For U.S. Fans of Expos, It's Going, Going, Gone

He began a concerted effort to gather Expos gear, pursuing relics of the team's players -- many of whom would be lucky to get historical-footnote status -- as if they were Hall of Famers. That included his spring-training dumpster diving, which might yield uniforms the team was throwing out, and his longtime relationship with an Expos equipment manager who would call up and offer to sell truckloads of used equipment.

" 'Bad day at the racetrack,' " Pearo remembered the man saying. " 'Come on up, I've got something for you.' "

One such transaction left Pearo with one of his most unusual treasures: long underwear owned by Steve Rogers, an Expos pitcher from 1973 to 1985.

"They're autographed," he said.

He's also quite proud of a bat used by John Boccabella, a backup catcher on the original 1969 Expos. This was a rare find, Pearo says, because bats are usually discarded only after being broken, and the weak-hitting Boccabella didn't usually swing hard enough to make that happen.

"I think I had to sell the wheels off a car" to pay for that bat, Pearo said.

At his home near the shore of Lake Champlain, just two minutes from the Canadian border, Pearo converted an indoor basketball court to hold his hundreds of items by adding imitation baseball lockers and a two-story wall of bats.

In the space of a loft apartment, his Expos Room dwarfs the Expos collection at the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y., which has seen fit to keep only about 95 items related to the team. Pearo didn't want the exact location of his house reported for fear that burglars would be attracted by the collection.

Among the displays are bobble-head dolls and rosin bags, warm-up jackets and old advertisements: items including the first bat ever used by an Expos hitter and the shoes worn by former Expos manager Frank Robinson -- who now skippers the Nationals -- during the team's final game last season.

The end: Unfortunately, that's where this is going. The Expos were eventually done in by declining attendance and revenue, for which Pearo blames fair-weather fans in Quebec. He says he was pleased, for reasons of spite, when their beloved National Hockey League season was cancelled last year.

This year will bring another symbolic blow, as the minor-league Vermont Expos, whom the Nationals inherited, also plan to change their name. Fan suggestions here have included the Green Mountain Boys, the Howlin' Howards -- after former Vermont governor and erstwhile presidential candidate Howard Dean -- and several variations involving maple sugar.

Now, Pearo said he would like to sell the collection to somebody in Washington -- lock, stock and bobble-head. He would like to see it put on display, but he's a little doubtful, having heard from a friend in the D.C. area that Nationals fans aren't interested in the team's past.

"I guess they feel like it's a brand-new baby," he said. "And not an adopted child."