September 16, 1976: Larry Landreth, Expos’ first Canadian starting pitcher, wins big-league debut

The expansion Montreal Expos had finally developed their first Canadian player. In an attempt to find a major gate attraction, the fledgling team had signed 18 Canucks − 14 of whom were pitchers − in their first six years.1 None of them panned out until 21-year-old Larry Landreth walked out to the mound on September 16, 1976, to face the Chicago Cubs.2

The Stratford, Ontario, native had signed with the Expos in the spring of 1973 as an amateur free agent,3 and he quickly ascended their minor-league system. Despite being significantly younger than the competition at every level, Landreth had compiled a 44-32 record with a 3.10 ERA and 1.243 walks plus hits per innings pitched (WHIP) in his first four seasons of professional baseball. Those numbers were even more impressive considering he had spent the 1976 season pitching home games in the mountain air of Denver’s Mile High Stadium. In early September Landreth had led the Denver Bears to the American Association championship by winning a pair of playoff games against the Omaha Royals.4 As soon as Denver clinched the title, the Expos called up nine Bears, including Landreth and a 22-year-old phenom named Andre Dawson.5

The Expos were in dire need of a good-news story as the 1976 season wound down. The second year of their youth movement had been a complete train wreck.6 Injuries, clubhouse dissension, and disappointing performances from several players led to Montreal’s worst season since its inaugural 1969 campaign, and rookie manager Karl Kuehl paid the price when he was fired on September 3. To make matters worse, the Expos spent their final season in Parc Jarry completely overshadowed by the 1976 Montreal Summer Olympics, and home attendance plummeted.7 Coming into their weekday-afternoon matchup with the Cubs on September 16, the Expos’ record stood at 48-94 − the worst in the major leagues by a whopping 12½ games.

Former Expo Steve Renko (7-9, 4.37 ERA) got the start for the fourth-place Cubs.8 Renko had been a reliable workhorse in Montreal’s first eight seasons, posting a 3.90 ERA in 192 starts and 46 relief appearances. With an eye to the future, the Expos had traded the 31-year-old Renko, along with Larry Biittner, to the Cubs four months earlier in return for a promising young hitter, Andre Thornton.9

A nervous Landreth opened the game by giving up a single to Jerry Tabb for the 24-year-old first baseman’s first major-league hit. After striking out Joe Wallis, the rookie hurler had the unenviable task of facing a red-hot Bill Madlock, who was on his way to winning his second consecutive batting title.10 Madlock had extended his hitting streak to 10 games the previous evening with a single and a double against Montreal’s ace, Steve Rogers, and he led the league with a .345 batting average. Landreth had devised a plan of attack. He had watched Madlock in the previous game and noticed the slugger’s short swing. Landreth believed he could neutralize “Mad Dog” by feeding him a steady diet of sliders in on his hands, and on this day it worked.11 Madlock hit into a 6-4-3 double play to end the top of the first inning.

With one out in the top of the second, Landreth issued a four-pitch walk to Biittner; the jittery rookie promptly balked him to second base. After Manny Trillo lined out to right field for the second out, Landreth walked Steve Swisher and the light-hitting Mick Kelleher to load the bases. But the Montreal right-hander steadied himself and struck out Renko to escape the inning unscathed.

Renko had retired the first six Expos he faced, but Gary Carter opened the bottom of the third inning with a double. Carter’s fellow future Hall of Famer, Dawson, hit an 0-and-2 pitch into center field for a single, moving Carter to third. After Landreth and Del Unser both struck out, Mike Jorgensen knocked in Carter with a single to right field, and the Expos led, 1-0.   

Landreth’s wildness continued, as he walked Champ Summers and Biittner to open the fourth inning. Fortunately for the Expos, Trillo hit a line drive to second baseman Wayne Garrett, and he relayed the ball to shortstop Tim Foli to double Summers off second base. Swisher followed with a groundout to end the threat.

