Elliott: Former Expos ace and Angels boss Stoneman excellent choice for HOF

GM Bill Stoneman after winning the 2002 World Series with the California Angels.

February 10, 2026

By Bob Elliott

Canadian Baseball Network

Tell me this is an example of Hall of Fame class or what?

When general manager Bill Stoneman took over the California Angels after the 1999 season he replaced Bill Bavasi.

When Stoneman and the Angels met the San Francisco Giants in Game 1 of the 2002 World Series at Edison Field, Stoneman invited Bavasi to the game, providing seats for Bavasi and his family.

Why? Because Bavasi’s prints were all over the 2002 team.

Now, think back on the Toronto Blue Jays family tree of GMs. Original boss Peter Bavasi (Billy’s brother) was followed by Pat Gillick in 1978. Gillick was followed by Gord Ash in 1995. Ash begat J.P. Ricciardi in 2002, Ricciardi begat Alex Anthopoulos in 2009, Anthoupoulos begat Tony LaCava (interim) in 2015 and next was Ross Atkins.

How many of those combinations remained friends or new GMs were secure enough in their jobs to invite their predecessor to a game the next year? While Gillick and Ash remained friends, 1995 does not count because Gillick remained on staff as a special advisor.

And LaCava held the interim position for 35 days and is still scouting for the organization. So the answer is zero in the 50-year history of the Blue Jays franchise.

Yet, dropping by Stoneman’s box were Hall of Famer Ernie Banks and Bavasi.

The hit column at Shea Stadium tells the whole story of Stoneman’s second no-no.

Just one reason along with two no-hitters (against Philadelphia in the expansion franchise’s ninth game at Connie Mack Stadium and three years later against the New York Mets at Parc Jarry) plus 54 games in 169 starts (245 appearances), including 17 wins in 1971.

He was a workhorse logging more than 200 innings pitched in four straight seasons for the Expos. His 251 whiffs in 294 2/3 innings in 1971 saw him finish third in strikeouts in the National League, behind Hall of Famers Tom Seaver (289) and Ferguson Jenkins (263). He had 19 complete games in 1971, good enough for a tie for third with Bob Gibson.

As a player he lived in Kirkland and then Senneville, Que.

* * *

We can remember like it was yesterday ... even if it wasn’t. On Jan. 8, 1987, my home phone rang on a Thursday afternoon.

“Hey Bob, Bill Stoneman here, Richard Griffin told me you were moving to Toronto,” said Stoneman, then a Montreal Expos executive.

Once again Griffin was right.

“When do you leave?” asked Stoneman.

“On Sunday and I have 101 things to do, why what’s up?” I asked.

“Well, I wanted to take you for lunch ... to tell you wrote like an American?”

I was stunned. This was pre-social media days. Stoneman was less of a quote machine than Fred McGriff or John Olerud after an 0-for-5 days with four strikeouts as an Expos executive. So there was silence on my end. “Did I offend you?” he asked.

“Heck no, it is a compliment, but where did you read my stuff?” I asked. Stoneman said since he lived in Hudson, Que., he had the paper delivered at home.

Remember this was the 1980s. Our relations were better with our neighbors to the south. No one was taxing the Ambassador Bridge or the Windsor Tunnel.

Just two years before at the Wales Conference finals in Philadelphia when the Flyers hosted the Quebec Nordiques I told Jay Greenberg he “wrote hockey like a Canadian.”

As compliments go it was A) unexpected and B) one of the best three or four I’ve ever received … and I have been given too many over the years.

* * *

The routine was always the same when Stoneman accompanied his Angels to Toronto. The Stoneman’s daughter Jill lives with her family in Lefaivre, Ont. (near Hawkesbury, which was not named after Andre (The Hawk) Dawson).

We’d run into each other on the field for 10 or so. He’d laugh. I’d laugh. Then, we’d both head upstairs.

One by one Angels writers who were seeing this for the first time would come over and ask “Ah ... I saw you and Stoneman on the field together. What were you talking about that made his smile and actually laugh? He never does that.”

It was none of their business, so I never told them.

Angels manager Mike Scioscia, left with GM Bill Stoneman

Yet, usually it was pronouncing John Boccabella (BACH-ah-bella) like the P.A. announcer at Parc Jarry, or talking about writers who used to cover the Expos, or playing golf with Steve Renko after winning the 2002 World Series and getting a congratulatory call from Charles Bronfman. They let the next group play through.

Or when former Expo and Angels scout Gary Sutherland landed at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport, hopped in a cab and told the driver: “Hilton O’Hare please.”

The driver turned and said “roll down your window sir and look to your left. That’s it there.”

* * *

Stoneman has a sense of humor.

Former Los Angeles Dodgers GM Ned Coletti knew I knew Stoneman and told him next time we spoke to ask him if he had any memories of Candlestick Park in San Francisco. The Montreal Stoneman would have sometimes told me of outcomes about games. The Anaheim Stoneman told me this story about his own self.

After pitching for the Expos, he worked for Royal Trust in Mississauga living in Georgetown. He and his wife became good friends with NHL official Bryan Lewis, a neighbor The families still stay in touch.

John McHale hired Stoneman to work in the front office. So, he would travel with the club on one west coast trip per season. Then he’d take a few of his University of Idaho Beta Theta Pi frat brothers living in the Bay Area area to Candlestick.

They’d get together for a day game at the Stick and head to a restaurant afterwards. Stoneman would call ahead to either Giants general manager Brian Sabean or assistant GM Colletti for use of an unsold stadium suite, which Stoneman would stock with refreshments.

As an Expos-Giants game was beginning in the mid 1990s, a couple of San Francisco policeman came into the suite and accused Stoneman’s group of throwing things out of the suite and onto the crowd below.

Stoneman said it must be the people in the suite next door.

Police insisted they had the right suite and asked who was responsible for the group?

“I am,” said Stoneman.

The police asked for his ID, and examined his Quebec driver’s license. The cop picked up his radio:

“Checking on wants and warrants for: Stoneman ... William Hambly Stoneman, ‘Kay-bec,’” the polceman said into his radio. He read Stoneman’s driver’s license number and home address Hudson in‘Kay-bec.’

There was a crackling on the radio. Then the voice on the other end came back from the stadium precinct station: “Wanted ... in Los Angeles for auto extortion.”

The policeman cuffed Stoneman, walked him out of the box and along the concourse.

All the time Stoneman suspected an Expo player had set up this elaborate prank. Then surprise, surprise ...

Stoneman spotted both Sabean and Colletti hiding around a corner ... doubled over in laughter. Suddenly, Stoneman could see clearly.

“Colletti had set it up,” recalled Stoneman.

Uncuffed and back in the box, the Expos GM and frat brothers spent the rest of the game and the whole dinner trying to come up with ways to get even with Colletti. So, whenever Colletti, accompanied the Giants on a trip to Montreal, he used an assumed name at the team hotel, didn’t ask for a team and box and didn’t ask for a ticket. He preferred to sit down the line where he could not be seen from Stoneman’s booth in the press box.

“Colletti should not stop looking over his shoulder, it’s not too late to get even,” Stoneman said jokingly.

Stoneman left at the end of the 1999 season -- at the time he had spent more years in Canada than the US -- to join the Angels, hired manager Mike Scioscia, the Angels won the it all in 2002 and now he’s a consultant with the Angels.

And his election to the Canadian Hall of Fame in St. Marys is long overdue. You might say as they used to say on the Untouchables “he will class up the joint.”