June 10, 1969: Expos’ first player, Dave Hartman, tosses 2-hit shutout for West Palm Beach

Manny Mota is frequently considered to be the Montreal Expos’ first player.1 Although Mota was the initial player chosen by the Expos in the National League expansion draft in October 1968, he wasn’t the first player under contract with the fledgling organization. That honor went to pitcher Dave Hartman, who was drafted by Montreal in the 11th round of the June 1968 amateur draft and signed more than a month before the expansion draft was held.2

The conditions under which Montreal took part in the June 1968 draft were astonishing. The American League had blindsided the senior circuit in the fall of 1967 by announcing that clubs in Kansas City and Seattle would begin play in 1969, so the National League hastily decided to add two new teams as well.3 San Diego was widely expected to get the first NL expansion franchise, with the other going to Milwaukee, Dallas, or Buffalo.4 Montreal, being located in a foreign country, was considered a long shot.

Expectations were muted in Montreal, and only two reporters from the city—both from La Presse—were sent to Chicago to cover the expansion announcement on May 27, 1968.5 But Walter O’Malley, the Los Angeles Dodgers’ owner and chairman of the NL’s expansion committee, was a key Montreal ally.6 That evening, O’Malley informed the five bidders that franchises were being awarded to San Diego and Montreal.7 The news shocked the reporters on hand.

The practicalities of putting a team on the field quickly became apparent to Montreal’s ownership group. The amateur draft was less than 10 days away, and the franchise didn’t have a general manager, a farm director, or any other front-office employees.8

The owners sent City Councilor Gerry Snyder, who had done a masterful job leading Montreal’s expansion bid, to New York to select the team’s initial draft class.9 Snyder may have been a skilled politician, but his baseball experience was limited to participating in a Montreal softball league.10 He was assisted in the draft by part-owner Johnny Newman and 26-year-old Montreal Gazette sportswriter Ted Blackman.11

The unorthodox trio had to rely on information provided by the newly founded Central Scouting Bureau and tips from a few friendly teams.12

The four expansion teams began picking at the end of the fourth round. Montreal selected Hartman, a 22-year-old baseball and basketball star at Iowa State University, in the 11th round (249th overall).13 One pick earlier, the Boston Red Sox had chosen outfielder Ben Oglivie, a future AL All-Star.

The greenhorns from Montreal drafted just 15 players before calling it a day. Eddie Leishman, general manager of the minor-league Padres and a former Pacific Coast League utilityman, selected 16 players for San Diego in the primary phase of the draft.14 Kansas City and Seattle—with significantly more time to prepare—drafted 50 and 29 players, respectively. Farm director Lou Gorman made the selections for Kansas City, while general manager Marvin Milkes led Seattle’s effort.15

Montreal was the only one of the four expansion teams that didn’t bother to select players in the secondary phase of the draft, which included previously drafted but unsigned players.16

Given the circumstances, it wasn’t a huge surprise that none of the players drafted by Montreal in June 1968 went on to make the big leagues.17 Of the 15 players selected, Hartman came the closest.18

On September 10 Montreal announced that Hartman was the first player to sign a contract with the team, less than a week after the name “Expos” was unveiled and about a month after Jim Fanning was hired as general manager.19 It was fitting that Fanning signed Hartman, since he had personally scouted him not long after he had set up the Central Scouting Bureau.20 “I don’t think [Hartman] was a hard thrower, but he had some moxie about how to pitch,” Fanning remembered decades later.21

Hartman received a modest $1,000 signing bonus and another $2,000 to complete his degree in physical education.22 He was more interested in the opportunity to quickly reach the big leagues than the size of the signing bonus. “Mr. Fanning pointed out that I won’t have to spend as much time in the minors as I probably would with an established club,” Hartman said after agreeing to the deal.23 Many years later he admitted that he would have signed for a new glove and a pair of spikes.24

