Philadelphia Phillies 6 – Montreal Expos 7
Wednesday, July 18, 2001, 7:07 PM, Stade Olympique
Attendance: 5,157, Time of Game: 2:59
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | R | H | E | |
| Phillies | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 6 | 8 | 0 |
| Expos | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 1 | 7 | 12 | 1 |
W: Ugueth Urbina (1-1) L: Rheal Cormier (5-2)
By the early 2000’s I was going to roughly 1-2 Expos games a year. Like much of the rest of the city I had enough with the baseball ownership situation in Montreal and at the same time felt bad for the players.
For some reason our client, Airborne Mobile decided to give me great tickets to a game in July of 2001. I was happy to go and invited my friend Anne who wasn’t a fan and had never been to a baseball game before. The Big O was empty and cavernous with roughly 5000 people at the game. I did what I could to explain the game and chat with my friend.
The crazy thing was that the ending of the game was probably one of the best I had seen to date. At the end of the 8th the Expos were up 6 – 3 and it was clear they were going to win easily. Then, in the top of the 9th the Phillies scored 3 runs and the place went dead silent. When Vladdy came up in the bottom of the 9th I was hoping for something big but it being the end of life Expos, I had no expectation. We were in for a treat and got to see him hit a walk-off homer to end the game.
At that moment I realized that I was watching one of the greatest Expos of all time, in his prime. I think to this day that his time in Montreal was sadly one of the best of any career right when the Expos really stopped mattering to Montreal and to Baseball as a whole.
A complete game recap can be found here at Baseball Reference.
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