June 23, 1982: Steve Rogers’ second consecutive shutout lifts Expos into first place

“After two near misses on the final weekends of ’79 and ’80, the Expos finally surmounted a psychological barrier by wresting the East title from the Phillies in the playoffs last October. Now, nothing stands between Montreal and greatness.” – Thomas Boswell, Washington Post1

The Montreal Expos were overwhelming favorites to win the National League East Division in 1982. They went through early-season struggles and significant internal strife but seemed to hit their stride in late May. Coming into a June 23 game against the New York Mets at Shea Stadium, Montreal had won 21 of its previous 29 games and moved to within a game of the first-place St. Louis Cardinals. The hot streak continued when Expos ace Steve Rogers tossed his second consecutive shutout in a 5-0 victory, lowering his major-league-leading ERA to 1.74.

The Expos had followed two close second-place NL East finishes in 1979 and 1980 by reaching the ’81 NL Championship Series, where they suffered a heartbreaking loss to the eventual World Series champion Los Angeles Dodgers. Even more was expected in 1982. The Sporting News, Sports Illustrated, and the Associated Press all predicted that Montreal would come out on top of the division.2 Up-and-coming baseball analyst Bill James even referred to the Expos as “the best team in baseball today.”3

But Montreal was stuck in neutral with a mediocre 12-11 record on May 8, and the Expos rejigged their lineup in an attempt to address their longstanding weakness at second base.4 Rodney Scott, Montreal’s starting second baseman since 1979, was designated for assignment and future Hall of Famer Tim Raines was shifted from left field to the keystone position.5 The move also opened up playing time for promising rookie outfielder Terry Francona.

Veteran reliever Bill Lee did not react well to news of his friend’s release. He flew off the handle and approached manager Jim Fanning “wielding a bat and shouting obscenities.”6 After being restrained by Andre Dawson and Warren Cromartie, Lee left Olympic Stadium just before the start of that day’s game and went drinking at a nearby brasserie. The next day the Expos released him, ending his 14-season major-league career.

Once Francona became Montreal’s regular left fielder, he began hitting at a torrid pace, putting himself into early contention for Rookie of the Year honors.7 But his season came to an abrupt end on June 16 when he suffered a serious knee injury in St. Louis.8 (Francona was eighth in the NL batting race with a .321 average, 2 percentage points ahead of teammate Al Oliver, who went on to win the batting title.) The loss of Francona forced the Expos to move Raines back to the outfield and the revolving door at second base continued to spin.9

A week after losing Francona, the Expos sent Rogers to the mound to face the third-place New York Mets. He was opposed by 31-year-old right-hander Craig Swan, winner of the NL ERA title in 1978. After injury-plagued seasons in 1980 and ’81, Swan was enjoying a huge bounce-back year. He entered the game with a 5-1 record and a 2.08 ERA in 5 starts and 15 relief appearances.

Both teams put a runner in scoring position in the first inning, only to have Swan and Rogers escape unscathed. Right fielder Cromartie led off the second for Montreal. He slammed an 0-and-1 offering from Swan for a home run, giving Montreal a 1-0 lead.10

The score remained that way until the fifth. Expos shortstop Chris Speier opened the inning with a single. After Rogers sacrificed him to second, Raines drove him in with a single, extending Montreal’s lead to 2-0.

Rogers dispersed four singles and a hit-by-pitch in innings two through five. The only time the Mets had a runner in scoring position was in the bottom of the fifth with two out, and Rogers ended the threat by striking out center fielder Mookie Wilson.

Cromartie batted with two out and nobody on in the sixth. He drove the first pitch from Swan for a home run, his second of the game and ninth of the season.11 Cromartie, a classic line-drive hitter, had his second − and final – multi-homer game in the big leagues.12

In the bottom of the sixth, Rogers recorded his only one-two-three inning of the game.13

The Expos blew the game open in the seventh. Rogers, batting .121 on the season, got things started with a one-out infield single. After Raines reached on his second single of the game, rookie second baseman Mike Gates – called up from Triple A to replace the injured Francona – moved both runners into scoring position with his groundout to the right side of the infield.14 Dawson drove them in with a double off Swan and the Expos led, 5-0.

