiography but subsequently denied the reports, even to me personally when I asked him about it.