Momentary main attraction Expos' AAA farm club spent just a season-and-a-half here, but starting pitcher from Texas and then-12-year-old superfan have warm memories of the Winnipeg Whips a half-century later By: Jason Bell Posted: 7:00 PM CDT Wednesday, Jun. 17, 2020 Last Modified: 9:02 PM CDT Wednesday, Jun. 17, 2020 Updates

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 16/06/2020 (1556 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Ernie McAnally was the poster boy for the Winnipeg Whips, even though most people in the Manitoba capital had likely never heard of the hard-throwing Texan.

Yet, there he was on the front of the Winnipeg Free Press sports section on June 19, 1970 flashing the ball club’s new uniform the day the Whips played their inaugural game at a makeshift ballpark at Winnipeg Stadium.

McAnally and the rest of the Montreal Expos’ wandering AAA affiliate had finally found a home.

Winnipeg’s starting pitcher that evening against the Syracuse Chiefs says he has fond memories of being the main attraction 50 years ago.

“The city was great, a lot better than where we were before. It was a tough season, getting shifted around, playing on the road, moving your family. But Winnipeg was good to us, the fans were great and the press was good to us. People were just glad we were there,” says McAnally, 73, reached earlier this week at his home in Mt. Pleasant, Texas.

“Nobody cared about us when we were in Buffalo. We were kind of the lost Bisons that wound up the Whips. And we were grateful to be Whips. People came to the park and supported us.”

The Expos brass had grown tired of bleeding money in Buffalo; attendance had dropped to a few hundred spectators each home game in 1970 and the stadium was in a squalid part of town. After one particular game, the team bus of the Richmond Braves, the minor-league squad of the Atlanta Braves, was bombarded by rocks from angry Bisons fans.

“Nobody cared about us when we were in Buffalo. We were kind of the lost Bisons that wound up the Whips. And we were grateful to be Whips. People came to the park and supported us.”
– Ernie McAnally, Winnipeg Whips starting pitcher

By early June, ownership transferred the squad to Winnipeg after a six-week road trip.

“We left Buffalo in a pretty ratty old plane and flew down to Tidewater (Norfolk, Va.), and before we landed, the travelling secretary, Doc McCormick, came back and said, ‘Boys, we don’t know where we’re going but we’re never going back to Buffalo,’” recalls McAnally, picked up by Montreal in the expansion draft prior to the Expos’ first-ever major-league season in 1969.

“We were gone for about six series on the road and then it all got worked out for the franchise to be moved to Winnipeg. We got to Rochester (N.Y.) and they flew me and my first wife out to Winnipeg on the Thursday, and we got in about midnight. The press conference was Friday and I got some special treatment, as far as getting to represent the team there and model the uniform.”

Renamed the Whips, the club took up residence on a diamond in the southwest corner of Winnipeg Stadium on Maroons Road.

“It was a strange field we played in, with pretty short porches. It was decent enough by the standard of those days,” McAnally says.

A sellout crowd of more than 7,000 packed the stands Friday, June 19 — half a century ago — as McAnally delivered the Whips’ historic first pitch to Chiefs centre-fielder Bobby Mitchell.

The 6-1 right-hander surrendered just four hits through six-and-a-half innings, yet Winnipeg trailed 2-0.

But the hosts loaded the bases in their half of the seventh and second baseman Kevin Collins, 0-for-2 in two previous plate appearances, launched a grand slam to spark the Whips to a 4-2 comeback triumph. McAnally managed a tidy final two innings to secure the complete-game victory, fanning seven hitters along the way.

Jeff Solylo wasn’t there for the team’s official welcome under the lights that Friday night, but wore his baseball mitt and sat in the bleachers for dozens of Whips games in the summers of 1970 and ‘71.

That 12-year-old kid from the Morse Place neighbourhood lived and died with every pitch in those days.

“Our family went to a lot of games. Ticket prices were so low. I have a ticket stub from when the Expos actually came through town and played the Whips (in an exhibition game) in ‘71 and I think it was $3.50,” said Solylo, now 61.

“I really enjoyed getting autographs, I really enjoyed talking to the ball players because you were so close to the field in the old stadium.

“Players would even step over the short fence and sit in the stands with us and talk. I remember (relief pitcher) Steve Shea would do that every now and then; he’d walk over during batting practice and pre-game warmups, step over the fence and just starting chatting with us. That was huge for us kids. It was really a nice, friendly environment there. There was incredible interest in the team that first season.

“My autograph book was full. The very first page has the names of Boots Day, who was my favourite player, Kevin Collins, who hit the grand slam to win the very first game, Steve Shea and Ernie McAnally.”

But the Whips, a collection of baseball retreads, finished near the cellar in 1970, going 52-88 overall. McAnally posted a respectable 12-13 record and a 4.69 earned-run average, leading the eight-team circuit in innings pitched (192.0) and strikeouts (178). He also walked 144 hitters, most in the league that season.

“Players would even step over the short fence and sit in the stands with us and talk… That was huge for us kids. It was really a nice, friendly environment there. There was incredible interest in the team that first season.”
– Winnipeg Whips fans Jeff Solylo

“We didn’t win many games that year but it seemed like we got runs on the days I pitched,” says McAnally, a man of strong Christian faith who balanced family life and careers in banking and real estate after baseball. “I got some nice reviews in Winnipeg and it helped my prospects. Triple-A ball is a pretty good challenge and I got selected to the league all-star game that year.”

McAnally made the Montreal roster out of spring training in 1971 and, save for a two-week conditioning stint that summer with the Whips, went on to pitch four seasons with the big-league squad, winning 30 of 97 career starts on an Expos team that consistently finished below .500 in the National League East. He wasn’t a bad hitter, either, picking up 27 career hits in 204 plate appearances, including a lone home run in his rookie year against the Chicago Cubs.

The Whips, who had much-ballyhooed rookie and future Montreal star pitcher Steve Rogers on the roster, went from bad to worse in their second and final season, faltering to 44-96 in 1971. The rest of the league was fed up with travelling a couple of thousand kilometres to Winnipeg, and the Expos had lost a pile of money shuttling the minor-league squad by air and subsidizing the travel of other teams.

By November, Expos general manager Jim Fanning announced the team would relocate to Lynchburg, Va., as the Peninsula Whips.

“That was very disappointing because there was no pro baseball to root for here. After two years, the Whips were gone, never to return,” says Solylo. “We’d watch baseball on TV and we jumped in the car and drove down to Minneapolis to see the Twins. But I always missed the Whips.”

By 1976, McAnally was done with baseball but treasures the time he spent in Winnipeg.

“I have many great memories of Winnipeg. I went back up there years later for a fellowship of Christian athletes in the winter, and it was cold. But I loved Winnipeg,” he says. “My son (Kevin) was just a little guy then but he and my first wife were there with me when I played for the Whips. The city was very good to our family.”

jason.bell@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @WFPJasonBell