Carl Morton: Remembering the Expos 1970 Rookie of the Year

Carl Morton was born on January 18 1944 in Kansas City, Missouri. On the week that would have seen his 80th birthday celebration, we look at one of the early Montreal Expos and how he got to the majors.

Back in those days, gambling was frowned upon in most places, especially in baseball but these days you can head over to the top Canadian betting sites and look over some of the futures that they have for the 2024 season that lies ahead of us. 

Morton was an original Expo, one of the first players to take the mound for the Montreal franchise and more importantly, the player who would win the first major award in Expos history.

The Montreal Expos came into being on May 27, 1968, the same day that San Diego was chosen for the other expansion franchise. Issues with finding a place to play before Jerry Park was used led to rumours that the franchise was going to be lost but in 1969, the Expos would take the field for the first time.

There was a lack of much to cheer about in the early years. 10 years went by without a winning record, by which time Morton had come and gone and with him some of the other stars of the early seasons in Jerry Park, like Rusty Staub. Staub returned for a season in 1969 and had his number 10 retired by the franchise although that was down to a certain Andre Dawson who injected life into Montreal in the late 70s and early 80s.

One of the larger issues in the early time of the Expos was the lack of a proper stadium for them to play in. A domed stadium had been promised by 1971 but it was not until 1977 that the Expos would land at Olympic Stadium, ‘The Big O’. 

The loss of the Expos to Washington D.C has been much lamented by Canadian baseball fans. There have been hopes ever since that Major League Baseball will one day return to Quebec. A single National League East title in 1981 was a scant reward for fans who cheered for the team during their 36 years in baseball.

Although Morton was born in Kansas City, it was in Oklahoma that he grew up and would not move away from. Both High School and College ball were played in the state he would return to after he retired from playing baseball.

He grew up idolising Mickey Mantle and became an outfielder in the hope of one day being able to share an outfield with him. Mantle was born in Oklahoma himself but retired at the end of the 1968 season before Morton would make it to the big leagues the following year.  

There were clubs interested in signing Morton when he was in high school and it has been reported that when he was 18, Morton would turn down a couple of big signing bonus opportunities to stay close to home and play ball for the University of Oklahoma.

As a Sooner, he would play both the outfield as well as pitch, more of the former than the latter. In 1964 Morton would make just nine appearances on the mound, all in relief with an ERA of 2.88 to his credit. He would have 89 at-bats, hitting .326 with 29 hits that included six doubles and six home runs with 20 runs driven in.

That was his sophomore year and the only one in which Morton would put up any numbers for the Sooners, once more attracting attention from major league clubs and this time deciding that he would head into full-time baseball.

It was the Milwaukee Braves who would sign Morton and with the moving of the franchise, the Atlanta Braves that he would return to, to see out the remainder of his major league career, though he would play in the minors for a number of years for a variety of different feeder teams.

The Braves would send Morton to the minors at a pair of teams in opposite corners of the country, the West Palm Beach Braves in Florida and then the Yakima Braves in Washington state. It would be during his minor league career that he would be turned into a pitcher rather than an outfielder.

1966 and 1967 would see a pair of seasons with the Kingston Eagles in A ball before a move up to AA came in 1968 with the Shreveport Braves of the Texas League.  He was 10-9 in 1967 with Kingston but it was his 13-5 record in Shreveport that was the first sign that Morton could be a major league player.

The Braves would leave him unprotected in the expansion draft where the Expos and Padres would pick their teams. Picked 45th overall, Morton would pitch for the first time in the majors in just the 4th game in Expos history, their first trip to Wrigley Field to take on the Cubs.

It was an exceptional debut, sitting the Cubs down in order in the first with a trio of groundouts. He would go nine scoreless but the Cubs would break a 0-0 tie in the 12th to take the narrowest of wins.

Morton’s first start at home was against the St Louis Cardinals but would only go four innings and give up three earned runs. Knocked around in the rest of his April and one May start, Morton would not appear again until September where he would throw six innings across three bullpen outings.

In that 1969 season, he would appear in eight games in total, making five starts and ending with an ERA of 4.60. The Expos would go 0-8 in those starts and 52-110 overall. It was not the most impressive start to Morton’s career (nor the Expos) but it was enough to dip a toe in the water and not enough to stop him from retaining his rookie status for the next season.