In the top of the sixth, Landreth surrendered a two-out double to Biittner. Trillo singled into right-center field, but Biittner failed to take off at the crack of the bat, and he was thrown out at the plate by Unser. “Biittner used to get thrown out on that play with us all the time,” recalled Montreal third-base coach Ozzie Virgil. “That’s why we got rid of him (in the May 1976 trade). With two outs in that situation, you gotta take off.”12

With Montreal clinging to a slim 1-0 lead, interim manager Charlie Fox pulled Landreth from the game. He had given up four hits and six walks, and Fox was happy to get six shutout innings out of his rookie hurler. “That’s a great start,” Fox told him. “You’ve had enough.”13 Although Landreth was known to vigorously lobby his minor-league managers to let him remain in the game, he grudgingly accepted Fox’s decision.14 “I was ready to go nine innings,” he told reporters after the game. “It didn’t really bother me coming out, but I like to finish nine.”15

Rookie Cubs reliever Bruce Sutter replaced Renko in the bottom of the seventh. Foli opened the inning with a double, and he advanced to third on Garrett’s groundout. Carter’s groundball to Madlock at third base resulted in Foli being caught in a rundown; when the catcher Swisher hung onto the ball too long, Foli slid back safely into third, and Carter was safe at first base on the fielder’s choice.16 Cubs manager Jim Marshall had Sutter intentionally walk the number-eight batter, Dawson, to get to the pitcher’s spot. Fox outfoxed Marshall by sending pinch-hitter extraordinaire José Morales up to the plate, and Morales came through with a bases-clearing double down the left-field line that extended Montreal’s lead to 4-0. The pinch hit was Morales’ 25th of the season, which set a major-league record that stood until 1995.17

The three insurance runs came in handy, because the Cubs scored three unearned runs off Joe Kerrigan in the eighth inning and closed the gap to 4-3. Dale Murray pitched a scoreless ninth for his 13th save of the season, and Landreth picked up his first major-league win. The Montreal starter was thrilled about both his landmark victory and Morales’s pinch-hit record. “I was in the clubhouse and when I heard it (Morales’s double) over the radio I jumped up and cheered,” Landreth said. “Especially when I heard all those runs scoring. That was a great feeling. What a way to start!”18 Landreth’s debut was even more remarkable considering that he held the dangerous Madlock hitless in three at-bats, which helped snap the batting champion’s 10-game hitting streak.19

It was the only win of Landreth’s big-league career. He pitched poorly in his two other September 1976 starts and spent the next season back in Triple A with Denver. After helping the Bears to their second consecutive American Association championship, he earned another September call-up in 1977. The Expos mainly used Landreth in relief, a role to which he was unaccustomed, and he posted a 9.64 ERA in four appearances with Montreal. He struggled through the next two minor-league seasons before retiring from professional baseball just after his 25th birthday. Landreth finished his major-league career with a 1-4 record and 6.64 ERA in seven appearances.

It was almost 16 years before another Canadian pitcher started a game for the Expos. On June 30, 1993, Mike Gardiner of Sarnia, Ontario, took to the hill at Olympic Stadium and beat the Pittsburgh Pirates, 9-1. As of the end of the 2020 season, 11 Canadians had pitched for the Expos/Nationals franchise, and six of those hurlers had started at least one game.20

The Expos finally hit paydirt in their search for a star Canadian player when they inked a failed junior hockey goalie21 for a modest $1,500 signing bonus in November 1984. The raw 17-year-old from Maple Ridge, British Columbia, went on to become one of only five Canadian position players in the history of the Montreal Expos.22 That player was none other than future Hall of Famer Larry Walker.

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Bruce Slutsky and copy-edited by Len Levin.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org for pertinent information, including the box score and play-by-play.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/MON/MON197609160.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1976/B09160MON1976.htm

Notes

1 Bob Dunn, “Expo Homebred Search Turns to Finlayson,” The Sporting News, January 25, 1975: 41.

2 Landreth was the second Canadian to play for the Montreal Expos, but he was the first Canadian produced by their minor-league system. On August 19, 1969, Montreal purchased the contract of 32-year-old reliever Claude Raymond from the Atlanta Braves, and he pitched for the Expos during the franchise’s first three seasons (1969-71). Raymond, a native of Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Québec, was a National League All-Star with the Houston Astros in 1966. He went 8-16 with a 4.47 ERA in 111 relief appearances with Montreal, and he led the team with 23 saves in 1970. Thirty-five-year-old pitcher Ron Piché was activated by the Expos in September 1970, although he never saw any game action. Piché was born in Verdun, Québec.

3 Canadians were not eligible for the major-league draft until 1985.

4 The Denver Bears were the Expos’ Triple-A affiliate from 1976 to 1981. During those six seasons, Denver won the American Association championship in 1976, 1977, and 1981. Landreth spent two full seasons (1976-77) and two partial seasons (1978-79) pitching for the Bears.

