April 14, 1969: The 1st Major League Baseball Game Outside the U.S.

April 14, 1969: For the 1st time, a regular-season Major League Baseball game is played outside the United States of America.

The location was Jarry Park, a 28,000-seat no-frills stadium on the north side of Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The Montreal Expos, an expansion team, had debuted a week earlier, playing their 1st 6 games on the road, going 3-3.

That pool beyond the right field fence

was the landing place for a few home runs.

Jarry Park was never meant to be their permanent home. A condition for Montreal getting the franchise was a domed stadium that would be ready for the 1972 season. And when the city was awarded the 1976 Olympics, it looked like the domed stadium would be ready.

It wasn't: When the Olympics got underway in 1976, the stadium still wasn't ready -- not for the Olympics, not for baseball, not for the Canadian Football League's Montreal Alouettes, and not for any of the professional soccer teams that played there.

But that was a problem for the future. At this moment in 1969, the Expos, named for the Expo '67 World's Fair that had been held in Montreal, took the field against the St. Louis Cardinals, 2-time defending National League Champions.

Larry Jaster was the starting pitcher, and he began the game by getting Lou Brock to line out to 2nd baseman Gary Sutherland. The 1st Expo batter was Don Bosch, and he singled off Nelson Briles. Maury Wills popped up, but Rusty Staub drew a walk, and then Mack Jones hit a home run to right field to make it 3-0 Expos. Jones hit a triple in the 2nd inning to make it 5-0. Jaster helped his own cause with an RBI single in the 3rd.

But he fell apart in the 4th, blowing the 6-0 lead he'd been given, giving up a grand slam to Dal Maxvill, an RBI single by Vada Pinson, and a 2-run homer by Joe Torre. (Torre had also hit the 1st home run in a regular-season major league game at Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium, 3 years earlier.) It was 7-6 St. Louis.

But Briles didn't last much longer. A single, a double, a walk and a wild pitch tied the game in the bottom of the 4th. With 1 out in the bottom of the 7th, 3rd baseman José "Coco" Laboy doubled. Following a groundout, pitcher Dan McGinn singled Laboy home with what turned out to be the winning run. The Expos won, 8-7. McGinn turned out to be the winning pitcher.

For a long time, this was the high-water mark for the Expo franchise. They lost 110 games in that 1st season. In 1973, there were 6 teams in the National League Eastern Division, and except for the Philadelphia Phillies, none of them seemed willing to lose it -- but the other 5 didn't seem to be willing to win it, either. The Expos finished 79-83, but only 3 1/2 games out of 1st place.

They moved into the Olympic Stadium in 1977, finally reached their 1st Pennant race in 1979, just missed the NL East title in 1980, and won it in 1981, before losing the NL Championship Series to the Los Angeles Dodgers. In 1994, they had the best record in MLB when the strike hit, and never recovered, having to trade off several good players before the games resumed. After the 2004 season, they were moved, becoming the Washington Nationals, finally winning their 1st Pennant and World Series in 2019.

In 1996, Jarry Park was converted into the 11,815-seat national tennis stadium of Canada, now named Stade IGA (IGA Stadium in English), after a supermarket chain. The home plate stands are the only remaining original part of the stadium, serving as its west end.

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April 14, 1969 was a Monday. These other MLB games were played that day:

* The New York Mets lost to the Philadelphia Phillies, 5-1 at Connie Mack Stadium in Philadelphia. Woody Fryman limited the Mets to 4 hits, and they fell to 2-5. At this point, anybody saying that they would have won the season's World Series would have been taken to Bellevue Hospital. (The New York Yankees did not play on the day.)

* The Boston Red Sox beat the Baltimore Orioles, 5-3 at Fenway Park in Boston. For the Red Sox, Carl Yastrzemski went 2-for-4. For the Orioles, Brooks Robinson went 0-for-4, and Frank Robinson went 1-for-3.

* The Chicago Cubs beat the Pittsburgh Pirates, 4-0 at Wrigley Field in Chicago. Ken Holtzman pitched a 7-hit shutout, and Ernie Banks went 1-for-4. For the Pirates, Roberto Clemente went 0-for-3, and Willie Stargell went 1-for-3.

* The Houston Astros beat the Los Angeles Dodgers, 11-5 at the Astrodome.

* The Chicago White Sox beat the California Angels, 4-3 at Anaheim Stadium. (It was renamed Edison Field in 1998, and Angel Stadium in 2004.)

* And in a game between the 2 expansion teams in the American League, the Kansas City Royals beat the Seattle Pilots, 2-1 at Sick's Stadium in Seattle. Roger Nelson outpitched Mike Marshall, and the Pilots did not, as their manager Joe Schultz wanted, "Zitz 'em and then go pound some Budwieser."

Jim Bouton, pitching for the Pilots, recorded the season in a diary, published the next season under the title Ball Four. That night, he was sent down to the Pilot's Class AAA farm team, the Vancouver Mounties of the Pacific Coast League. Or, as he put it, using a classic ballplayer's phrase for being sent down: "I died tonight." He was called back up on April 29.

The Stanley Cup Playoffs were between rounds. Game 5 of the NBA Eastern Division Finals was played at Madison Square Garden. The New York Knicks beat the Boston Celtics, 112-104. But the Celtics won Game 6 in Boston to take the series. They would beat the Los Angeles Lakers in the NBA Finals.