New York got a runner to second base with one out in the seventh and nobody out in the eighth. Both times Rogers recorded consecutive outs to end the inning.

Former Expo Ellis Valentine singled with one out in the ninth and once again Rogers bore down.15 He retired Ron Hodges on a fly ball and Bob Bailor on a groundout to nail down Montreal’s sixth consecutive victory and his major-league-leading fourth shutout of the season. With the victory, Rogers raised his record to 9-3, tying Fernando Valenzuela of the Los Angeles Dodgers for the league lead in wins. He scattered eight hits, struck out seven, and didn’t walk a batter.

The win moved the Expos into first place by percentage points over the Cardinals, and Rogers wasn’t surprised that Montreal had climbed back on top. “The talent is there and it’s producing now that we’ve gotten over the rough spots and all the player changes have been made,” he commented in the postgame media scrum.16 Mets manager George Bamberger was also singing the praises of the Expos. “That’s the number-one club in our division,” Bamberger said. “There’s no doubt about it.”17

Montreal appeared to be well on its way to a second consecutive division title. But it was not meant to be. More rough spots were just around the corner. The Expos pitching staff, which had a league-leading 3.05 ERA on June 23, suddenly went cold.18 Dawson, the best outfielder in baseball, missed nine games with two knee injuries.19 The Expos won only 5 of their next 20 games and limped into the All-Star break in fourth place, four games behind the Cardinals and Philadelphia Phillies.

Another significant incident − covered up at the time – involved the 22-year-old Raines. The Expos had an offday in Montreal on June 28 and Raines went on an all-night cocaine bender, failing to show up for the next night’s game.20 The Montreal Gazette reported that he missed the game because of an upset stomach and headache, and the Expos surreptitiously sent him to a psychiatrist to get help with his drug problem while he continued to play.21

According to Raines, he had started using cocaine in January 1982 and was spending $1,000 per week to sustain his habit.22 “I was playing with a handicap [in 1982],” he admitted later. “A lot of times I got no sleep. A lot of times I couldn’t even see the ball.”23  

Montreal hosted the All-Star Game on July 13 and four Expos were in the NL’s starting lineup: Rogers and future Hall of Famers Gary Carter, Dawson, and Raines. A fifth Expo, Oliver, was named as a reserve. In front of 59,057 boisterous fans, Rogers helped the NL to a 4-1 victory, becoming the first starting pitcher to win an All-Star Game at home since Johnny Vander Meer turned the trick in 1938.

The 32-year-old Rogers went on to have a career year, going 19-8 and winning the NL ERA title with a 2.40 ERA. His 19 wins were second in the league behind Steve Carlton (23-11).24 As was the custom of the day, wins were weighted heavily by Cy Young Award voters. Despite besting Carlton in ERA, walks plus hits per innings pitched (WHIP), winning percentage, and Baseball-Reference Wins Above Replacement (bWAR), Rogers finished second to Carlton in NL Cy Young Award voting.25 

Injuries and age finally caught up with Rogers and his performance began to decline in 1983. The Expos released the five-time All-Star in May 1985 after 13 seasons with the team. As of the end of the 2024 season, Rogers was still the (Expos/Nationals) franchise leader in several statistical categories, including wins (158), shutouts (37), innings pitched (2,837⅔), starts (393), and complete games (129).

The ’82 Expos played solid baseball after the All-Star break, pulling to within two games of first place in mid-September.26 But a disastrous four-day period from September 16 to 19 – soon after Raines relapsed into cocaine use − dropped Montreal 6½ games behind St. Louis, sealing its fate.27 The Expos finished in third place with a disappointing 86-76 record, six games behind the eventual World Series champion Cardinals.28 

Raines quietly entered drug rehab soon after the 1982 season ended and in December he voluntarily disclosed his struggles in a bombshell Montreal Gazette interview.29 With the help of his good friend and mentor Dawson, Raines was able to stay clean and his career soared to new heights.

