MONTREAL -- Jarry Park, the original home of the Expos, is now a tennis center. But the locals still refer to a swimming pool as piscine de Willie -- Willie's pool -- because Willie Stargell belted a slider off Wayne Twitchell that landed in the water.
"It wasn't even one of his longest ones," Steve Blass recalled. "When we played at Jarry Park, they should have given us blue ribbons when we won because they also used the grounds for livestock shows and rodeos."
After the game tonight, the Pirates might be saying au revoir to La Belle Cite for the final time. This is the Pirates' only visit to Olympic Stadium this season, and there is talk of contraction or relocating the struggling franchise to Washington because of low attendance and the failure to convince Canadians to provide public money for a new ballpark.
Stargell's home run is but one Montreal memory. And there's a yellow seat in the upper deck at Olympic Stadium where one of Stargell's homers landed.
How about Doug the Camel? It was a leather dromedary that Keith Osik bought in a Montreal curio shop two years ago when the Pirates were playing poorly. The Pirates named the creature Doug because they "dug" themselves a hole, and it had some immediate success helping the Pirates win. The team brought Doug back to Three Rivers Stadium, but it's days as a good-luck charm quickly ended. It ended up in somebody's den as a piece of sports memorabilia when Three Rivers Stadium was imploded.
In 1997, Montreal was the setting for what became a signature saying applied to a season by a team with a payroll of $9 million. Kevin Young hit a grand slam off Expos closer Lee Smith to key an improbable comeback. Announcer Greg Brown talked of how freaky a grand slam could be, and after Brown's comments got more exposure on the sports highlight shows, the '97 Pirates became know as "The Freak Show."
Mike Williams remembers Montreal as the place where he made his final big-league start. On July 17, 1999, he was at lunch when former manager Gene Lamont called him to tell him he would be making an emergency start because the Pirates traded Esteban Loaiza
Williams allowed one run in five innings to get the win, with Jason Christiansen pitching four innings of relief to notch a save. In that game, Aramis Ramirez charged the mound and threw his batting helmet after being plunked by Javier Vazquez. Ramirez had to serve a five-game suspension.
Bob Bailey, a one-time bonus baby with the Pirates, was chosen by the Expos in the 1969 expansion draft when Montreal and San Diego were awarded franchises. Other former Pirates who played in Montreal included Dave Cash and Al Oliver.
Bill Virdon managed the Expos for parts of two seasons after being at the helm with the Pirates, Yankees and Astros. He had an 82-80 record in 1982 with Andre Dawson out for most of the season, but he was fired after a 64-67 mark the following season with Gary Carter out for the year.
"I was never unhappy here," Virdon said. "It's the best-kept, prettiest, cleanest city there is."
Russ Nixon also served as a coach in Montreal in the mid-1980s.
There are odds things at baseball games inside cavernous Olympic Stadium. Rather than stomping their feet during rallies, spectators slap empty seats to make noise. And fans were fond of bringing in horns, interrupting games with a melancholy "whoooooom."
The stadium was built for the 1976 Olympics and converted for baseball. But there was a huge problem with the first roof -- it was torn by high winds and leaked often -- and the second one, since repaired and still in use, collapsed under the weight of a snowfall during an auto show.
Pirates announcer Bob Walk remembers being the opening-day starter in 1989.
"I don't know if I ever won a game in Montreal," Walk said. "The area where the stadium is located is so isolated that it looks like a movie set or a ghost town. It always seems like they evacuated the city and nobody told us. But if we don't go back to Montreal, we'll miss it."
If tonight is the final Pirates appearance in Montreal, there will be mixed feelings. The city has some of the finest scenery in the major leagues and has the feel of an Old World urban center. But for all it's charm as a city, it isn't a good baseball venue -- especially after fans were turned off by the 1994 strike that wiped out the Expos' best season.
"The only thing I'll miss about it is leaving," said first-base coach Tommy Sandt. "When we leave here, it'll be my happiest day of the season. I'll feel joy about not having to come back."
Pirates to extinguish 'Olympic' flame 
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