June 17, 1970: Braves bounce Expos in Hoyt Wilhelm’s only game in Canada

Hoyt Wilhelm pitched in 1,070 games in his 21-season major-league career, a record at the time. Of those games, 1,069 were played in the United States.

The knuckleballer’s only appearance in Canada occurred on June 17, 1970, a little more than a month before his 48th birthday, when his Atlanta Braves matched up against the Montreal Expos at Jarry Park in Montreal.1 In addition to being an unusual footnote to Wilhelm’s career, the game gave fans plenty to talk about. The night’s events included a brief flirtation with a perfect game; a dramatic late lead change; and appearances by three future Hall of Famers, including Wilhelm.

Wilhelm had joined the Braves – his seventh big-league team2 – in September 1969 in a trade with the California Angels. He notched two wins and four saves in eight relief appearances, supporting the Braves’ push to the inaugural National League West division championship.3 He remained with the Braves in 1970 and entered the game of June 17 with a 2-2 record, 4 saves, and a 3.44 ERA out of the bullpen.

Lum Harris’s Braves had a 32-26 record, which might have put them in or near the pennant race in other seasons. But in 1970, rookie manager Sparky Anderson’s Cincinnati Reds were off to a blistering 44-18 start, and Atlanta sat in second place, already 10 games back. Before coming to Montreal and winning the first game of a three-game series, the Braves had been swept in three games by the New York Mets, another team trying to repeat the successes of 1969.4

Righty Jim Nash got the start for the Braves. A former Kansas City/Oakland Athletic, he’d been the Sporting News American League Rookie Pitcher of the Year in 1966, when he went 12-1 with a 2.06 ERA. He hadn’t approached those results in subsequent seasons. A trade in December 1969 brought Nash back to Atlanta, where he’d attended high school.5 Apparently revived, Nash brought an 8-2 record and a 3.47 ERA into the game – though one of his losses had been inflicted by the Expos on June 6, when he gave up five runs in six innings.

Gene Mauch’s Expos occupied last place in the NL East Division with a 22-37 record, 11½ games behind the first-place Chicago Cubs. This performance represented an improvement for the second-year expansion franchise. The Expos’ record a year before, at the close of play on June 16, 1969, had been 15-42, a deficit of 23½ games behind the first-place Cubs. The 1970 Expos also split their season series with the Braves, with each team winning six games. Montreal had won just four of 12 matchups with Atlanta the previous year.

Montreal starter Mike Wegener had been tabbed as a prospect by the Expos, who made him the 15th choice in the October 1968 expansion draft from Philadelphia. Mauch gave the rookie regular work in 1969. This trial by fire was only intermittently successful, as the hard-throwing righty walked 5.2 batters per nine innings and threw 13 wild pitches en route to a 5-14 record and a 4.40 ERA. As it happened, Wegener was pitching with a damaged elbow; he underwent offseason surgery to remove bone chips.6

The June 17 game marked Wegener’s sixth game back, and he was still looking for his first win, with an 0-1 record and a 3.26 ERA. On June 5 Wegener had pitched six innings against the Braves, giving up four hits and two runs and getting no decision in a game the Expos won 3-2. Wilhelm took his second loss in that game, serving up a game-winning ninth-inning homer to Coco Laboy.

In front of a crowd of 10,694 plus a national TV audience across Canada,7 Wegener set the Braves down in order in the first, ending with a groundout by Henry Aaron. Nash struck out the first two Expos in the bottom half, then gave up a double to Rusty Staub, ending an 0-for-14 slump for “Le Grand Orange.” Ron Fairly followed with a single to score Staub, and moved to third on an error by Atlanta catcher Bob Didier.8 Jim Fairey stranded Fairly with a fly to center field.

Wegener reached second base in the third inning on an error by Braves third baseman Bob Aspromonte and a sacrifice, but advanced no farther. The home team doubled its lead in the fourth as Fairey hit a one-out single, moved to second on a groundout, and scored on a single by John Bateman. And in the fifth, Montreal redoubled its lead to 4-0 on a one-out single by Marv Staehle and a homer by Jim Gosger, the center fielder’s first round-tripper of the season.

While the Expos chipped away for runs, Wegener held the Braves in check. Through the first five innings, Atlanta didn’t muster a single baserunner. That changed in the sixth, when Aspromonte’s leadoff grounder rolled through Expos third baseman Laboy. The play went as an error but by one account could have been scored a hit.9

One out later, pitcher Nash came to the plate. He’d hit a drive in the third inning that left fielder Fairey had to reach over the fence to snag.10 This time, Nash bombed a pitch one reporter called a “fat fastball” 420 feet over the center-field fence.11 Nash’s homer ended Wegener’s no-hitter and shutout with one swing, bringing the score to 4-2.12 “I had no idea what [the pitch] was or where it was,” Nash admitted later. “I don’t hit often enough to tell you that.”13

It appeared that Wegener and the Expos had their revenge in the sixth. With two away, Bobby Wine walked, and consecutive singles by Wegener and Staehle brought the Montreal lead to 5-2. Nash was replaced by Larry Jaster, a left-hander who had departed Montreal on a bitter note after going 1-6 with a 5.49 ERA for the Expos in 1969.14 Jaster retired Gosger on a grounder to end the inning.

The two future Hall of Famers in the Braves’ starting lineup sparked a seventh-inning rally that drew the Braves even. Aaron and Orlando Cepeda sandwiched singles around a fly out; Tony Gonzalez’s single scored Aaron. Native French-Canadian and local favorite Claude Raymond took over for Wegener and got Aspromonte on a fly for the second out.