5 Associated Press, “Expos Call Up Nine off Farm,” Monroe (Louisiana) News-Star, September 7, 1976: 9.

6 The Expos had the youngest position players in the majors in both 1975 and 1976.

7 The Expos drew 646,704 fans in 1976. The sole major-league team with lower attendance that season was the San Francisco Giants, who drew 626,868 fans. The Expos moved into Olympic Stadium in 1977 and attendance more than doubled to 1.43 million, which was sixth best in the National League. Montreal’s attendance peaked in 1983 when the team drew 2.32 million, a figure that ranked second in the National League.

8 The Cubs were 22 games behind the division-leading Phillies with a 67-79 record.

9 Thornton, who had hit only .193 for Montreal since coming over from Chicago, did not play in the September 16, 1976, game against the Cubs. He finished the season with a .191 batting average for the Expos, and the team hastily traded him to the Cleveland Indians for veteran starting pitcher Jackie Brown in December of 1976. Thornton played in Cleveland for 10 seasons, made the American League All-Star team twice, and won a Silver Slugger Award. He amassed 214 home runs and 749 RBIs with the Indians. Brown pitched poorly for Montreal in 1977, which was his final season in the big leagues.

10 Madlock finished his career with four batting titles.

11 Ian MacDonald, “Morales Sets Record with 25th Pinch Hit,” Montreal Gazette, September 17, 1976: 19; Kevin Glew, “Ex-Expos: Whatever Happened To? … Larry Landreth,” Cooperstowners in Canada, July 30, 2020, cooperstownersincanada.com/2020/07/30/ex-expos-whatever-happened-to-larry-landreth/, accessed January 5, 2021.

12 Bob Verdi, “Expos Nip Cubs in Near Secrecy,” Chicago Tribune, September 17, 1976: 61.

13 MacDonald.

14 Glew.

15 Glenn Cole, “Canadian Rookie Wins for Expos,” Ottawa Journal, September 17, 1976: 20.

16 Associated Press, “Expos’ Jose Morales Sets Pinch-Hitting Mark,” Daily Leader (Pontiac, Illinois), September 17, 1976: 6.

17 John Vander Wal of the Colorado Rockies broke Morales’s record in 1995 with 28 pinch hits. As of the end of the 2020 season, only three players had more than 25 pinch hits in a season: Vander Wal, Ichiro Suzuki (27 with the Miami Marlins in 2017), and Lenny Harris (26 with the Colorado Rockies and Arizona Diamondbacks in 1999).

18 MacDonald, “Morales Sets Record with 25th Pinch Hit.”

19 After Madlock grounded into a double play against Landreth in the first inning, he flied out to center field in the third and lined out to center field in the sixth. Madlock was walked by Joe Kerrigan in the eighth inning in his only other plate appearance of the game.

20 The Montreal Expos moved to Washington, D.C., and became the Nationals at the end of the 2004 season. As of the end of the 2020 season, no Canadian pitcher had started a game for the Nationals since Mississauga, Ontario’s Shawn Hill started on June 24, 2008. The 11 pitchers to appear in at least one game for the Expos/Nationals franchise were Claude Raymond (1969-1971), Larry Landreth (1976-77), Bill Atkinson (1976-79), Dave Wainhouse (1991), Matt Maysey (1992), Mike Gardiner (1993), Denis Boucher (1993-94), Derek Aucoin (1996), Rhéal Cormier (1996-97), Mike Johnson (1997-2001), and Shawn Hill (2004, 2006-08). The following Canadian pitchers started at least one game for the Expos/Nationals: Hill (37 starts), Cormier (28 starts), Johnson (27 starts), Boucher (7 starts), Landreth (4 starts), and Gardiner (2 starts).

21 The player in question failed to make the Regina Pats of the Western Hockey League in both 1983 and 1984. The WHL is a major junior ice hockey league based in Western Canada and the Pacific Northwest.

22 The five position players to play for the Expos were Doug Frobel (1985), Larry Walker (1989-94), Joe Siddall (1993, 1995), Rob Ducey (2001), and Matt Stairs (1992-93). On September 6, 1993, three Canadians were in the starting lineup for the Expos: Larry Walker, Denis Boucher, and Joe Siddall. As of the end of the 2020 season, only two Canadian position players had appeared in a game for the Washington Nationals: Pete Orr (2008-09), and Stairs (2011).