JotCast | FanGraphs Book Club - Up, Up & Away

FanGraphs Book Club - Up, Up & Away

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Paul Swydan

9:02

Hi everybody!

Andrea's Fault

9:02

What's the best beer to go with this chat--and I hope it's not just Labatt's or Molson.

Paul Swydan

9:03

How about a Molson 5X? You know Canadian beer is like moonshine.

9:04

So, I'm excited to chat about this book! I remember getting an early copy of this book to review it for The Hardball Times. It was pretty thrilling.

9:05

"The Extra 2%" was a good book, but I sort of knew the broad strokes, having been in the sabermetric world for most of the success part of the story. But the Expos? I didn't know much about the Expos before they wanted to acquire Casey Fossum for Pedro Martinez.

Gabe

9:07

This book is so good it's in the curriculum for a class I'm taking on baseball in Canadian culture.

Paul Swydan

9:07

That's awesome!

9:08

I could easily see the parts about how the team started and got their stadium deal as authoritative accounts.

9:09

So this is more a comment than a question, but I think Jeffrey Loria is a ****.

Jonah Keri

9:09

Hi gang! Figured I'd jump on early, since I'm watching the Cardinals annihilate the Braves and my dog is scrapping with my cat (whose name is Pedro Martinez).

Paul Swydan

9:10

Well, it's a well-said comment. It still feels kind of odd that MLB is rid of him. Say what you will about how Jeter is running the Marlins, but it does seem like he'll at least try.

Hi Jonah!

Jonah Keri

9:10

Hey Paul, thanks for inviting me! Happy to answer any questions anyone has.

9:11

Realistically, is there hope of a return to Montreal?

Jonah Keri

9:14

JT, it's funny you ask that. For some background, the editor of my first book The Extra 2% was an American who'd gone to McGill in the late 90s and thus became a huge Expos fan. While we were working on the Rays book he'd egg me on to write an Expos book. I kept laughing him off -- I thought there was no way anyone would care about a team a decade after people already didn't care about them. Then Gary Carter died, then reunions and events started happening, then exhibition games popped up every spring in which 50,000 poured into the Big O, and now we're at the point where well-heeled companies and investors are working behind the scenes to try and bring baseball back. The real kicker is that every time Commissioner Manfred gets asked about relocation or expansion, he always cites Montreal as the top available market to be filled. So yes, I think there's a realistic chance. Problem is, it'll cost about $2 billion Canadian to make it happen, between franchise acquisition costs and a new ballpark.

Andrea's Fault

9:14

Hi, Jonah--it's too bad you didn't get to interview Warren Zevon on Bill Lee (one of the best songs related to baseball, if you ask me).

Jonah Keri

9:15

That would have been awesome for sure. My wife Amy and I are huge Zevon fans, so that would have been perfect for all kinds of reasons. I guess the consolation is I got to play "Montreal reporter" in the movie Spaceman about Bill Lee. Still waiting for my Oscar.

Paul Swydan

9:16

Jonah, speaking of the reunions, what was it like revisiting the book when you wrote the afterword?

I've been told that once you finish a book, you never want to see it again. Was writing the afterword hard?

Jonah Keri

9:17

It was jarring. We released the book 4 days before that first Jays exhibition game at the Big O. Then suddenly I was in the stadium hawking books with a little stand, and 50,000 people were milling about. I'm generally an optimistic guy, but no way did I think there was so much pent-up demand for baseball in Montreal. So I just wrote the afterword from that perspective, about how much had changed over a 2-3-year span.

9:19

The afterword felt like a totally new chapter, and didn't really require revisiting anything else I'd written, so it wasn't hard at all to write. I think the biggest thing about writing a book is that it can be so all-consuming, it's the notion of writing another book (of any kind) that becomes overwhelming to imagine.

Happy

9:19

now that you helped tim raines get into the Hall, what kind of projects are there that you can put together to help preserve Expos history?

Jonah Keri

9:20

Raines got in on the strength of his numbers, the whole thing about me getting credit was massively overblown and not really deserved. No real projects of that ilk on the horizon, though I do believe that Larry Walker is just as worthy of induction. Terrific player who got dinged for playing in Coors Field, which has caused people to ignore his terrific body of work!

9:20

For an ownership group, could you see Bell wanting to get an alternative to Rogers' Jays broadcasts?

Paul Swydan

9:20

Yeah, I've heard that too! I know authors who are working on multiple chapter book projects at the same time, and it makes my head spin.

Jonah Keri

9:21

Nothing speculative about that -- Bell is widely known to be the leading light behind a push to bring baseball back to Montreal. For Americans who aren't familiar with Bell (or Rogers), imagine ESPN and AT&T having a baby, and you can see the clout that both companies can have in the Canadian sports/media landscape.

9:22

Paul, I was working at day jobs during each of the books, and that alone was overwhelming and extremely dumb. Writing multiple books at the same time would permanently fry my brain. Hats off to anyone who can pull off that crazy trick.

Andrea's Fault

9:22

Are there any stories from all your interviews that you loved but just couldn't work into the flow of the book?

Jonah Keri

9:23

There was stuff about ummm...off-field behaviours that I didn't include, because I'm not being on being salacious for no good reason. That said, let's just say that there's a Bull Durham-esque romance involving one ballyhooed Expos rookie that was quite enjoyable (and by all accounts no harm came of it).

Dutch

9:27

Was it more fun interviewing and researching the stars whose names made it into the subtitle, or the less glamorous players?

Jonah Keri

9:27

My favourite book interviews in order:

9:28

Felipe Alou. I'm not religious at all, but listening to Felipe talk for an hour about...I'd call it more spirituality than anything else, and also how his family made a name for itself with he and his brothers, and how proud he was of the legacy of Dominican baseball, and how much he adored Vlad and Pedro, it was just so cool. Hard to explain why, but I was near tears the whole time.

9:29

I spent 2 hours in a Miami coffee shop interviewing Cliff Floyd. He was so awesome, after about 30 minutes every other customer had pulled their chairs up to our table to listen in.

Former Expos PR man/now Toronto Star columnist Rich Griffin told me some terrific stories at the winter meetings. Ditto for former Montreal Gazette beat writer/now Toronto radio host Jeff Blair.

9:30

Ellis Valentine was amazing to talk to. Pedro took a while to track down, but the wait was totally worth it.

And here's my favourite random interview story.

9:31

I went to track down Jamey Carroll at Dodger Stadium. He was a bit player on the later-year Expos teams, and I didn't have many guys from that era. Before the clubhouse was renovated at Dodger Stadium, it was crazy cramped. So everyone could hear every word of my chat with Carroll, even though we weren't talking loudly.

Finally after about 10 minutes of this, Casey Blake, sitting at the next locker, interrupts us, smirks, and says: "Are you seriously fucking talking about the fucking Montreal Expos?!??!"

9:32

I laughed for a week after that.

Youppi is my homeboy

9:32

You've written two books that have landed "bestseller" labels, and were the driving force behind another. If you did write another book, what would it be about?

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