After a turbulent year, in the 1982-83 offseason the Expos’ brain trust passed the managerial reins to Bill Virdon, a stern disciplinarian. But the so-called “Team of the ’80s” was running out of time.30 Their championship window was beginning to close.

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Thomas J. Brown Jr. and copy-edited by Len Levin. The author thanks John Fredland for providing feedback to improve the initial draft of this article.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted Baseball-Reference.com, Stathead.com, Retrosheet.org, and Norm King’s SABR biography of Steve Rogers and Tim Raines. No Montreal newspapers were published on the day after this game because June 24 was a statutory holiday (Saint-Jean-Baptiste Day) in Québec. Limited information on the June 23 game was included in Montreal papers on June 25.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/NYN/NYN198206230.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1982/B06230NYN1982.htm

Photo credit

Photo of Steve Rogers courtesy the Trading Card Database.

Notes

1 Thomas Boswell, “N.L. Races: Rise of Montreal, Fall of LA,” Des Moines Register, April 4, 1982: D-1.  

2 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), 189; Herschel Nissenson (Associated Press), “NL East Preview,” Syracuse Post-Standard, April 6, 1982.

3 Keri, 189.

4 From 1979 to the end of the 1982 season, Expos second basemen hit .233 and averaged 3 homers and 47 RBIs per season. Second baseman Rodney Scott compiled -3.1 Wins Above Average (WAA) and an adjusted On Base Plus Slugging (OPS+) of 67 in his five seasons with the Expos (1976, 1979-82).

5 Scott was not the starting second baseman early in the 1982 season. He started only five games and went 5-for-25 (.200) before his release. Raines had been a second baseman in the minor leagues. He had played in the outfield in only 6 of his 402 minor-league games prior to 1981.

6 Keri, 191.

7 Corky Simpson, “Grass Hasn’t Been Greener for Montreal’s Francona,” Tucson Citizen, June 18, 1984: D-1.

8 Canadian Press, “Francona Is Gone for Year,” Calgary Herald, June 19, 1982: A-13.

9 Montreal second basemen finished last in the NL with an On Base Plus Slugging (OPS) of .605. Rookie Wallace Johnson had been Montreal’s second baseman on Opening Day. The Expos used eight players at second base in 1982: Doug Flynn (58 games), Mike Gates (36), Tim Raines (36), Frank Taveras (19), Bryan Little (17), Wallace Johnson (13), Rodney Scott (12), and Mike Phillips (10).

10 Jenny Kellner, “Expos’ 6th Gives Mets Loss,” New York Daily News, June 24, 1982: 80.

11 Kellner, “Expos’ 6th Gives Mets Loss.”

12 Cromartie also hit two homers in a game against the Mets at Shea Stadium on April 15, 1980. One of those homers was against Craig Swan; the other was against Mark Bomback. In 10 major-league seasons, Cromartie hit .281 with 61 homers and 391 RBIs. He also spent seven seasons with the Yomiuri Giants of the Japan Central League. Cromartie hit .321 with 171 homers and 558 RBIs in Japan.

13 Rogers faced only three batters in the fourth inning, although Dave Kingman reached on a hit-by-pitch. He was erased on a double play.

14 The 25-year-old Gates remained the starting second baseman until late July. The Expos purchased the contract of second baseman Doug Flynn from the Texas Rangers on August 2 and Gates was sent back to Triple A. Gates hit .231 with no homers and 8 RBIs in 36 games with the Expos. He never played in the big leagues again. Brian Kappler, “Knee Injury Sidelines Francona for Season,” Montreal Gazette, June 19, 1982: H-1.

15 The Expos had traded Valentine, who battled substance abuse and injuries throughout his playing career, to the New York Mets for pitchers Jeff Reardon and Dan Norman on May 29, 1981.

16 Associated Press, “Rogers and Cromartie Combine to Put Expos on Top,” Kingston (Ontario) Whig-Standard, June 24, 1982: 12.

