The Man Who Cared

Bill Atkinson’s pitching career began promisingly enough. After being signed by the Montreal Expos in October 1971, the Ontario native began a slow and steady climb up the organizational ladder. On September 18, 1976, Atkinson made his major league debut against the St. Louis Cardinals, pitching three innings and allowing zero runs in a 4-1 loss.

In 1977, Atkinson, who had earned himself the nickname “Kid Canada,” appeared in 55 games with a record of 7-2 and a 3.35 ERA. Atkinson, however, struggled to throw strikes. He walked too many hitters and allowed far too many home runs for Expos manager Dick Williams’ liking. Williams relegated Atkinson to low-leverage appearances, often bringing in the young reliever late in games when the Expos were behind or tied in in extra innings. In an era of 10-man pitching staffs, Atkinson was often the pitcher of last resort, even on an Expos team that finished with a record of 75-87, fifth in the National League East.

In 1978, Williams continued to deploy Atkinson from the back of the bullpen. In 14 of his 29 appearances, Atkinson entered the game with the Expos losing by three runs or more. In only five of his appearances did Atkinson emerge from the bullpen with the Expos tied or leading by one run.

On the night of June 29, 1978, Williams brought Atkinson into a game against the visiting Toronto Blue Jays in the top of the seventh with a 4-1 lead. Atkinson promptly allowed the Jays to tie the game 4-4. Williams had originally planned for Atkinson to pitch only two innings, but as Williams later explained, “I wasn’t going to take him out, not after it went 10 innings. I’d used enough pitchers as it was.”

In the bottom of the 10th, Atkinson scored the game’s winning run on a squeeze bunt after singling to start the inning, transforming himself from goat to hero. The Ottawa News declared, “Kid Canada saves the day.” Even though Atkinson was the winning pitcher and scored the winning run, the game against the Blue Jays did not count in the standings. Rather Atkinson had become the winning pitcher of the first-ever Pearson Cup, an exhibition game between the Expos and Blue Jays.

The game, the first in an annual series, honored Lester B. Pearson, the late Canadian prime minister who introduced universal health care, student loans for college, the Canada pension plan, and the Maple Leaf flag. During his lengthy career, he distinguished himself as a diplomat, winning a Nobel Peace Prize for helping bring about an end to the Suez Canal Crisis in 1957.

Pearson was also an avid baseball fan. He played rugby, basketball, hockey, lacrosse, and baseball as a young man. An infielder, Pearson spent one summer playing semi-pro ball with the Guelph Maple Leafs of the Ontario Intercounty Baseball League. After retiring from public life in 1968, Pearson took up the post of honorary president of the Expos until his death in 1972. He was inducted into the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame in 1983.

In the run-up to the inaugural match-up, the Expos and Blue Jays enthusiastically promoted the game. At a reception on June 14, 1978, the Expos officially presented the Pearson Cup to Maryon Pearson, the prime minister’s widow. Holding the cup for the cameras, Mrs. Pearson said, “It’s so heavy, it must be expensive.” She also expressed her pleasure and pride at a game honoring her late husband’s love of baseball. Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau similarly approved of the honor granted to his predecessor. Blue Jays president Peter Bavasi announced, “We are going to Montreal with great expectations. Hopefully, we can bring the Pearson Cup back to Toronto.” Expos president John McHale said, “We’re delighted to be able to play this game. From this point on this is going to be a very competitive thing. I know the Blue Jays are going to play a very tough game to beat the Montreal Expos.”

When tickets for the game went on sale in early June, the Expos announced to the public that they expected the game to sell out. The Blue Jays and Expos agreed to donate the proceeds from the game to amateur baseball organizations in Canada. To drum up interest, they claimed the game would “determine the major league champions of Canada.”

Despite the teams’ best intentions, problems had already begun to appear on the horizon. In late May, McHale had rebuffed efforts by CBC-TV to purchase the broadcast rights for the game, fearing fans would not buy tickets for the game if they could watch it from the comfort of their own homes.

On game day, the expected sell-out never materialized. Expos general manager Charlie Fox announced the team had sold only 10,000 tickets out of the 59,511 available seats at Olympic Stadium. Fox told reporters he expected about 30,000 fans to attend the game. He hoped that walk-in crowds from the subway would make up the 20,000 fan gap.

Fox also tamped down expectations that the Expos would give their best effort. He noted that the team was in the midst of a particularly difficult stretch of the schedule in which the team would play 10 games in seven days. Fox viewed the Pearson Cup as “just an exhibition.” If Blue Jays president Peter Bavasi wanted “a series, a best-of-five after the season is over, winner take all, I’d be more interested,” he told reporters. Expos manager Dick Williams was also nonplussed. He said, “The game is not utmost on our mind. We’ve got something going here with this team and it may result in a division title.”

