Andre Dawson once played himself in a 1984 movie called The Cap, based on a short story by Canadian novelist Morley Callaghan that focused on a young boy who is given a baseball cap by his Montreal Expos idol after a game.
Now Dawson is the one accepting an Expos cap, this time as offered by the National Baseball Hall of Fame. The eight-time all-star will be enshrined into Cooperstown on Sunday, as possibly the last Montreal Expo inducted. The Expos moved to Washington, D.C., following the 2004 season.
Dawson played his first 11 seasons in Montreal, and at first argued that he should be depicted in the Hall wearing the cap of the Cubs. He starred in Chicago six seasons and won the National League most-valuable-player honour in 1987, his first with the Cubs after leaving the Expos as a free agent. He is now accepting of the Hall's decision, and on Sunday will be joined by at least two busloads of fans from Montreal, along with previously inducted Hall of Fame catcher Gary Carter, former manager Jim Fanning, and former owner Jeffrey Loria.
"I understand the decision of the Hall more or less pertaining to the history of the game and the important thing is, I'm in the Hall of Fame," Dawson, nicknamed The Hawk due to his fearlessness and intensity, said during a telephone conference call. "The cap wasn't a huge or major issue."
Dawson made the Hall during his ninth year of eligibility in January, when he surpassed the 75-per-cent threshold in a vote by members of the Baseball Writers Association of America.
He is the only player in the class of 2010 to get the call. He will be joined by former manager Whitey Herzog and umpire Doug Harvey, each elected by the veterans committee.
Veteran baseball broadcaster Dave Van Horne, now the voice of the Marlins, spent 32 years covering the team in Montreal.
"It never dawned on me that once he got elected, Andre would be wearing any cap other than the Expos cap," Van Horne said.
From 1976 through 1996, Dawson hit 438 home runs with 1,591 runs batted in, and won four Silver Slugger awards. Dawson, Hall of Famer Willie Mays and Barry Bonds are the only players in major-league history with at least 400 home runs and 300 stolen bases.
In 1977, he was voted NL rookie of the year with the Expos. When chosen MVP 10 years later with the Cubs, he became the first member of a last-place team to earn that recognition, after batting .287 with 49 home runs and 137 RBIs.
"Andre Dawson was the kind of talent who could just take over a game," Van Horne said. "Sometimes it was with his legs, sometimes it was with his glove, often it was with his bat and his base running.
"And that's what made him so special. He could do all of those things and do them so well to win games for the ball club."
Playing on the unforgiving artificial surface at Montreal's Olympic Stadium at the beginning of his career took its toll on Dawson's legs. He wound up getting 12 surgeries on both knees, and had both replaced when his playing career ended. He is expected to give a nod in his induction speech to former Expos trainer Ron McClain, who is also expected to attend. McLain said recently that Dawson would spend two hours before each game getting his knees loose, and when the team went on a road trip, he would put compression wraps on them to keep the swelling down.
"When you get up over 10,000 feet, the pressure in the plane changes and his knee would fill with fluid, just like your feet swell," McClain told the Palm Beach Post. "When I started with the Expos [in 1980] it took me a couple of road trips to realize that the first day after travelling to a city, he could hardly play. He could hardly bend his knee because his knee was always swelling."
Dawson, 56, was also an eight-time Gold Glove recipient awarded for defensive prowess.
He said that he will always hold his time in Montreal in high esteem. The Expos, established in 1969, were still relatively young when he first joined the club that Dawson said had a penchant for developing young talent, mentioning the likes of Warren Cromartie and Ellis Valentine.
"I felt we were always maybe a particular free agent or two away from getting to the next level, and that is going through the postseason and getting to the World Series," said Dawson, who never played on a league championship team. "It was very tough to get the quality free agents to want to come across the border and play in Montreal.
"They would entertain it but, you know, their decision at the last minute was that … they would go elsewhere."
Dawson finished his career with two seasons in Miami, and now works for the Marlins as a special assistant.
Editor's note: An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated the year the Expos were founded.