But Mike Lum, hitting for Didier, lined a double to left field to score Cepeda and Gonzalez, tying the game at 5-5. In his previous games against Atlanta in 1970, Raymond had retired all 12 batters he faced. “It was a case of going to the well just once too often,” the Montreal Star wrote. “‘Frenchie’ didn’t have it on this night.”15

The Braves mounted another rally against Raymond in the eighth. Gil Garrido led off with a triple as right fielder Staub “impulsively” charged his line drive, only to have the ball roll past him.16 Félix Millán flied out, and Mauch judiciously ordered an intentional walk to Aaron.17 Rico Carty hit a potential double-play grounder to second base, where Staehle dove to snag it but couldn’t get the ball out of his glove to make a play.18 Garrido scored to give Atlanta a 6-5 lead, its first of the game. John O’Donoghue eventually replaced Raymond and ended the Braves’ rally.

Wilhelm came on in the eighth, pitching to substitute catcher Hal King, who “had an awful time trying to catch Wilhelm’s crazy stuff,” according to the Montreal Star.19 Wilhelm retired Bateman and Adolfo Phillips, who hit for Wine. Mack Jones, hitting for O’Donoghue, drew a walk, stole second, and took third when King threw the ball into center field.20 Staehle drew another walk, putting the tying and go-ahead runs on base for Gosger. The Expos’ earlier home-run hero grounded to Millán at second.

Wilhelm returned to close out the game in the ninth, but it proved slippery. With one out, Fairly struck out, but took first base when the third-strike knuckleball hit King in the mask and rolled away.21 Rookie Don Hahn, running for Fairly, advanced to second when another Wilhelm flutterball evaded King for a wild pitch.

Wilhelm struck out Bailey for the second out, but when Laboy walked, manager Harris summoned reliever Bob Priddy to end the knuckleball circus. Priddy – who came to Atlanta in the same trade as Wilhelm – retired Bateman on a grounder to second base to end the game in 2 hours and 51 minutes.

Jaster picked up the win, his first in the majors since April 27, 1969. His next – and final – major-league win did not arrive until September 8, 1972. Priddy earned his fifth save of the season, while Raymond took the loss, falling to 3-4. Wegener had to wait until July 11 for his first post-surgery win. He went 3-6 with a 5.26 ERA in 1970 and did not pitch in the majors thereafter.22

The 1970 season was Wilhelm’s last as a regular pitcher. He made 12 big-league appearances in 1971 and 16 in 1972 before the Dodgers released him for the final time, just five days short of his 50th birthday.23

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Mike Huber 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.

www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/MON/MON197006170.shtml

www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1970/B06170MON1970.htm

Image of 1970 O-Pee-Chee card #17 downloaded from the Trading Card Database.

Notes

1 Wilhelm pitched against the Expos five times, going 0-1 with a 5.68 ERA in 6⅓ innings pitched. His other four games pitched against Montreal were played at Atlanta’s Fulton County Stadium in 1970, when Wilhelm pitched for the Braves, and at Los Angeles’s Dodger Stadium in 1972, when Wilhelm pitched for the Dodgers.

2 He previously pitched for the New York Giants, St. Louis Cardinals, Cleveland Indians, Baltimore Orioles, Chicago White Sox, and California Angels. He subsequently pitched for the Chicago Cubs and the Braves again before ending his career with the 1972 Dodgers.

3 Wilhelm did not pitch in the 1969 NL Championship Series, in which the New York Mets swept the Braves in three games.

4 The Mets, World Series champions in 1969, entered June 17 in second place in the NL East with a 31-29 record, three games back. They finished 1970 in third place with an 83-79 record, six games out of first.

5 Nash graduated from Sprayberry High School in suburban Marietta, Georgia. The school’s other graduates include Marlon Byrd, Michael Chavis, and Kris Benson.

6 Ted Blackman, “Fireballer Wegener May Be Expos Surprise Starter,” Montreal Gazette, February 24, 1970: 37.

7 Ted Blackman, “Wegener Like Beethoven: His Symphony Unfinished,” Montreal Gazette, June 18, 1970: 11. Television listings in the June 17, 1970, editions of Canadian newspapers from Calgary, Edmonton, and Vancouver confirm that the Expos game was televised in markets across the country.

8 Game stories in Montreal and Atlanta newspapers did not specify the nature of Didier’s error, nor do the play-by-play summaries available through Baseball-Reference and Retrosheet. The game stories might have omitted that detail because Didier’s gaffe did not end up costing the Braves any runs.

9 Blackman, “Wegener Like Beethoven: His Symphony Unfinished.”

10 Wayne Minshew, “Jaster Brings Relief as Braves Top Expos,” Atlanta Constitution, June 18, 1970: 1D.

11 Blackman, “Wegener Like Beethoven: His Symphony Unfinished.”

12 Nash hit four home runs in his seven-season career – two in 1968 and two in 1970.

13 Ian MacDonald, “Nash’s Monster Blast Sparks Braves to Comeback Triumph,” Montreal Star, June 18, 1970: 21

14 MacDonald.

15 MacDonald.

16 Blackman, “Wegener Like Beethoven: His Symphony Unfinished.”

17 Minshew, “Jaster Brings Relief as Braves Top Expos.”

18 Minshew; Blackman, “Wegener Like Beethoven: His Symphony Unfinished.”

19 MacDonald, “Nash’s Monster Blast Sparks Braves to Comeback Triumph.”

20 Blackman, “Wegener Like Beethoven: His Symphony Unfinished.”

21 Blackman, “Wegener Like Beethoven: His Symphony Unfinished.”

22 He continued to pitch in the minor-league systems of the Expos, Mets, and Giants through 1977.

23 At the time, Wilhelm was believed to be just shy of 49. After his death in 2002, it was discovered that his birth date was July 26, 1922 – one year earlier than previously believed. Mark Armour, “Hoyt Wilhelm,” SABR Biography Project, accessed November 28, 2022.