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1981 Montreal Expos season

major League Baseball season

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionMar 4, 2026
Entity authorityQ4579893
Source-derived summary

The 1981 Montreal Expos season was the 13th season in franchise history. They made it to the postseason for the first time in franchise history. Their playoff run ended in the NLCS against the Los Angeles Dodgers, with Rick Monday hitting a ninth-inning solo home run in game 5, subsequently referred to as "Blue Monday" by Expos fans. This was the closest the Expos ever got to a World Series appearance while in Montreal. This was also their last time winning a playoff series until 2019, which they won the Wild Card game. The season was separated into two halves due to the 1981 Major League Baseball strike.

This would be the first and only time the team made the postseason as the Montreal Expos. The next time the franchise would reach the playoffs was in the 2012 season, after relocating to Washington, D.C., and becoming the Washington Nationals. The 30-year postseason drought set a Major League Baseball record for the longest in MLB history.

Offseason

December 8, 1980: Jack O'Connor was drafted from the Expos by the Minnesota Twins in the rule 5 draft.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “1981 Montreal Expos season” as major League Baseball season. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Montreal, Expos and season.

Editorial reviewA dependable orientation record for establishing vocabulary, names and a first evidence trail. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1981, 2019, 2012, 1980—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with Montreal, Expos and season providing the first useful test.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “1981 Montreal Expos season”, the useful work is to connect “major League Baseball season” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 4, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4579893. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1981, 2019, 2012 and 1980.

Critical limits

A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “1981 Montreal Expos season”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow 1981 Montreal Expos season primary sources, 1981 Montreal Expos season archive and Montreal research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from 1981 Montreal Expos season” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.