Monday, February 11, 2008

222 Reasons Why We Miss The Montreal Expos

Olympic Stadium: First the fans, then the team. Now even the turf has left.

Talk to anyone who travels regularly working National League baseball games. Chances are they miss the Montreal Expos more than they had expected.

Washington DC has it's advantages, but it doesn't have Youppi or over-the-counter codeine available in every pharmacy. Americans working Expos games were always doing favors for friends, bringing back as many bottles of "222" as they could squeeze into their bags.


For the uninitiated, a "222" is a pain relief pill made by Johnson & Johnson - Merck. It contains 375 mg aspirin, 15 mg caffeine and 8 mg codeine. While perfectly legal in Canada, any product using codeine in the US requires a prescription.

When the Expos left Montreal for Washington, TV folks and sportswriters alike were faced with a shortage of "222s".

Accordingly, Toronto has become more popular than ever among us TV types.

So why are we bringing all this up?

Ampex2000 has posted "Chris Berman and how to smuggle Canadian 222s", on YouTube. Of his fourth posting, Ampex2000 writes:
"Chris Berman explains how to sneek 222's in the US and the pop he gets from it." (sic)




Although they've gone up in price as the US dollar tumbled, "222s" continue to be a big reason many are quietly saddened by the loss of baseball in Montreal.

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