Girish Mahajan (Editor)

2003 Montreal Expos season

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Owner(s)
  
Major League Baseball

Manager(s)
  
Frank Robinson

General manager(s)
  
Omar Minaya

Local television
  
Réseau des sports (Rodger Brulotte, Denis Casavant)

Local radio
  
CKGM (AM) (Mitch Melnick, Elliott Price, guest minor league play-by-play broadcasters) CKAC (AM) (Jacques Doucet, Marc Griffin)

The 2003 Montreal Expos season was a season in baseball, and the 35th season for the Expos in Montreal. It involved the Expos attempting to win the NL East. On August 28, 2003, the Expos led the NL Wild Card, tied for first place with the Marlins, Astros, Phillies, and Cardinals, but faded away in the stretch and failed to make the postseason.

Contents

Regular season

  • June 24, 2003 – Brad Wilkerson hit for the cycle in a game against the Pittsburgh Pirates.
  • August 26, 2003 – The Expos rallied from being down 8-0 and 10-3 to claim a 14-10 win against the Philadelphia Phillies and be within two games of the National League Wild Card. It was the second biggest comeback in Expos history.

    • On August 30, 2002, MLB signed a collective bargaining agreement with the players association, which prohibited contraction through the end of the agreement in 2006.

    Ultimately, the Expos finished 8 games behind the Wild Card (and World Series Champion) Florida Marlins.

    Puerto Rico

    Although their attendance increased from 7,935 per game in 2001 to 10,031 in 2002, MLB decided that the Expos would play 22 of their home games at Hiram Bithorn Stadium in San Juan, Puerto Rico in 2003. Despite being a considerably smaller facility (it seats approximately 19,000) than Montreal's Olympic Stadium, attendance in San Juan's Hiram Bithorn Stadium averaged 14,222, compared with 12,081 in Montreal. The Puerto Rican baseball fans embraced "Los Expos" (particularly Puerto Rican players José Vidro, Javier Vázquez and Wil Cordero, and other Latin players like Vladimir Guerrero and Liván Hernández) as their home team (as well as the Latin players from other teams), all the while hoping the team would make a permanent move to Puerto Rico. Thanks in part to the San Juan games, the Expos were able to draw over a million fans at home in 2003 for the first time since 1997. The Expos' season in Puerto Rico was chronicled in the MLB-produced DVD Boricua Beisbol – Passion of Puerto Rico.

    Opening Day starters

  • Orlando Cabrera
  • Endy Chávez
  • Wil Cordero
  • Vladimir Guerrero
  • José Macías
  • Tomo Ohka
  • Brian Schneider
  • Jose Vidro
  • Brad Wilkerson

    • Notable transactions

  • August 20, 2003: Todd Zeile was signed as a Free Agent with the Montreal Expos.

    • Batting

    Starting Players

    Note: G = Games played; AB = At bats; H = Hits; Avg. = Batting average; HR = Home runs; RBI = Runs batted in

    Other pitchers

    Relief pitchers

    Award winners

  • Liván Hernández, National League Pitcher of the Month, July

    • 2003 Major League Baseball All-Star Game

    References

    2003 Montreal Expos season Wikipedia
    (Text) CC BY-SA