Felipe Alou Gave the Expos Their Stripes

With a little help from his cardboard friends

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1974 Topps Traded Felipe Alou (#485T) - Card of the Day

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How you picture Felipe Alou in your mind no doubt has a lot to do with when you “found” him.

For fans and collectors who landed in the diamond world during the late 1970s or early 1980s, that mental painting might be a bit fuzzy. Maybe you stumbled across some old cards at a show or shop, or in your brother’s buddy’s shoebox stack.

In that case, you might have caught a dusty glimpse of Alou with the Giants or Braves. But then, maybe you also encountered one or both of his brothers, Jesus or Matty. Not always easy to pick up on those relationships when you’re just passing through, so unwittingly finding the siblings could have thrown the A’s, Astros, Pirates, Cardinals, and other teams into the mix.

If your Alou experience was anything like mine, though, none of the three really stuck in your mind until Felipe landed (back) with the Expos as their manager in 1992. By then, I was still pretty deep into the day-to-day drama of the game, and into the hobby. It was pretty tough to ignore the new skipper writing his left fielder’s name into the lineup every night — that would have been Moises Alou, Felipe’s son.

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So for me, and probably for many fans who’ve followed the game over the last 30+ years, Felipe Alou is an Expo. Or maybe a Giant, owing to his run as San Francisco’s manager from 2003 through 2006.

Of course, Alou’s ties with the Expos began a generation earlier than his ascencion to the top of the9r major league dugout steps.

Toward the end of the 1973 season, when Alou was nearing the end of his career, the Yankees placed the 38-year-old on waivers. The Expos selected him on September 6, and Alou hit .208 for Montreal through the end of the campaign.

That all went down early enough for Topps to catch the new team designation in their 1974 set, on card #485:

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No airbrushing necessary, thanks to the artful application of the under-the-bill photographic technique…and the viewer’s willingness to ignore the verticals. Or maybe it created a uniform Mandela Effect. I mean, the Expos wore pinstripes in 1973, right? Right??

But this wasn’t really the end of the line for Alou as a player. As mentioned above, it was merely near the end of the line. Because, in December of 1973, the Brewers bought Alou’s contract from Montreal, and he broke Spring Training with Milwaukee in 1974.

After going hitless and striking out twice in three at-bats over three games in the early going, though, the Brewers released Alou on April 29, 1974.

The future big league manager was done in pro ball as a player at that point, but Topps either didn’t get the memo or inadvertently gave us a peek behind the curtain into their scheduling lag time. Because, later that year, their 1974 Traded set included Alou in his brand new, radioactive Milwaukee Brewers ball cap (aglow at the top of this post).

And, of course, his Brewers pinstripes.

Today, Felipe Rojas Alou — he of the Giants, Braves, A’s, Yankees, Expos, Brewers, Expos, and Giants — turns 90 years old.

Two Final Tubs of Goo

Alou struck out in his final at-bat, a pinch hitting appearance against Terry Forster in the top of the eighth of a Brewers loss to the White Sox at Comiskey Park on April 24, 1974. About 12 years later, Forster threw his final pitch, winding up his career with Angels.

The next spring, Forster landed on a couple of career-capper cards. Read all about his wind-down and those final cards right here.