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It never happened for the supposed Team of the 1980s, but in 1994, it appeared my childhood dream was finally about to come true. Twenty years ago this week, the Expos had the best team, the best manager and the best record in baseball and were on their way to a possible World Series berth.

Then, on August 12, 1994 (a date etched as deeply in my memory as any family birthday or anniversary), the players went on strike. A few weeks later the playoffs and World Series were cancelled. And the following spring, the Expos cut costs and shipped their best players away to other teams.

It would take another decade before the team would finally be moved to Washington, but the strike changed the course of the franchise – and my passion for baseball – irrevocably. The eventual loss of the Expos deprived me of the continuity that fans in other cities are able to sustain from childhood through the rest of their lives.

Rick Monday couldn’t kill my optimism, but baseball labour politics and big business did. Since 1994, I’ve been much more of a casual fan of the sport, unwilling to give any ballclub the power to let me down. Each time the notion of baseball returning to Montreal has come up, I haven’t gone there. Even when two Blue Jays exhibition games drew almost 100,000 fans to Olympic Stadium this spring, my reaction was: big deal.

But in the weeks since Selig made his comments, two other things have eroded my stubborn resolve. I haven’t read much about the Expos since they broke my heart. But this summer I allowed myself the pleasure of absorbing Jonah Keri’s book Up, Up and Away, an entertaining ride through the entire history of the Expos franchise. I relived some of the special moments that I had tucked away for two decades.