Dodger fans living in Southern California have it made. I mean, we just hop on the I-5 or the 110 or the 2 and within minutes we are at Blue Heaven on Earth and get to enjoy watching the greatest baseball franchise on the planet. But what if you’re a Dodger fan who happens to live too far away from Dodger Stadium to make it to very many games every year? Or worse – what if you’re a Dodger fan who doesn’t just live in another state but lives in another country, such as Canada? How on earth can you follow Vin Scully and the Dodgers when you live 3,500 miles and four time zones away from Chavez Ravine? And as a Canadian, why wouldn’t you simply be a Toronto Blue Jays fan? The answer to these questions are simple – because the Blue Jays aren’t the Dodgers and the Dodgers are.

Gail Johnson is a Dodger fan; not just a casual Dodger fan, but as big of a Dodger fan as any season ticket holder who makes it to every home game. She is a true-to-the-blue, die-hard, avid Dodger fan who just so happens to live in Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada. Just how far is Moncton from Dodger Stadium? This far:

Dodger Stadium – Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada

So how did a lady who lives about as far away from Dodger Stadium as you can get and still be on dry land become a Dodger fan? You can blame it entirely on Dodgers bench coach Tim Wallach, who was a five-time All-Star, three-time Gold Glove winner and two-time Silver Slugger winner during his 13 seasons with the Montreal Expos.

Gail grew up in Moncton, New Brunswick and was the middle child of an all-girl family. She was the tough-as-nails tomboy son that her father never had and by the time she was nine years old in the fall of 1981, she was an avid baseball fan – a Montreal Expos baseball fan.

“I can still remember the excitement across Canada when the Expos clinched their division in the strike-shortened 1981 season and prepared to face the Dodgers in the NLCS, then a five-game series,” Gail recalls. “Because I was only nine and starting the fifth grade, I didn’t yet know what heartbreak of any kind was, especially the sports variety. So in my mind, ‘Of course the Expos were going to beat the Dodgers and then go on to win the World Series.’

“In my naïveté, there was never going to be any other outcome,” added Gail. “Then, on that fateful, cold October afternoon now known as Blue Monday, I learned about the heartbreak that can come when a team of people you have never met, yet have somehow developed an emotional attachment to, falls just short of the dream.”

It’s bad enough that Gail had to go through this emotional crisis at such a young age, but to make matters worse, she had to endure it for another couple of weeks.

“My father, who I was still learning a lot about baseball from, had grown up an avid Dodgers fan and was beaming with excitement and pride for his favorite team,” said Gail. “Not wanting to rain on his parade, I ran down the hallway of our bungalow to hide and started crying inconsolably. Dad, to this day, still remembers vividly how bad he felt when he realized how upset his little nine-year old daughter was while he was celebrating the victory of “his” team. He simply did not know at the time, and neither did I quite frankly, how deep my affection was for this team, and how that love would only grow.”

As every Dodger fan knows all too well, heartbreak is all part of being a fan – a big part of it, in fact. But another big part of being a fan is getting over the heartbreaks and looking forward to next season. And now a much more mature 10-year old Gail Johnson was a full-blown Expos fan – particularly a fan of that young, handsome, athletic Expos third baseman Tim Wallach.

“Admittedly, I don’t have many clear memories of Tim from the 1981 season, as he wasn’t a regular and it was his first season in the majors and my first season as a fan,” Gail said. “I was still trying to figure things out. I noticed him, of course, in the month of May 1982 when he caught fire and was named the NL Player of the Month. I remember Duke Snider and Dave Van Horne, the Expos broadcasters, mentioning that honor on one of their CBC broadcasts.

“‘Well cool,’ I remember thinking, ‘an Expo besides Gary Carter, Andre Dawson or Tim Raines is getting noticed,” added Gail. “All the while Tim just kept quietly going about his business, getting better and better at third, making me root for him more and more. Plus, honestly, I was 10 going on 11 and thought he was the cutest guy on the team.”

Former Expos great and current Dodgers bench coach Tim Wallach has had a profound impact on Gail Johnson’s life. (Photo credit – Stephen Dunn)

Gail remained a loyal Expos and Tim Wallach fan through her teens and adolescent years and would keep score of games on television in score books that she bought with babysitting money. She also grew out of the childhood crush and began respecting Tim for the great person and outstanding third baseman he had become.

“It is hard to pinpoint exactly when and how Tim grew into what I still consider a hero to me,” said Gail. “I remember how he always carried himself with such grace and dignity, never getting too wound up about anything, while remaining the consummate team player, always seemingly working as hard as he could to help the team win. No longer did my admiration of him have anything to do with the crush my younger self had had on him.