Hartman kept in shape during the summer of 1968 by pitching for a semipro team in Slater, Iowa.25 After going to spring training with Montreal in 1969,26 the 6-foot-3, 190-pound southpaw was assigned to the West Palm Beach Expos of the Class A Florida State League.27

Hartman’s professional career got off to a great start. Coming into his June 10 outing against the second-place Fort Lauderdale Yankees, he had compiled a 7-2 record for the light-hitting West Palm Beach squad. Hartman faced off against another one of the top hurlers in the league, Fort Lauderdale’s Larry Gowell. The 21-year-old righty was on his way to leading the circuit in wins (16) and strikeouts (217).28

Hartman cruised through the first three innings and neither team was able to get on the scoreboard.29

Fort Lauderdale registered its first hit of the game in the fourth on a bunt single by Andy Torgeson, son of former Boston Braves first baseman Earl Torgeson.30 “I threw him a changeup,” Hartman recalled after the game. “It was a perfect pitch to bunt.”31

West Palm Beach right fielder Joe Moock, who had played 13 games with the New York Mets in 1967, led off the sixth with an infield single. He stole second and advanced to third on a groundout.

Expos manager and third-base coach Ed Sadowski noticed that Gowell wasn’t keeping an eye on Moock at third. “I told Joe to wait a few pitches and then take off,” said Sadowski. Moock followed his manager’s instructions to a T and stole home, giving West Palm Beach a 1-0 lead. It was the only run the Expos needed.

West Palm Beach tacked on two more runs in the seventh.32 After Willie Brown drew a two-out walk, Garry Jestadt singled to extend his hitting streak to 16 games. Moock came through again, lashing a triple to right-center to drive in both runners.33

The Yankees got their only other hit of the game in the ninth when the speedy Alfonzo Neal tapped a slow roller to Jestadt at short.34

Hartman went the distance for his first professional shutout, a two-hitter.35 Neither hit left the infield. Hartman struck out eight and walked only two batters in what he called his “best game ever.”36 The win evened West Palm Beach’s record at 25-25 and moved them to within 4½ games of the first-place Miami Marlins.

Hartman was one of the few bright lights for West Palm Beach in 1969.37 The team struggled in the second half and finished in fifth place in their division with a 56-73 record, yet Hartman still managed to compile a 14-9 mark and a 2.04 ERA. His 14 wins led the entire Montreal organization in its inaugural season.

Hartman followed that up with another solid season in 1970, posting a 2.01 ERA in 21 starts for the Jacksonville Suns of the Double-A Southern League.38

He made his only career appearance at Jarry Park when he was called up to start a June 8 exhibition game against the Boston Red Sox in front of 18,271 fans.39 Hartman faced a hard-hitting lineup that included Carl Yastrzemski, Reggie Smith, George Scott, Tony Conigliaro, and Rico Petrocelli.40 He lasted only 2⅔ innings, gave up four runs (two earned), and took a no-decision in an 8-6 Montreal win.41

Hartman seemed ticketed for the majors as late as the middle of the 1971 season. He had a 2.59 ERA for the Double-A Québec Carnavals when he started the Eastern League All-Star Game on July 6.42 Two other Carnavals started the game, left fielder Pepe Mangual and shortstop Pepe Frías. In Hartman’s two innings of work, he gave up a two-run homer to Pawtucket’s Manuel Crespo and was tagged with the loss.43

Hartman finished the 1971 season with a 6-10 record and a 3.57 ERA. On February 20, 1972, just a few days after his 26th birthday, he retired from baseball. Hartman finished his minor-league career with a solid 2.43 ERA and a better than 2-to-1 strikeout-to-walk ratio in 71 appearances.

The Expos offered Hartman a job as a minor-league pitching coach, but he declined. He went on to teach and coach for nearly 10 years in Minnesota and Iowa before changing careers and becoming an executive with Hitachi Medical Systems.44

In September 2004, shortly before the Expos’ last home game prior to their move to Washington, a Montreal Gazette reporter contacted Hartman to do a piece on the long-forgotten pitcher. “If you’re a fan, it must be very difficult to see what’s happening to this team,” Hartman said. “And baseball hasn’t even given the [former] players a chance to come back and say, ‘Thanks, we loved being an Expo.’”45 Despite never playing in a regular-season game for Montreal, Dave Hartman loved being an Expo.