The Expos organized a series of contests to entertain the crowd before the game began. John Mayberry of the Blue Jays and Ellis Valentine of the Expos engaged in a home run contest. Balor Moore and Mike Garman had a fungo hitting competition and catchers Alan Ashby and Gary Carter competed to see who had the most accurate throwing arm. Several hundred ballerinas whirled across the Astroturf waving peace flags.

Yet for all the fanfare about the game honoring Pearson, with the proceeds going to support Canadian baseball, and taking place between  the two major league baseball teams located in Canada, the game was devoid of actual Canadians. The teams’ presidents, general managers, and field managers were all Americans. Only two players, Atkinson and Blue Jays infielder Dave McKay, out of the 50 involved in the game, were Canadian.

While Atkinson gave the game a dramatic finish, only 20,221 fans came out to see it, well short of the Expos’ expectations. The money from ticket sales amounted to less than $100,000.

After the game, Expos McHale, apparently sincerely, told manager Williams, who had managed the Oakland A’s to back-to-back World Series championships in 1972-1973, “You’ve now won the first championship of Canada. That’s something nobody can take away from you.” Posterity did not record the typically caustic Williams’ response.

Atkinson seemed to be the only person who enjoyed himself. He told reporters after the game, with a smile on his face and an ice pack on his triceps, “Being Canadian, the only Canadian (for the Expos), this game meant a lot to me. To the other guys, maybe it was just an exhibition, but I really wanted to get in there. I was hoping to pitch. I wanted to pitch.”

Despite the lackluster response from everyone except Atkinson, the teams agreed to a rematch the following year. During the afternoon of April 19, 1979, the teams met again, this time at Toronto’s Exhibition Stadium. Only this year, the fans were just as dissatisfied as the players. Canada’s “championship” ended in a tie. Prior to the game, the Expos and Blue Jays had agreed to a 7:15 curfew since the Expos had an 8:50 flight to Chicago for a series against the Cubs the next afternoon. While the teams had agreed to a time limit, no one told the fans until the 10th inning. After the game, Jays president Peter Bavasi admitted he had erred in not informing fans, but he had hoped the game would end well before the curfew.

Additionally, some fans were upset that the Expos seemed to drain the clock by delaying the start of the bottom of the 11th inning. While it was an exhibition game, the Williams refused to allow David Palmer to pitch to the Blue Jays’ McKay, just minutes before the 7:15 deadline. After the game, Williams feebly explained his stalling tactics: “My catcher had a little trouble getting his equipment on and then the ball got by my second baseman.” The cantankerous Williams had no intention of giving the Jays an opportunity to win a meaningless exhibition game.

Fans booed during the presentation of the Pearson Cup to Toronto manager Roy Hartsfield and Williams. Others demanded their money back, yelling “We was robbed.” Eventually, about a dozen extra police were called in, one person was arrested for disorderly conduct, and the crowd peacefully dispersed.

After the game, Williams again complained about the exhibition game clogging up the Expos’ regular-season schedule. Williams, who rested many of his starters, used three pitchers in the game and complained that his 10-man pitching staff was depleted after an injury to starter Bill Lee. Lee had bruised his left shoulder and hip after being hit by a taxi while doing his daily five-mile jog between his hotel and the stadium. Steve Rogers, slated to start the next day, had flown ahead to Chicago rather than make a needless stop in Toronto.

The Expos players meanwhile found themselves in a dilemma of their own. As infielder Dave Cash explained, “Some of the guys take this serious. It’s an exhibition. It’s like any other game, though. If you slow up, you’re liable to get hurt. Most of us have pride to do the best we can.”

A few days later, Scott Young of the Globe and Mail called for an end to the Pearson Cup. Young felt that Lester Pearson “deserved better than to have a lousy exhibition game named after him, so meaningless that U.S. players who had never heard of him, or cared, were flipping coins to see who would lose and therefore have to take part in the titanic struggle.” Instead, Young suggested a postseason series featuring both teams, assuming neither was in the World Series.

By the time the third Pearson Cup came around in 1980, interest in the game was waning fast. On July 31, 1980, a headline in the Ottawa Journal declared, “Third Pearson Cup may also be last.” The Expos’ French-language radio station refused to carry the game. An Expos spokesman speculated that both teams might just stop playing the game in the future. Only 6,731 fans filled seats at Olympic Stadium to watch Montreal triumph 3-1 over the Blue Jays. The Expos themselves did little to help the Pearson Cup’s reputation by resting their starters and bringing up pitchers from the minors to give their rotation a rest.

In 1981, the players’ strike canceled the Pearson Cup, which had been scheduled for July 6. Despite the opportunity to let the Pearson Cup a peaceful death, the Expos and Blue Jays decided to revive it in 1982, only this time with a twist, an umpire plucked from a reality show. The CTV show “Thrill of a Lifetime” arranged for Dennis Pipella, an amateur umpire from Edmonton, to call the balls and strikes after Pipella’s girlfriend sent in an application. After the game, another Expos victory, Blue Jays outfielder Jesse Barfield said, “He didn’t do bad. I’ve seen worse.” Garth Iorg said, “I thought he was a very good umpire.”

