For the Montreal Expos, the team with the best record in 1994, the road to the World Series turned into the road to extinction.
A balanced lineup featured power and speed, with Marquis Grissom setting the table for Moises Alou , Larry Walker and Wil Cordero .
“We could hit home runs and manufacture runs, we were athletic, we played good defense and had good pitching,” Malone said. “We had so many different weapons and could win in so many different ways.“We got on a roll, won a bunch of games and felt we were unbeatable at times. And we played with a chip on our shoulders because most of the guys weren’t highly paid. They were younger, still proving themselves, and we were a small-market team in Canada. It created an us-against-the-world attitude.
“We didn’t get good value back because teams knew we had to trade those guys,” Malone said. “They held us hostage.” The Expos were competitive for two months in 1995 but faded in June. They finished last in the NL East at 66-78, 24 games behind Atlanta. Malone resigned after the season and took a job as Baltimore’s assistant GM. He went on to be the Dodgers’ GM from 1998 to 2001.
Malone believes that had Montreal played out the 1994 season, the Expos would have experienced a renaissance like Seattle did in 1995, when the Mariners went on an exhilarating September and October run that resurrected the struggling franchise, fueled the push for a new stadium and saved baseball in the city.
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