Le Boss in Montreal gives the Expos a new attitude

Sporting News, The, March 20, 2000 by Jon Heyman

For the first time in several years, since the days of Marquis Grissom, Delino DeShields, Larry Walker, John Wetteland and Ken Hill, there is buzz about the forgotten team from Montreal.

Much of that buzz comes from its excited new owner, Jeffrey Loria, a New York City art dealer who wants only to talk players, not paintings. "It's a new beginning," Loria declared last week at spring camp. "It's not business as usual anymore."

If anyone wants to disregard the Expos, Loria is there to remind them about all of their attributes, greater than many people realize. The Expos have a superstar position player, right fielder Vladimir Guerrero, and a potential No. 1 pitcher, righthander Dustin Hermanson, and both are signed through the 2003 season. They have talent procurers such as vice-president/international operations director Fred Ferreira, who ensures that the cupboard is never bare. They have a manager, Felipe Alou, who routinely performed miracles with undermanned, underpaid teams in the mid-1990s.

And now they have an owner in the middle of the fray. Loria greets his players by name as they parade past him in spring training, even though most are too surprised or intimidated to respond enthusiastically. "I know all the players. I knew all of them from day one," Loria says. "I have a different approach to this. I'm trying to pull all these guys together into one big family."

Loria was an all-city infielder at Stuyvesant High in Manhattan who spent the past 20 seasons in his box seats at Yankee Stadium, down the right field line. Says Loria, "I don't profess to know everything about all the players, although I'm probably as knowledgeable as any person in an ownership situation about who the players are since I've been a fan for so long."

Loria loves being involved in baseball, and there's no question he is extremely involved. "There's two perceptions of the word `involved,'" Loria says as a point of clarification. "One is caring; and that's my way, as opposed to somebody who has a million things to say. I am not a meddler. I am caring, involved. Let's face it, the team needed some direction. It had no direction. And that's my job."

The reviews are excellent so far. "It's different than it was before," says general manager Jim Beattie. "He's showed a lot of excitement for the team." People inside the organization are saying Beattie and Alou, who is entering his ninth season as Montreal's manager, are coexisting better, as well, after a tough couple of years when Alou was critical of Beattie.

Loria's fingerprints already are all over the roster and front office. His resume includes ownership of the Rangers' Class AAA affiliate at Oklahoma City from 1989-93 and 50-plus years as a Yankees fan. First base coach Perry Hill and bullpen coach Brad Arnsberg were with Oklahoma City. Michael Berger, formerly in the Rangers' scouting department, is the new assistant to the G.M. New acquisitions Hideki Irabu and Graeme Lloyd, a starter and reliever, were part of recent Yankees championship teams. Executive V.P. David Samson is Loria's stepson.

Loria, who has known George Steinbrenner for 20 years and appears to be modeling his ownership after Steinbrenner's positive traits, helped pull of the first major trade of his tenure, netting the controversial Irabu for pitching prospect Jake Westbrook and two more prospects. Beattie, who became well-acquainted with Steinbrenner's meddlesome ways when he was publicly ridiculed by The Boss after a bad outing as a young Yankees pitcher two decades ago, stepped aside to allow Loria to have what Beattie said was a "main" role in doing the Irabu deal with Steinbrenner.

"They got a pretty good arm, and we got what we needed," Loria says. "I always liked Hideki. New York is a difficult city to perform in. It's a city with great expectations. Let's not forget he came to New York, a large city with a microscope, from a different culture. And he made the transition." In a major reversal, Irabu is being looked up to in Expos camp, not ridiculed. He's also pitching well so far after an early scare with minor elbow pain. "He's hitting his spots," Beattie says. "He doesn't get excited with things. If our young starters could learn from watching him, that would be a big plus."

Any involved owner, especially one who's a Yankees fan, is going to draw comparisons to Steinbrenner. "He's very involved, but he's not demanding," says Ferreira, formerly a high-ranking Yankees scout. "He's trying to make everyone comfortable."

There are disadvantages to owning the Expos, and most of those involve funds. But Loria sees some advantages, too, and one of them is that controversy and criticism are infrequent. Alou eschewed a chance to go to the Dodgers before last season, and part of the reason is assuredly his high level of comfort in Montreal, where he is treated like a king and the team's past two awful seasons were glossed over. The Expos don't have to worry as much as other clubs about backlash. They have considered deals for John Rocker and Rickey Henderson over the past several weeks, although there's no sense that either deal is imminent or even likely.