Stade Olympique

The Hacksaw

On Opening Day, April 15, 1977, stadium officials could not find the keys to the doors. They took a hacksaw to the chains to let the crowd of over 57,000 inside, drawing an incredulous reaction from Expos executive John McHale. The Expos had moved from Jarry Park into a building that was not built for them. Roger Taillibert, a French architect whose main credential was modernizing Paris' Parc-des-Princes football stadium, had designed it for the 1976 Summer Olympics. Montreal lost 7-2 to the Philadelphia Phillies. Ellis Valentine hit the first home run, off Steve Carlton.

What Taillibert left over the bowl was a massive concrete tower leaning at a 45-degree angle, designed to house a Kevlar retractable roof that would lower along 26 steel cables and fold into the tower. The roof was not there on Opening Day. The tower was not finished. The Kevlar did not arrive until 1987, and when it came, it never worked properly.

The Rim

Before the roof existed, there was open sky and a high concrete rim that nobody had planned for as a baseball feature. Dave Kingman of the Mets hit a ball that struck that rim, and the umpires did not know what to call it. They ruled it foul. After that, orange foul lines were painted along the rim so the next ball off it would have an answer waiting.

The building held close to 60,000, which meant a crowd in the mid-thirty thousands still looked thin across the seats. The Pie-IX metro station sat directly beneath the stadium's atrium, connecting the park to Montreal's transit system about six stops from the Berri-UQAM hub.

The Roof That Stayed

The Kevlar membrane — orange inside, costing roughly $700,000 a year in maintenance, taking 45 minutes to open — malfunctioned and remained closed until May 1998, when it was taken down and sold for a dollar. The Expos played the 1998 season with no dome at all before a new non-retractable roof was installed for 1999. The park stood through the 2004 season.

Reporting: SABR, BR Bullpen, Ballparks of Baseball. Park data: MLB StatsAPI and Retrosheet, via the Fever engine.