It was 20 years ago this week that a baseball season halted, never to resume. The players’ strike commenced Aug. 12, 1994. For the Braves, the walkout arrived at a peculiar moment: They’d won their division the previous three seasons and would finish first every year from 1995 through 2005, but ’94 marked the one season in 15 they were clearly second-best.
The 1994 Braves trailed Montreal by six games when playing ceased. They’d claimed three consecutive come-from-behind division titles in the National League West — storming from 9 1/2 games back to catch the Dodgers in ‘91, from six back to overhaul the Reds in ‘92 and from 10 back to shade the Giants on the final day of the ‘93 season — but realignment had forced a relocation.
A young colossus was rising in the East. The Expos had a rotation topped by Ken Hill and Pedro Martinez; a bullpen featuring John Wetteland and Mel Rojas; rising talents in Cliff Floyd and Rondell White, and one of the finest outfields — Moises Alou in left, Marquis Grissom in center, Larry Walker in right — ever assembled, albeit briefly.
Montreal trailed the Braves by 4 1/2 games on June 21, but all was not bliss in these environs. Having made their reputation as chasers, the Braves took poorly to front-running. (This correspondent wrote: “They’ve seemed tired, distracted, almost disinterested.”) Montreal would command their attention soon enough. The Expos went 33-12 from June 22 through Aug. 11, surging from 4 1/2 back to six ahead in Braves-like fashion.
Gifted and stylish and self-assured, the Expos were demonstrably unawed by the former scourge of the West. Their erudite manager, the former Brave Felipe Alou, said: “We’re deeply involved in our own program.”
The Expos took two of three at Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium in late July. Moises Alou, Felipe’s son, hit a two-run triple to beat Mark Wohlers in Game 1. Greg Maddux, who would end the shortened season with an ERA of 1.56, was undone by four unearned runs in Game 2. Fifth starter Kent Mercker salvaged Game 3 for the Braves. Years later, Walker would tell Jonah Keri, author of the Expos history “Up, Up and Away”: “I remember leaving Atlanta and we were just laughing. Like, ‘This is our competition?’”
The Braves cut the Expos’ division lead from seven to six on what would be the season’s final day. Maddux threw a shutout in Colorado; Zane Smith, another erstwhile Brave, beat Montreal 4-0 in Pittsburgh. That was it. There would be no more baseball until April 1995.
Of the many oddities regarding the strike season, the oddest was that, for the first time, the Braves didn’t need to win their division. Prompted by the Braves-Giants chase of ’93, baseball had instituted the wild card. Over the weekend, Washington manager Matt Williams — he’d been the Giants’ third baseman — recalled the last great pennant race: “We won 103 games and went home. That’s what I remember.”
The Braves led Houston by 2 1/2 games for the wild-card spot on Aug. 12, 1994. They would surely have held on, but they’d probably have lost to Montreal in the NLCS. Even as we stipulate that weird things happen in October, we also concede that those Expos were better than those Braves.
But the great young team was never allowed to grow up. Walker left after the ‘94 season to sign with Colorado. In the span of two spring days in 1995, cash-strapped Montreal shipped Hill to the Cardinals, Wetteland to the Yankees and Grissom to the Braves. Six months later, Grissom caught Carlos Baerga’s fly to seal the 1995 World Series. Tom Glavine, the target of local vitriol for his high-profile union role during the strike, yielded one Cleveland hit over eight innings and was named Series MVP.
As sweet as the World Series triumph was, the 1995 postseason wasn’t nearly as impassioned as those from ’91 through ’93. The strike had cooled every fan’s ardor. In 1992, switchboards shut down when 2,000,000 tried to buy Braves postseason tickets. Three years later, you could walk up and buy World Series seats at the box office during the NLCS. (I know because I did.)
It was 20 years ago that many folks around here swore they’d never care about baseball again. Most eventually returned; some never did. The Braves drew nearly 3.9 million fans in 1993; in 1996, the last full season in the old ballpark, they drew 2.9 million. They broke 3 million in each of Turner Field’s first four seasons but haven’t since, which is one reason they’re bound for Cobb.
It was 20 years ago that the Braves seemed destined to finish second behind Montreal. Today they’re apt to finish second behind the Washington Nationals, the team that, in 2005, the Montreal Expos became.
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