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Kurt Blumenau and copy-edited by Len Levin. The author thanks Lynn Phelps and Jeremy DeJong for their research assistance.

Sources

In addition to using the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted Baseball-Reference.com, Retrosheet.org, and The Sporting News contract cards. Unless otherwise noted, all play-by-play information for this game was taken from the article “Hartman’s Blank Job Beats FL” on page 22 of the June 11, 1969, edition of the Palm Beach Post. Florida State League standings were referenced in the Cocoa (Florida) Evening Tribune.

Photo credit

The image of the “1969 Rookie Stars” baseball card was created by Lynn Phelps in the same style as the 1969 Topps set. The card was never issued by Topps, but is an imagining of what might have been.

Gaetan Groleau was an outstanding amateur pitcher from the Montreal area and the first Canadian signed by the Expos.46 Although he went to major-league spring training with Montreal in 1969, he never played in the minor leagues.47

Notes

1 Dan Ziniuk, “Expos’ Birth No Cakewalk,” Montreal Gazette, June 7, 1998: B-4.

2 The first player selected by Montreal in the June 1968 amateur draft was Michael Swain from Ohio State University (4th round, 81st overall). Montreal failed to sign Swain by the January 1969 deadline. He signed with Seattle not long after the deadline had passed. Charlie Halpin, “College Pitching Star Signed by Montreal,” Montreal Star, September 10, 1968: 56; Ted Blackman, “Montreal Drafts 16 [sic] Players but Who Will Sign Them?” Montreal Gazette, June 7, 1968: 39; Ziniuk, “Expos’ Birth No Cakewalk.”

3 Warren Corbett, “Expansion Round Two: How Charlie Finley Blew Up Baseball,” in Time for Expansion Baseball, eds. Maxwell Kates and Bill Nowlin (Phoenix, Arizona: SABR, 2018), accessed online at https://sabr.org/journal/article/expansion-round-two-how-charlie-finley-blew-up-baseball/ on April 3, 2023.

4 Jonah Keri, Up, Up & Away: The Kid, The Hawk, Rock, Vladi, Pedro, Le Grand Orange, Youppi!, The Crazy Business of Baseball, & the Ill-fated but Unforgettable Montreal Expos (Toronto: Random House Canada, 2014), 7.

5 The two Montreal reporters who covered the expansion announcement were Marcel Desjardins and Gerry Champagne from La Presse. Neither the Montreal Gazette nor the Montreal Star sent reporters. Danny Gallagher, “‘Les Expos Sont La’: The Expos Are Here,” in Time for Expansion Baseball, eds. Maxwell Kates and Bill Nowlin (Phoenix, Arizona: SABR, 2018), accessed online at https://sabr.org/journal/article/les-expos-sont-la-the-expos-are-here/ on April 3, 2023.

6 O’Malley’s Dodgers had a long history with the minor-league Montreal Royals. The Royals had been a Brooklyn affiliate from 1939 to 1957 and a Los Angeles affiliate from 1958 to 1960. “I know what Montreal can do,” O’Malley once told Gerry Snyder, who led Montreal’s bid. “I made a lot of money there with the Montreal Royals Triple-A team.” Gallagher, “‘Les Expos Sont La’: The Expos Are Here.”

7 George Kellam, “AL Club Shift Next D-FW Target,” Fort Worth Star-Telegram, May 28, 1968: 21.

8 Blackman, “Montreal Drafts 16 [sic] Players but Who Will Sign Them?”

9 Gallagher, “‘Les Expos Sont La’: The Expos Are Here”; Blackman, “Montreal Drafts 16 [sic] Players but Who Will Sign Them?”

