Stadium memories: Olympic Stadium

Courtesy of www.flickriver.com

I have seen more Major League Baseball games at Montreal's Olympic Stadium than any other ballpark, past or present.

I took several trips to the "Big O" while I was attending SUNY Plattsburgh -- each time, it was a school-sponsored bus trip when the New York Mets were in Montreal playing the Expos. We always had lower level seats -- usually along the third base side -- and I remember thinking, "Who are these seats designed for?" They were narrow, yellow plastic seats little back support, and they always snapped back the moment you got up. It's probably why Expos fans used the (many) empty seats as noisemakers.

It also helped to have a cursory understanding of Canadian French when attending an Expos game. Announcements were in two languages, and the scoreboard switched between French and English. It was like getting a French lesson for the price of a ticket and transportation.

I would have had my first experience covering a Major League Baseball game in Montreal, had it not been for an illness I came down with the night before the Expos-Mets game. By the time I woke up with a fever of 102.3 degrees that Saturday morning in April, I knew I wasn't going anywhere. I wound up being stuck in my off-campus apartment for three days trying to shake that illness (probably the flu, but I never got it diagnosed). That gave me three days to brood about missing my first opportunity to interview professional athletes.

My final trip to Olympic Stadium was about 10 years ago. My Canadian friend Gab had season tickets behind home plate, so I met him up there for a game between the Expos and the Atlanta Braves (first time I had not seen the Mets play in that stadium). We both knew the end was near for the Expos, and we wondered what would become of the saucer-shaped stadium. As a joke, I suggested that the Canadian government attach rockets to it and send it into space. It had the right shape for it.