August 9, 1977: Expos, Padres become backdrop to kidnap drama

At 3 P.M. on Tuesday, August 9, 1977, and then again at 4,1 baseball fans living in the area of Sherbrooke, Quebec, heard a mysterious message interrupt the French-language broadcast of that afternoon’s San Diego Padres-Montreal Expos game on radio station CHLT.2

“This is a message of special public interest,” radio newsman Richard Desmarais cut in to say during each break. “Mr. Nebets wants to talk to Mr. Noiram. Mr. Nebets wants to talk to Mr. Noiram. Mr. Nebets wants to talk to Mr. Noiram.”3

Then the message—as cryptic as the signals of a third-base coach—ended, and announcers Jacques Doucet and Claude Raymond returned to call the game action from Olympic Stadium.4

“Mr. Noiram” referred to 57-year-old credit union manager Charles Marion, victim of a highly publicized abduction the previous Saturday from his cottage in the Quebec countryside. “Mr. Nebets” was Marion’s boss, Claude Steben. The phrasing of the message and the timing of the broadcasts had been demanded by the kidnappers, as a signal that police and the credit union had received their written messages and were willing to cooperate.5

The Marion affair continued—with numerous and sometimes bizarre twists—until the end of October, becoming Canada’s longest-duration kidnapping case to that time.6 The baseball game on which it intruded lasted 2 hours and 43 minutes and packed plenty of its own unexpected developments before resolving in the visiting Padres’ favor.

That afternoon’s game brought together the fifth-place teams in each of the National League’s divisions. The teams played each other fairly evenly that season: San Diego took seven of their 12 matchups, including four out of six games at Montreal’s brand-new Olympic Stadium. The August 9 game was the second of a two-game series; the Expos had pushed across an eighth-inning run the night before to win, 6-5.

The Expos, in Dick Williams’s first year as manager, were rebounding from a disastrous 55-107 campaign the previous season. Entering the game, Montreal had a 52-58 record, 13 games behind the first-place Philadelphia Phillies. By comparison, they’d been 37-68, 34 games back, at the close of play on August 8, 1976. A few of the players who would help lead the Expos into the 1981 playoffs were already on hand, including rookie stars Andre Dawson and Warren Cromartie7 as well as Gary Carter, Larry Parrish, Chris Speier, and Steve Rogers.

The Padres had changed skippers at the end of May, with Alvin Dark replacing John McNamara,8 but it hadn’t paid dividends. San Diego, eight games below .500 at the time of McNamara’s departure, were now 19 games under, with a record of 48-67. They trailed the NL West-leading Los Angeles Dodgers by 22 games. First-year Padre Rollie Fingers was a star on the mound, tied with the Cubs’ Bruce Sutter with a league-leading 24 saves. Offensive leaders included Gene Tenace, Dave Winfield, and rookie left fielder Gene Richards, who placed third in that season’s NL Rookie of the Year voting behind winner Dawson and second-place Steve Henderson of the Mets.

One noteworthy member of the Padres didn’t play on August 9, having strained ligaments in his knee two days earlier in a fight against the Chicago Cubs.9 Dave Kingman was on his second team of the season, having been traded to the Padres from the Mets on June 15. On September 6, the California Angels claimed him off waivers; nine days later they traded him to the New York Yankees. Thus it was that Kingman achieved the unprecedented feat of playing for teams in each of the major leagues’ four divisions in a single season.10

Expos starter Wayne Twitchell had been traded to Montreal from Philadelphia in June and brought a 2-7 record into the game. He’d started three games against the Padres in 1977 without a decision. Padres starter Dave Freisleben was 4-5 and had thrown a complete-game win against Montreal in the first game of a July 26 doubleheader.

With 23,907 fans in the stands—and, presumably, Marion’s kidnappers among the uncounted listeners to the broadcast on CHLT—the Padres and Expos each moved a runner into scoring position in the first inning but could not capitalize. In the top half, Winfield grounded back to Twitchell for an inning-ending double play with runners on first and third. In the bottom half, Dave Cash led off with a single and stole second, but the heart of the Montreal order could not advance him.

The Expos were first on the scoreboard but ran themselves out of at least one additional run. Dawson led off the second inning with a single and was caught stealing second. Carter hit his 18th home run of the year and, one out later, Speier hit his fifth homer for a 2-0 lead.

In the top of the third, Speier helped give the lead away. Richards singled and stole second with one out. Speier then threw away a tough grounder hit by Bill Almon,11 allowing Richards to score and Almon to take second. Back-to-back walks loaded the bases, and a fly to center by Jerry Turner scored a second run. Tenace struck out to leave the game knotted 2-2.

The stolen bases continued in the bottom half. Ellis Valentine singled with two out, stole second, and took third on a throwing error by Tenace. Tony Perez, not known for his speed,12 walked and stole second, and Dawson was hit by a pitch to load the bases. Carter grounded to shortstop Almon, who touched second base to force Dawson and end the inning. Valentine stole still another base in the fifth, but advanced no farther. “We’ll always run on Tenace,” said Williams, who had managed Tenace with the 1972 and 1973 World Series champion Oakland A’s. “He’s a good friend of mine, but we’ll always run on him.”13

San Diego took control in the sixth inning. Tenace hit a leadoff homer, followed by two groundouts. Freisleben and Richards singled, and Almon walked to load the bases. Reliever Fred Holdsworth, obtained from Baltimore in a July 14 trade, entered with a 2-0 count14 and completed a walk to Mike Ivie to hand the Padres another run. He then surrendered a two-run single to Winfield. Will McEnaney, another newcomer to Montreal in 1977,15 relieved Holdsworth and struck out Turner to keep matters at 6-2.

