Danny Gallagher poses with his newest book on the Montreal Expos. The book is available at indigo.ca, amazon.com or it can be ordered by emailing exposbook2020@yahoo.com. Photo by James Tubb
By James Tubb [1]
BELLEVILLE – Danny Gallagher is working hard to keep the memory of the Montreal Expos alive.
On Sunday, Gallagher had an informal signing of his sixth book about the Expos, Always Remembered: New Revelations and Old Tales about the Fabulous Expos. [2] The 69-year-old Loyalist College grad is a former Expos beat writer for the Montreal Daily News, who is trying to do his part in sharing the untold stories of the former MLB franchise.
“Since they left in 2004, (I’m) just paying tribute to the franchise even though they are gone. (I’m) paying homage to them,” Gallagher said.
The book, which was released in March, focuses on a combination of stories from star players in Expo’s history like Gary Carter [3], Andre Dawson [4], and Tim Raines [5]. It also features a lot of stories from role or part-time players that “filled the holes of the franchise.”
Filled with 265 pages of vignettes a combination of short and long stories, from the team’s tenure in Montreal, Gallagher has shared many unheard stories in the hope to help people keep the “Montreal Expos fever.”
The book contains 94 interviews conducted over a year as Gallagher gathered all of these stories. “It takes a lot of time to interview people, and write out these stories and try to get photographs.”
For him, the task of writing six books on a team’s history is not as daunting as it may sound. He is already planning a seventh book to be released in 2021.
His desire to tell these stories and write the books is inspired by a former Expo.
“There’s Expos fever that has been going back to 2012. From 2004 to 2012 there was nothing in Montreal. Gary Carter died in 2012 and his teammate Warren Cromartie [6] was devastated. He came back to Montreal and never saw any hats or memorabilia so he organized a reunion in 2012 for the ’81 Expos and a couple of years late for the ’94 team. He was the catalyst to bring the fever back to Montreal. A lot of memorabilia sold and people started wearing hats again. I was inspired by Cromartie,” he said.
The book allowed Gallagher to tell stories and focus a section on one of his favourite player growing up and the first star player for the Expos, Hall-of-Famer Rusty Staub [7].
“Rusty was in Belleville while I was at Loyalist College doing a cross country tour on behalf of the Montreal Expos and the “junior Expos fan club” with the Bank of Montreal. So I found out he was coming to Belleville and I met him somewhere downtown and talked to him, did an interview for the school paper ‘the pioneer’,” Gallagher said.
In 2018 he paid Staub a visit in a hospital in West Palm Beach, Fla. while covering spring training.
“I may have been one of the last people to see him alive.”
“I knew that he was sick so I just walked in off the street into the hospital and asked if I could visit and they just let me in. The nurse propped him up and he was kind of out of it. So I just told him how much he meant to me and how much he means to Expos fans. It was kind of a special and eerie moment.”
The meeting was two weeks before Staub passed away at the age of 73.
Gallagher was always a fan of the Expos, but the passion grew once he started covering the team in 1988.
“If I had not become a beat writer, I don’t think I would have written these books. When I got to Montreal it just elevated my passion for the Expos. Even though I cheered for them for many years in other cities,” he said.
He holds out hope that a franchise could return to Montreal but only if it will be a permanent situation.
“I think that at some point the commissioner’s office of the MLB will allow Tampa Bay to sell the team to Montreal outright because of their attendance problems down there. I don’t think that part-time thing would ever work, and it’s still a long time away,” Gallagher said.
If the Expos ever did make their return to Montreal, rest assured that Danny Gallagher would be there to see them.
He may even write a book about it.