Stepping foot on foreign soil for the first time in the regular season, the Cardinals felt the ground shift beneath them.
On April 14, 1969, the Cardinals opposed the Expos at Montreal in the first regular-season major-league game played outside the United States.
Led by the slugging of Mack Jones, the Expos, a National League expansion team, overcame a seven-run inning by the Cardinals and won, 8-7, before 29,184 at sold-out Jarry Park.
It was a joyous day for the baseball fans of Montreal, who naturally were proud to have a team and were thrilled to win a home opener against the two-time defending National League champion Cardinals, but there were glitches.
Though the weather was sunny, the playing field was a mess, despite the efforts of the grounds crew.
“When the frost began to thaw underground, the mound and area behind the plate sank a few inches,” according to The Sporting News, and the field became soft and lumpy.
“It was like running on a hunk of Gouda cheese,” wrote the Montreal Gazette’s Ted Blackman.
Oh, Canada
The National League awarded Montreal a franchise, even though it didn’t have a suitable ballpark. The Expos had a few months to renovate 3,000-seat Jarry Park and get it up to major-league standards before the start of the 1969 season.
The Expos opened their inaugural season with six road games, three at New York against the Mets and three at Chicago against the Cubs, and won two.
Four days before the home opener, Expos management “feared the game might never happen” because Jarry Park wasn’t ready, The Sporting News reported, but workers “toiled around the clock.”
About 3,000 temporary folding chairs still were being installed in sections of the ballpark on game day, delaying the opening of the gates. Expos general manager Jim Fanning pitched in, putting up chairs in the section behind home plate, the Gazette reported.
“Stadium workers were still bolting in seats and shoveling snow as the first fans arrived,” the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) reported.
Sinking feeling
Players were disappointed to find the field “rough” and “rubbery,” according to The Sporting News.
Cardinals third baseman Mike Shannon teasingly told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that his burly teammate, Joe Torre, will “sink six inches into that infield.”
Torre good-naturedly replied, “This soft infield ought to bring everyone else down to my speed.”
The infield was “extremely spongy and seemed to have foam rubber under it,” the Post-Dispatch reported.
Cardinals shortstop Dal Maxvill said, “You step here and ground sinks a yard away.”
Indeed, the ground literally was shifting. “As the earth settled, the mound dropped five inches below the official 10-inch height, which was already five inches lower than last year’s regulation elevation,” the Gazette observed. “Pitchers had the feeling they were throwing uphill.”
“To further complicate the situation,” the Gazette added, “home plate was off kilter and pointing slightly toward left field.”
The ground was so soft “plate umpire Mel Steiner was standing ankle deep in the turf behind home by the end of the game,” according to the Associated Press.
According to columnist Bob Addie in The Sporting News, catchers Tim McCarver of the Cardinals and John Bateman of the Expos “were sunk in the soft stuff up to their ankles. It was the first time a catcher ever had to throw from a foxhole.”
“I’ve played on some bad diamonds, but this is the worst,” said Cardinals center fielder Curt Flood. “I pray I don’t get killed out there.”
Flood continued, “It was unbelievable. The infield was soft and it was tough to go from first to third. A stolen base is going to be unheard of here until something is done about it. You just can’t get the proper footing …. The outfield is rough and it’s tough to figure out which way the ball is going to bounce.”
Flood’s remarks offended Expos manager Gene Mauch, who wanted him fined. “The commissioner should turn Flood upside down and shake a little money out of his pocket,” Mauch said to The Sporting News. “It’s not in the best interest of baseball to say what he did.”
Recalling his days as Phillies manager, Mauch said, “The infield at Jarry Park was better than the infield when we played at Busch Stadum for the first time” after the downtown ballpark opened in St. Louis in 1966.
Hits and errors
For the first game at Montreal, the batting orders were:
_ Cardinals: Lou Brock, left field; Curt Flood, center field; Vada Pinson, right field; Joe Torre, first base; Mike Shannon, third base; Tim McCarver, catcher; Julian Javier, second base; Dal Maxvill, shortstop; Nelson Briles, pitcher.
_ Expos: Don Bosch, center field; Maury Wills, shortstop; Rusty Staub, right field; Mack Jones, left field; Bob Bailey, first base; John Bateman, catcher; Coco Laboy, third base; Gary Sutherland, second base; Larry Jaster, pitcher.
Jaster was a former Cardinal and Laboy was developed in their farm system.
Jones, nicknamed “Mack the Knife,” looked sharp. In the first inning, he hit a three-run home run, and in the second he produced a two-run triple.
“I hit a pretty good breaking ball for the homer and the triple was a fastball,” Jones said.
The Expos added a run in the third on Jaster’s single and led, 6-0, but in the fourth they committed five errors and a balk, helping the Cardinals score seven times. Maxvill’s grand slam, his only one in the majors, and Torre’s two-run homer were the big hits.
Referring to the Expos’ miscues, Cardinals manager Red Schoendienst said, “They tried to give us the game, but we didn’t want it.”
The Expos tied the score, 7-7, in the bottom of the fourth and produced the winning run in the seventh when pitcher Dan McGinn drove in Laboy from second with a single against Gary Waslewski. McGinn, a former punter for Notre Dame’s football team, got the win with 5.1 scoreless innings and avenged the loss he suffered seven months earlier in his major-league debut for the Reds against the Cardinals.
Said Cardinals general manager Bing Devine: “It was a badly played game on both sides, but we’re not supposed to be playing as badly as the Expos.” Boxscore and video
RetroSimba 
The Cardinals really sputtered the first three months of 1969 (35-41). The year following the Year of The Pitcher, they still had great pitching, but the offense just couldn’t get it in gear. Pinson got hurt; Flood tailed off a bit, and Shannon had trouble driving in runs.
You are correct. The Cardinals scored the fewest runs of any of the established National League teams in 1969. Only the expansion Expos and Padres scored fewer. I was asked to write a feature on the 1969 season for the 2019 edition of the Cardinals yearbook. I hope you’ll check out a copy when it comes in the summer.
One more thing: The card shows Mack Jones batting righthanded. I remembered him with the Braves as a lefthanded hitter. Had to look it up: He did hit from the left side.
You are right. Mack Jones, a left-handed batter, is pictured posing from the wrong side on his 1969 Topps baseball card. The most prominent error on a 1969 Topps card was the one for Angels third baseman Aurelio Rodriguez. The person pictured on Rodriguez’s baseball card is the Angels batboy, Leonard Garcia.
The Cardinals actually played decent ball during the second half of the season going 50-31. But it wasn’t enough to overcome a poor first half. 1969 was the year of the Miracle Mets. After getting off to an 18-23 start they went 89-40 including playoffs and World Series.
Thanks. The 1969 Cardinals had a hot streak, winning 30 of 39 in mid-summer and taking their record from 37-44 on July 4 to 67-53 on Aug. 17. For the month of July, Steve Carlton and Mike Torrez each was 4-0 and Chuck Taylor was 3-0. Julian Javier batted .349 in July and Vada Pinson had his best month as a Cardinal, batting .302 with 20 RBI. But the Cardinals were 20-22 in their final 42 games. It was a fundamentally flawed team. It stopped advancing runners as it had done so well in 1967 and 1968 and it stopped manufacturing runs. In addition, the outfield defense was sub-par and Tim McCarver allowed the highest number of base runners to steal of any catcher in the league.