17 Dan Quinn, “Mets Have Sinking Feeling,” Rockland County (New York) Journal-News, June 24, 1982: D-1.

18 During Montreal’s 5-15 slide from June 24 to July 11, the team ERA was 4.65. Montreal’s pitching staff finished the 1982 season with a 3.31 ERA, second best in the NL.

19 Dawson amassed 7.9 Baseball-Reference Wins Above Replacement (bWAR) in 1982. The only major-league players with more bWAR were Milwaukee Brewers shortstop Robin Yount and Expos catcher Gary Carter. Dale Murphy (6.1 bWAR) won the NL MVP Award. Carter finished 12th in MVP voting; Dawson tied for 21st. Dawson missed two games (June 26-28) with a stiff right knee. He sprained his left knee sliding into second base on June 29 and missed seven more games (June 30-July 4). Ian MacDonald, “Rogers Can Ensure All-Star Start with Continued Effective Pitching,” Montreal Gazette, June 29, 1982: B-1; “Dawson, White to Miss Pirates’ Series,” Montreal Gazette, July 2, 1982: C-1.

20 Michael Farber, “Raines Beats $1,000-a-Week Habit,” Montreal Gazette, December 11, 1982: 1.

21 Ian MacDonald, “Gardenhire Hits His First Homer to Drop Expos,” Montreal Gazette, June 30, 1982: C-1; Farber, “Raines Beats $1,000-a-Week Habit.”

22 Farber, “Raines Beats $1,000-a-Week Habit.”

23 Raines finished second in NL Rookie of the Year Award voting in 1981. In 1982 Raines’ batting average dropped 27 points (.304 to .277), his On Base Plus Slugging (OPS) fell from .829 to .723, and his adjusted OPS (OPS+) dropped from 135 to 101. Farber, “Raines Beats $1,000-a-Week Habit.”

24 Fernando Valenzuela of the Dodgers also won 19 games. He finished with a record of 19-13 and an ERA of 2.87. Valenzuela tied for third in NL Cy Young Award voting.

25 Carlton posted a 3.10 ERA (119 ERA+), 1.147 WHIP, .676 winning percentage, and 5.5 bWAR. Rogers had a 2.40 ERA (152 ERA+), 1.119 WHIP, .704 winning percentage, and 7.7 bWAR. Carlton received 112 voting points to Rogers’ 29 points. Fernando Valenzuela and Bruce Sutter of the Cardinals tied for third place with 25 points.

26 Another blow came in mid-August when 24-year-old starter David Palmer, who had a career ERA of 2.90, blew out his elbow. He underwent Tommy John surgery and missed the entire 1983 season.

27 From September 16 to 19, Montreal went 0-4 and St. Louis went 5-0. Expos pitchers gave up seven or more runs in three of the four losses. Raines, who had a relapse and used cocaine regularly in the last three weeks of the 1982 season, grounded out four times in four plate appearances in a 3-1 loss to the Chicago Cubs on September 17. He was loudly booed by the Montreal fans. Remarkably, Raines hit .272 and was 12-for-13 in stolen-base attempts from September 14 until the end of the season. Farber, “Raines Beats $1,000-a-Week Habit”; Brian Kappler, “Expos Lose to Fall Four Games Behind,” Montreal Gazette, September 18, 1982: G-1.

28 From June 24 until the end of the season, the Mets went 31-64 (.326). They finished in last place with a 65-97 record, 27 games behind St. Louis.

29 Farber, “Raines Beats $1,000-a-Week Habit.”

30 A talented young Expos squad was dubbed the “Team of the ’80s” during the 1979 season. By 1983, frustrated fans and the media were using “Team of the ’80s” as a term of derision. Ian MacDonald, “Lots of Changes for Expos Roster,” Montreal Gazette, December 31, 1983: F-7; Tim Burke, “Infield Uncertainties Hamstring Expos,” Montreal Gazette, August 24, 1983: G-1.