The most excitement from the 1983 Pearson Cup came when Blue Jays reliever Joey McLaughlin expressed his utter lack of interest in the game: “This doesn’t make any difference to me. I know the game is for a good cause… and I know I’ll go down in history as the first Blue Jay pitcher to win a Pearson Cup, but it doesn’t mean anything. My record still says 0-1, not 1-1.” He then complained about the negative media attention surrounding his pitching: “Everybody’s been writing me off and I’m probably paying more attention to them than I should be, but it bothers me. The media hasn’t given me credit for my contribution in the past couple of years. I’ve given up three home runs in eight innings, and it seems like everybody has forgotten what I can do. There were a couple of comments that were made to me tonight that were very disheartening. I won the game, but the whole thing is totally negative, the whole outcome.”

In 1984, Expos bullpen coach Joe Kerrigan pitched in the Pearson Cup to spare the Expos pitchers a risk of injury while the team struggled to a 78-83 record.

Finally, in the spring training of 1987, the Expos and Blue Jays announced they could not find a mutually agreeable date to play the game and spared fans, players, and managers any more consternation over a well-intentioned but mismanaged exhibition game.

The failure of the Cup stemmed from a simple conundrum. Was the game meaningless because no one—from the executives to the players to the fans—cared about it? Or did no one care about it because it was meaningless?

Expos infielder Chris Speier summed up the feelings of the players toward the Cup: “The Pearson Cup is a joke. They take one of our off days in midseason away from us and expect us to be interested in an exhibition game when all a ballplayer is thinking about is the pennant race and trying not to get hurt. If they want to have a meaningful competition, let them make it a postseason thing and put a monetary prize on it.”

By 1987, Bill Atkinson’s major league career was long over. Four days after his victory in the first Pearson Cup, the Expos sent Atkinson to Triple-A Denver. Kid Canada had injured his thigh while making his game-winning charge towards home. As he later recalled, “I tore everything from the kneecap to the groin.” Atkinson, however, expressed no regrets about giving his all on the play: “I could feel it tightening about five steps from home plate, but I was the winning run and there was no way I was going to stop. Then I slid and  (Jay catcher) Alan Ashby fell on top of me and I knew my leg was a mess.” When Atkinson returned to the majors in September, he struggled, pitching only eight innings while allowing seven runs and a 6.75 ERA.

Atkinson spent most of the 1979 season in the minors before earning another September call-up. In 10 outings, he threw 13.2 innings, allowing four runs. He struck out seven and walked four. After the season, the Chicago White Sox purchased his contract. While Atkinson pitched for several more seasons in the minors, he never reached the majors again.

Atkinson was not sour about his fate. He later recalled, “I’m not bitter. Frustrated. Angry, sometimes. I thought they [the Expos] could have handled it a little better. But I’m not going to worry myself sick about it.” In the end, the only man who cared about the Pearson Cup became a footnote in a maligned and forgotten exhibition game.

References & Resources

Baseball-Reference

“Atkinson struggles to stay in majors,” Globe and Mail, March 28, 1979

“We was robbed” Ottawa Journal, April 20, 1979

Allen Abel, “Maple Leaf wins in Pearson Cup,” Globe and Mail, June 30, 1978

Allen Abel, “Jays invade Expo territory: Reluctant battlers caught in a war of sudsy giants,” Globe and Mail, March 12, 1981

Bob Ferguson, “Expos’ reliever in battle for bullpen berth,” Ottawa Citizen, March 29, 1979

Ian McDonald, “Blue Jays see exhibition as ‘Canadian championship,” Gazette, June 3, 1978

Ian McDonald, “Pearson Cup Game ends on a sour note,” Gazette, April 20, 1979

James Golla, “Expos drop Jays before sparse Montreal crowd,” Globe and Mail, August 1, 1980

James Golla, “Thrilled umpire wins praise from major-league players,” Globe and Mail, September 3, 1982

Kevin Boland, “A night to forget for Kerrigan,” Globe and Mail, May 25, 1984

Marty York, “Jays’ McLaughlin not impressed after gaining victory over Expos,” Globe and Mail, May 6, 1983

Paul Patton, “10th-inning bunt gives Expos 5-4 win over Jays,” Globe and Mail, June 30, 1978

Paul Patton, “A ‘difficult time’ in Expo schedule Pearson Cup game arouses little enthusiasm,” Globe and Mail, June 29, 1978

Paul Patton, “Pearson Cup ends in 4-4 tie when curfew halts game,” Globe and Mail, April 20, 1979

Paul Rodway, “Pearson Cup unveiled for Expos-Jays series,” Ottawa Citizen, June 14, 1978

Scott Abbott, “Third Pearson Cup may also be the last,” Ottawa Journal, July 31, 1980

Scott Young, “Pearson deserves better,” Globe and Mail, April 21, 1979