“I loved reading stories about his life, and hearing that his sons were born and that he had married his university sweetheart. He just sounded like a great man. And those plays at the hot corner – they were a thing of beauty.”

But just as it has for 146 years, baseball is a series of endless heartbreaks for true baseball fans, and Gail would suffer the worst baseball heartbreak of her 21-year young life in December of 1992.

“I remember shedding a few more baseball tears when Dad informed me (after I had received a new Expos cap for Christmas), that Tim had been traded to the Dodgers the day before, on Christmas Eve,” Gail said. “It was like October 1981 all over again for me, it was heartbreaking. ‘Tim would continue to play in L.A. – I mean, it’s not like he is retiring or anything,’ I would tell myself, but part of me knew it was all over. My interest in the Expos was still there but was not as big a part of my life as it once had been.

“I watched Tim and the Dodgers play the Expos in Montreal the week before the strike of 1994 brought an abrupt end to the season,” said Gail. “Although the 1994 strike killed most of the passion for baseball I had left at the time, I drove to Montreal for the last weekend the franchise existed; a nostalgic trip down memory lane. I had spent too much of my youth and had invested too much in the team to not take the time to say good-bye. Still, there was never another player to me like Tim Wallach. No sports figure who would ever have such an impact on me personally … without him even knowing it.”

As Wallach’s career went on, so, too did Gail’s. But even though the Southern California native was a continent away, Gail continued to follow her childhood hero.

“I never lost track of Tim’s career and enjoyed reading about his coaching progression and about the successes of his 3 boys,” Gail said. “Through it all I have never read or heard a negative thing said about him and admire the way he seems to be universally respected by all who have played with and for him.

“When Tim became of a member of the Dodgers coaching staff in 2004, I started following the Dodgers – still my father’s favorite team – and I soon became an avid fan of the Boys in Blue,” Gail added. “My love for any sports team will never match the love my teenage self felt for the Expos of the 80’s, but now that I am in my early 40’s, I find myself looking forward to watching baseball games again and have once again thrown myself into players stats and stories. Chances are I’ll shed a few more baseball tears the day that the Dodgers win the World Series, and that inevitable day that Tim becomes a major league manager.”

Although Gail’s story could end here, it does not. In fact, it gets incredibly if not impossibly better.

“When I learned that Tim was going to be inducted into the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame I wanted to attend the ceremony, but for financial reasons it was simply not possible for me to go,” said Gail. “I didn’t know how else to reach Tim [to congratulate him] and I had decided that life is too short for regrets, and that it would mean a lot to me if I could at least get a letter to him on this great occasion. I have always gotten the impression that Tim is a very unassuming, humble man, and figured it was very likely that he had no idea of what his career (as an Expo especially) meant to a lot of people, so I wanted to at least let him know. Thankfully, I was able to find an email address on the HOF website and threw caution to the wind.

“A few days after the HOF ceremony, I read a wonderful column online by a sportswriter by the name of Bob Elliott, whose name I recognized from reading about the Expos growing up,” Gail continued. “He covered the Expos until the late 80’s and he was also inducted into Cooperstown as a writer in 2012. On a whim, I entered a short comment on the website about what a great article it was, the best I had read about the induction ceremony, and truly it was, as it was quite heartfelt and touching. Not long after, maybe a few hours, I received an email from Bob thanking me for the note.”

Over the next few months, Gail corresponded back and forth with Elliott and with Danny Gallagher, Elliott’s colleagues from the Canadian Baseball Network. Gail shared her story with Gallagher and much to her surprise, he included it in one of his articles. But the real surprise for Gail came last week on December 23rd – two days before Christmas.

“When I arrived for work there was a letter waiting for me at my desk postmarked December 10th from California,” Gail said. “When I opened it there was a handwritten note from Tim Wallach and an autographed baseball card from his 1987 season, one of his best seasons as an Expo. I can’t tell you how thrilled I was to receive this, and what a classy move on Tim’s part! I am beyond thrilled.”

One can only imagine the joy and excitement that Gail Johnson felt when she received this handwritten note and autographed baseball card from her childhood hero Tim Wallach.
(Photo courtesy of Gail Johnson)

So what’s next for Gail whose Twitter handle is @GJOH29 – the 29 being Tim Wallach’s jersey number – and whose Twitter profile proclaims that she is “The biggest Dodger fan north of the border?”

“I like to think that maybe, just maybe, Montreal will get a professional baseball team back one day. If they do, I will certainly cheer for them like I do the Toronto Blue Jays,” said Gail. “But I bleed Dodger Blue now. The next item on my bucket list is to make the trip to Dodger Stadium, which will hopefully happen while I am waiting to win the lottery! In the meantime, I will be supporting and following the team from 3,500 miles away.”