The original plan was for Morton to provide long relief in the 1970 season but he would get a spot start in the second half of a doubleheader at the end of April against the Giants after three relief appearances to start the season in Cincinnati, St Louis and Chicago.

He would go eight innings, only giving up two runs for a win and earning himself another start in Los Angeles against the Dodgers early in May, giving up only an unearned run in nine innings. He would beat the Giants again, this time in Montreal, despite giving up five runs before taking a loss against the New York Mets.

The rest of May was a struggle, not going more than three innings in his next five appearances over three starts and a pair of bullpen efforts. June and July saw him make seven starts in each month and while there was not a lot of consistency, there were some games where he really started to stand out.

A complete game shutout at the Philadelphia Phillies was his first win in a stretch of eight W’s in a nine-game span as he started to really find his stride and gain the attention that would see him win the Rookie of the Year award at the end of the season. The last three of those were all complete game efforts, part of the 10 that he would hurl over the campaign, four of which were shutouts.

As the year turned to August, things didn’t go right for him, winning just a single start during the month, dropping his record to 15-10 in the process. A home game on the 29th saw Morton throw 10.2 innings only to take the loss against the Cincinnati Reds. That was how the month of August went, the run support that he had enjoyed all season dried up, losing 1-0 to the Atlanta Braves. A gentleman by the name of Henry Aaron drove in that sole run that day, the 100th of the season for the future Hall of Famer.

The final month of the season saw Morton pick up three more wins, including a pair of complete game shutouts. The second one of those was an 11-inning effort to keep the Cardinals off the board in Montreal. Morton would end the season with a record of 18-11 across 284.2 innings and an ERA of 3.60. 

Morton would make 112 plate appearances that season, batting .161. Two doubles and two home runs would help drive in seven along with a pair of sacrifice flies and 11 sacrifice bunts.

Of the 24 voters from the baseball writers, Morton would gain 11 votes for the Rookie of the Year award. In third place was a young shortstop in Philadelphia by the name of Larry Bowa, the future five-time all-star selection, dual gold glove winner and World Series champion in 1980. Morton would also gain Cy Young votes that year, finishing 9th in the rankings.

After four seasons with the Expos Morton was dealt to the Atlanta Braves, the organisation where he had started out when in Milwaukee. Both the 1971 and 1972 seasons had been disappointing for Morton and a fresh start was able to revitalise him for a few seasons.

One thing that will have satisfied Morton was his record as a Brave when he would take on his former Expos team. As a Brave, Morton would face Montreal on 11 occasions, 10 as the starter. He would produce an 8-1 record in those games with an ERA of 3.41 over 68.2 innings. A poor season in 1972 saw him traded by the Expos but he would return to haunt them. 

Morton’s first game against the Expos would be on June 7 in Montreal. Two earned runs over six innings of work was enough to see the Braves and Morton pick up the win. He would beat the Expos twice more in that first season in Atlanta, on July 13 in Georgia and on August 18 back in Montreal.

In Atlanta, Morton would go 52-47 over three and a half seasons with an ERA of 3.47. Another 29 complete games and eight shutouts would be added to his record in that time which included seasons with 15, 16 and 17 wins. 1976 would prove to be a struggle, traded to the Texas  Rangers but never appeared in a major league game for them. 

Morton would finish his major league career with an 87-92 record with an ERA of 3.73 and 650 strikeouts to his credit. It was a short time spent in the majors and one that always feels like a bit of a missed opportunity and a tale of what could have been.

Morton would find a home in the minor league system of the Phillies briefly in 1977. He would be assigned to the AAA Oklahoma City 89ers where he would go 9-12 with a 3.32 ERA. At the age of 33 and with hopes of making it back into the majors looking slim, Morton would retire and take up coaching.

He would link back up with his high school coach at the University of Tulsa Golden Hurricanes before Morton passed away at the age of just 39 while he was out jogging. He suffered a heart attack on his parents’ driveway and passed away at a Tulsa hospital.

While Morton was never a star, he is a player who played a huge role in the early years of the Montreal Expos. From playing in the 4th ever game that the Expos played to being their first major award winner with his 1970 Rookie of the Year win, Morton will never be forgotten in Montreal.