10 Gallagher, “‘Les Expos Sont La’: The Expos Are Here.”

11 Ted Blackman, “Fanning Recalls the Early Moves That Launched Expos,” Montreal Gazette, May 31, 1971: 17.

12 Three of the friendly teams were the Pittsburgh Pirates, Los Angeles Dodgers, and San Diego Padres. Blackman, “Montreal Drafts 16 [sic] Players but Who Will Sign Them?”

13 “Robinson Request Denied by Reds,” Rockford (Illinois) Morning Star, September 11, 1968: 7.

14 Buzzie Bavasi served as San Diego’s general manager in 1969, but he was still employed by the Los Angeles Dodgers when the June 1968 draft was held. Jack Hand (Associated Press), “Grid Star Drafted for Baseball,” Camarillo Star (Ventura, California), June 7, 1968: 10; United Press International, “Bobby Klaus Named New Padres Manager,” Escondido (California) Daily Times-Advocate, June 18, 1968: 7; Phil Collier, “Popovich Sparkles, Sews Up Dodgers’ Keystone Slot,” Monrovia (California) Daily News-Post, June 7, 1968: 9.

15 Hand, “Grid Star Drafted for Baseball.”

16 As was the case in the primary phase, expansion teams began selecting in the secondary phase at the end of the fourth round. By that time, the Dodgers had selected Steve Garvey (first round) and Ron Cey (third round). San Diego selected three players in the secondary phase, while Kansas City took six and Seattle selected one. The only impact player chosen in the secondary phase once the expansion teams began picking was Mickey Rivers, who was taken by the New York Mets in the eighth round.

17 Bill Lee (Boston Red Sox, 22nd round), Paul Splittorff (Kansas City Royals, 25th round), and Bob Forsch (St. Louis Cardinals, 26th round) were all selected after the ill-prepared Montreal and San Diego contingents called it quits.

18 Hartman was the only player drafted by the Expos in June 1968 to make it as high as Triple A. He appeared in three early-season games with Triple-A Buffalo in 1970. The team was moved to Winnipeg, Manitoba, later that season.

19 Ted Blackman, “Faith Has Reward for Club Scouts,” Montreal Gazette, August 15, 1968: 26; Ted Blackman, “Expos? Yes, and Gene Mauch Is Boss,” Montreal Gazette, September 6, 1968: 15.

20 Dave Stubbs, “He’ll Always Be No. 1 Expo,” Montreal Gazette, September 29, 2004: 37; Norm King, “Jim Fanning,” SABR BioProject, https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/jim-fanning, accessed April 5, 2023.

21 Stubbs, “He’ll Always Be No. 1 Expo.”

22 Stubbs, “He’ll Always Be No. 1 Expo.”

23 Bill Bryson, “Hartman Pro,” Des Moines (Iowa) Tribune, September 10, 1968: 14.

24 Stubbs, “He’ll Always Be No. 1 Expo.”

25 “Hartman Hurls Iowa Past New Mexico,” Wichita Eagle, August 12, 1968: 25.

26 Stubbs, “He’ll Always Be No. 1 Expo.”

27 West Palm Beach was just beginning a successful 29-year affiliation with the Montreal Expos.

28 Gowell went on to appear in two major-league games. He pitched for the New York Yankees late in the 1972 season. He is best known as the last American League hurler to register a hit prior to the introduction of the designated hitter.

29 A low-scoring game between these two weak-hitting teams was hardly surprising. West Palm Beach finished the season with a .211 team batting average, scoring an average of 3.0 runs per game. Fort Lauderdale finished the season with a .216 team batting average, scoring an average of 3.6 runs per game. The Florida State League batted .234 in 1969.

30 Andy Torgeson hit .217 for the Fort Lauderdale Yankees in 1969. His career ended the next spring when he was released before the start of the regular season.