Montreal mounted a two-out rally in the eighth. Carter hit his second homer of the game and Wayne Garrett doubled. Fingers came on and retired Speier to end the inning. San Diego tacked on two more runs in the ninth as Winfield singled and Tenace hit his second homer in four innings, this one off Bill Atkinson, a native Canadian in his first full season in the majors.

Fingers worked around a leadoff walk and a single to shut down Montreal in its last turn at bat for an 8-3 victory. Freisleben earned the win, Fingers got the save, and Twitchell took the loss. Freisleben praised Montreal as “the most improved team in baseball,” but manager Williams wasn’t satisfied: “We’re not getting the big hits when we need them. We’ve been leaving a lot of men on base.” He also noted that Twitchell was having control problems and was susceptible to big innings.16

News coverage of the game also called out the Expos’ hitters for failing to produce with runners on base, and their pitchers for ineffective work. “Pitchers who can’t bring themselves to throw strikes to .260 singles hitters might be better off running their fingers along the help wanted section than along the seams of a baseball, and that brings up Fred Holdsworth,” wrote one dissatisfied scribe.17

Both teams closed the season in fifth place—the Expos with a 75-87 record in the NL East, San Diego at 69-93 in the West.

As the Expos played out the string that summer and fall, the unsolved Charles Marion kidnap drama continued to make headlines in Canada. Negotiations proceeded in fits and starts, punctuated by dramatic threats and unsuccessful ransom attempts. At one point, a ransom drop in a rural location was interrupted by a pair of game wardens who blundered into the area, scaring off the kidnappers.18

The criminals adjusted their ransom request from $1 million to $200,000 to $500,000 to a final, perhaps exhausted, $50,000. Marion’s son Pierre dropped off the money on the evening of October 26 at a location 20 miles from Sherbrooke. The following evening, Charles Marion was found walking in a wooded area near an airport. He was unkempt, disoriented, and wearing the same clothes he was wearing at the time of his kidnapping—but alive.19 Four conspirators, one of them a co-worker of Marion’s, were subsequently convicted of charges related to the abduction.20

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Gary Belleville and copy-edited by Len Levin.

Sources and photo credit

In addition to the specific sources cited in the Notes, the author used the Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org websites for general player, team, and season data and the box scores for this game:

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/MON/MON197708090.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1977/B08090MON1977.htm

Image of 1977 Topps card number 407 downloaded from the Trading Card Database.

Notes

1 News stories do not specify what inning was under way at the time of each interruption. The August 9, 1977, Montreal Gazette gives a start time of 2:15 P.M. for the game.

2 A notice of public hearing on page D9 of the January 31, 1977, Montreal Star identifies CHLT as part of a 22-station French-language radio network carrying Expos games that season.

3 Eddie Collister, “Airwaves Carry Only Clue to Kidnap,” Montreal Gazette, August 10, 1977: 1. Also: Canadian Press, “Quebec Police Unable to Contact Kidnappers,” Windsor (Ontario) Star, August 10, 1977: 45. A third story, in the Montreal Star, quoted the message as, “Mr. Nebets, call Mr. Noiram.”

4 Zander Hollander, The Complete Handbook of Baseball 1977 (New York: Signet, 1977): 282. Doucet and Raymond handled French-language Expos broadcasts that season, while Dave Van Horne, Russ Taylor, and Duke Snider provided commentary in English. (Taylor died on August 19, 10 days after this game, and also his 51st birthday.)

5 Collister and “Quebec Police Unable to Contact Kidnappers.” Also: Crosbie Cotton, “Credit Union Has $1 Million Ransom Ready,” Montreal Star, August 10, 1977: A1.

6 Canadian Press, “Kidnappers Too Called Case ‘Bizarre,’” Montreal Star, October 29, 1977: A8.

7 Dawson and Cromartie had both made big-league appearances in prior seasons, but exceeded rookie limits during the 1977 season.

8 Interim manager Bob Skinner took the reins for a single game, which the Padres won, between the departure of McNamara and the arrival of Dark.

9 Associated Press, “Gene Tenace Hoping for Strong Conclusion,” Escondido (California) Times-Advocate, August 10, 1977: A17.

10 Major League Baseball has since adopted a six-division format, three per league, to accommodate expansion.

11 “How They Scored,” Montreal Gazette, August 10, 1977: 10.

12 The 35-year-old Perez stole four bases in 1977. Presumably, he was running in this situation because a throw to second would have given Valentine an opportunity to score from third.

13 Ian MacDonald, “Expos Lose as a Team,” Montreal Gazette, August 10, 1977: 9.

14 “How They Scored.”

15 McEnaney and Perez were traded from Cincinnati to Montreal for Woodie Fryman and Dale Murray, both of whom were subsequently reacquired by the Expos.

16 “Gene Tenace Hoping for Strong Conclusion.”

17 Bob Dunn, “Homers Prove Only Offence for Erratic Expos,” Montreal Star, August 10, 1977: C3.

18 “Kidnappers Too Called Case ‘Bizarre.’”

19 “Kidnappers Too Called Case ‘Bizarre.’”

20 Canadian Press, “Man, 61, Gets Jail in Marion Kidnap,” Montreal Gazette, February 11, 1983: B11. Charles Marion was found dead in December 1999 at the house where he was kidnapped. See “1977 Kidnapping Victim Marion Is Found Dead,” Montreal Gazette, December 3, 1999: A5.