A few weeks ago a young colleague of mine happened to be singing a song that was part of a Walt Disney exhibit at the New York World’s Fair in 1964. I told her I was there and she was amazed. I thought I still had the official guidebook for the event, but it turns out it was actually the edition published for Expo ’67, which took place in Montreal — my ancestral manse — that I have on my bookshelf.
This, in turn, reminded me of several posts and Conversations I had about the Expos last year. A couple of shelves in my office are devoted to books about the franchise but I could not find two “instructionals” I distinctly remembered that came out in 1972 featuring catchers Ron Brand and John Bateman demonstrating how to play the game. Very elementary stuff; I imagine these were written with young kids in mind. These were virtually identical, save that Power Baseball was in English and Le Baseball Dynamique was in French.
A couple of days ago I was tooling around the attic in search of a tin box of photos taken 50 years ago when I was the manager of my college team. Couldn’t find those but I did find the Expos books! They are in surprisingly good shape, considering their age and compared with some others in my library.
Fun.
I can still remember visiting Montreal in ’72, spending a month during the summer visiting family, hanging out with my cousins, and just living the life of a carefree teenager. I’m guessing the books were purchased at W.H. Smith and Son, a favorite hangout of mine on St. Catherines in the downtown area.
is available on Amazon.com,