31 Don Boykin, “Hartman’s Blank Job Beats FL,” Palm Beach Post, June 11, 1969: 22.

32 This was Gowell’s last inning of work. He gave up three earned runs on five hits and four walks in seven innings. He struck out seven West Palm Beach batters. Fort Lauderdale’s Thomas Lawton struck out the side in a perfect eighth inning.

33 The 25-year-old Moock was old for the Florida State League, but the Expos didn’t have a Double-A affiliate in 1969. Moock hit .300 in 57 games with West Palm Beach before being loaned to the Savannah Senators (the Houston Astros’ Double-A affiliate) in late June.

34 Alfonzo Neal finished third in the Florida State League with 42 steals (in 48 attempts) despite hitting only .222. He missed the entire 1970 season with an injury and was released in the spring of 1971.

35 Hartman tossed two shutouts in 1969 and both were at home against Fort Lauderdale. His other shutout was in the first game of an August 16 twin bill. Tom Sherman, “Dave Hartman Hurls Expos Past Yankees,” Miami Herald, August 17, 1969: 9-E.

36 Boykin, “Hartman’s Blank Job Beats FL.”

37 Only three players on the roster of the 1969 West Palm Beach Expos went on to appear in a major-league game and all three had limited success. Garry Jestadt made his big-league debut on September 17, 1969; he hit .260 in 454 career at-bats in the majors. Balor Moore went 28-48 with a 4.52 ERA in eight big-league seasons. Ernie McAnally compiled a 30-49 record and 4.03 ERA in four big-league seasons. All three amassed negative Baseball-Reference Wins Above Replacement (bWAR) during their major-league careers. Although Joe Moock played 13 games with the New York Mets in 1967, he never returned to the majors. The player who had the most success at the big-league level was catcher John Hart. He went on to become the general manager in Cleveland, Texas, and Atlanta, coached third base for the Baltimore Orioles in 1988, and briefly served as manager of the Cleveland Indians near the end of the 1989 season. Hart was also Hartman’s catcher with the 1971 Québec Carnavals.

38 Hartman posted a 4.50 ERA in three early-season relief appearances with Buffalo before being demoted to Jacksonville. He was sent down to Double A to make room for a highly-touted prospect, Balor Moore. Moore was Montreal’s first-round pick in the June 1969 amateur draft. “Moore Up with Bisons,” Montreal Gazette, May 1, 1970: 14.

39 Montreal averaged 17,809 fans per game during the regular season. Boston’s average attendance was 19,695. Stubbs, “He’ll Always Be No. 1 Expo”; United Press International, “Fairly, Staub Hit Expos Over Red Sox, 8 to 6,” Portland (Maine) Press Herald, June 9, 1970: 15.

40 “National Box Scores,” Montreal Star, June 9, 1970: 15.

41 Hartman still had a better night than Boston starter Jim Lonborg, who was testing out his sore shoulder. Lonborg pitched in pain and gave up six earned runs on six hits and four walks in three innings on the hill. He made only two more appearances for Boston in 1970. Ray Fitzgerald, “Lonborg’s Aching Arm Pain in Neck to Sox,” Boston Globe, June 9, 1970: 29.

42 Players were assigned to either the National or American Division squad based on their team’s affiliation. Bill Madlock and Cecil Cooper started for the American Division. “2 Royals Voted to Star Team,” Elmira (New York) Star-Gazette, July 7, 1971: 13.

43 Roger O’Gara, “Madlock Stars as Americans Win EL All-Star Game, 5-2,” Berkshire Eagle (Pittsfield, Massachusetts), July 10, 1971: 18.

44 Stubbs, “He’ll Always Be No. 1 Expo”; Stephanie Myles, “Alou in Blue?” Montreal Gazette, September 13, 1998: 4.

45 Stubbs, “He’ll Always Be No. 1 Expo.”

46 Canadian Press, “Gaetan Groleau Big League Bound,” Brandon (Manitoba) Sun, January 16, 1969: 8.

47 Dan Rosenburg, “Drysdale No Trouble as Expos Beat Dodgers,” Montreal Star, March 26, 1969: 19.