Ellis Valentine

Earlier in the day I came across an old Ellis Valentine baseball card. For a brief period of time, he was my very favourite player.

In the late 70’s, along with Warren Cromartie and Andre Dawson, Valentine was going to usher in a golden age of Montreal Expos baseball. The three of them were expected to form the most awesome outfield of all time, with Valentine, who could throw a baseball through the moon, leading the way. Six feet four inches tall, he could do it all on the baseball field and was pretty much the opposite of me in every conceivable way. Great, great things were expected from him, and all sorts of people—like me– dreamed of being him.

In the baseball card, which may well be from his rookie year, you can see an incredible confidence in his eyes. Cocky and unbroken, with the world stretching out before him, he seems to be daring the pitcher, saying, “Yeah, you just try it.”

Well, as it turned out, Valentine’s career didn’t unfold as anticipated. After a couple of promising years, he got hit in the face by a pitch that broke his cheekbone. Many think that it was the injury to Valentine that kept the Expos, who had an incredibly talented nucleus, from the postseason, a place that they never in their history visited (excluding the strike shortened 1981 season). When Valentine returned he had to wear an awkward football type guard on his helmet, and he just didn’t look right. He looked suspicious and fearful, hardened in a distrustful way, and he was traded to the Mets the next year.

At this point, unbeknownst to a lot of people, the Expos were full of cokeheads, Valentine being one of them. He sucked as a Met, and then sucked for the handful of other teams he played for, too, before leaving Major League Baseball for good in 1985. It should be noted that his first job outside of baseball was working at a rental car company where he earned $4.25 an hour.

However, his story isn’t a tragedy, as he’s now a happy and healthy guy finding immense gratification in working with at risk youth. If you were to ask him, he’d probably say he wouldn’t change a thing, but still, there’s a real sadness for me in this story. As a boy I had an awful lot invested in both Ellis Valentine and the Montreal Expos. Valentine flamed out amidst scandal and disappointment, and the Expos, well, they didn’t even flame out, they just sort of faded away, and it makes me sad to think about the beautiful potential that they, and all of us pretending to be them on Ottawa baseball fields, used to have.