Le Stade Olympique de Montréal - The Montreal Olympic Stadium

Описание: It was once said that throughout their some 37 years history, the Expos never had a real stadium that was fit for baseball and in a way, I guess you have to consider this to be true. But back in the Expos' heyday at the end of the 70s, you'd never hear a single soul complain about this and that like you have today. The team was winning, the beer was flowing, le fun était dans le Stade and everyone was happy.

In fact, on a sunny sunday afternoon, Le Stade without a roof was even a very nice place to be. To me, the park's fate was sealed the day they permanently topped it off with their faulty kevlar roof.

Built at the final cost of 1.6 billion beautiful dollars (the second highest cost in history for a ballpark construction) and finally paid for in december of 2006, the Big Owe as often refered to was built in 1976. However, you can see in some pictures of this slideshow that when the '76 Summer Olympics were held, the stadium was far from completion.

If memory serves me well and chances are it doesn't, work on the tower was finished somewhere in the 80s and the pièce de résistance that wouldn't resist, the roof, was finally installed in 1987.

The big idea behind the stadium was to have a roof on it to prevent the nasty april-may-september and october weather from impacting the games too much. Too many times, games at the stadium were rained out in those months and had to be rescheduled into what became extra doubleheaders in the season and since doubleheaders are generally split between the two teams, some like Whitey Herzog think that this is what might have caused the Expos to come up short in '79 and '80.

As I said earlier, the problem was with the stadium that once the roof was on for good, some people felt it took something away from the game of baseball. Sure, it wouldn't keep the die-hard fan from going but you probably lost the ones who viewed this more as entertainment than sports and went there to just take the family out on a sunny afternoon more than anything else.

Still, after all is said and done, many wonderful nights were spent there by you all, I'm sure. You'll remember the seat clapping, Youppi goofing off on his quad or on the visitor's dugout, Fernand Lapierre at the keys for some of the best stadium music around the league, the incredibly talented players we were lucky enough to see in Montreal, thanks to great baseball men like Jim Fanning, John Mchale, Danny Menendez, Mel Didier, Dave Dombrowski, Bill Stoneman, Dan Duquette and so many others.

Oh and before I forget, I threw in there some pictures of the 1977 Pink Floyd concert in Montreal at which allegedly took place the spitting incident that would lead Roger Waters to write The Wall. The album includes subjects such as the virtual wall that had built between the band and the audience, how depressed family issues had made him or how the pressures of the music biz finally took their toll on him and made him slowly drift away from reality.

The music bit that accompanies the pictures of the actual concert at the Olympic Stadium was recorded during this show and you can even hear Roger Waters asking this kid who supposedly threw a beer at him to "come back" and that "all is forgiven".
When the concert security staff members helped the guy make his way to the stage, the legend says that Roger got his revenge by spitting a thick one in the face of the poor fool before he was thrown back into the crowd.

Now we all know how The Wall is outta this world as a rock album. Even though the Pink Floyd part in the video kind of takes it somewhere else a bit, I thought the incident was history enough to be included in the slideshow and after all, it did happen in our own backyard...

Hope you'll enjoy.

Please note that I don't own the copyrights of any of these pics and songs.