Once in a blue moon a jersey surfaces in the hobby with afascinating story behind it. Here is one of those instances. During SpringTraining in 1972 the Montreal Expos’ newly acquired leftfielder Ken Singletonwas struggling with red bumps and rashes that broke out all over this body. Hehad the same problem his first two seasons with the N.Y. Mets. At some pointduring ‘72 the regular season trainers determined that the cause of thismysterious rash was the flannel material of his uniform. So the team speciallyordered him this knit jersey and pants set and low and behold his rashesceased. Singleton was the only Expos player to wear knit in ’72 as most of MLBwas still wearing the heavy wool/flannel garments at that time. In 1973 theExpos made a permanent switch to the more comfortable knit fabric and Ken’sexperience may have had a lot to do with it. In ’73 Singleton had one of hisbest statistical seasons and it certainly was not a coincidence.

Featured here is this very 1972 knit road Expos uniformworn by Ken Singleton. It comes with direct provenance from longtime MLB scout BillSchudlich who began his scouting career with the Montreal Expos in theirexpansion 1969 season and acquired this jersey right from Singleton. He canback up the facts of this unique story as can an Oct. 19 2012 article inHardball Times by Bruce Markusen.

The powder blue button-down knit jersey has Wilson Size 44 taggingbehind the collar along with “72 Set 2” on the front left tail. The Expos “elb”cursive logo adorns the left chest in red white and blue tackle twill with“expos” below in lower-case block blue twill letters. Singleton’s No. “29” is sewnon the right chest and on the reverse in blue tackle twill. The sleeves havered white and blue piping. The accompanying road zip-up pants are properly tagged by Wilson inside with size 35 washing instructions and a long striptag inside the rear waistband that reads “29 72 27 Set 1” to denote jerseynumber year length and set. Both articles come all-original and display solidwear with some spot staining on the jersey and significant piling on the backright rear of the pants. What a unique uniform to own from the popularfranchise that has since moved from north of the border to Washington.

Includes LOA from former Expos scout Bill Schudlich.

Provenance: BillSchudlich has been a Major League Baseball scout for almost half a century. He startedout with the Montreal Expos when they became MLB’s first Canadian expansionteam in 1969. From there he scouted for the Detroit Tigers from 1977-96 wherehe signed John Smoltz and later served as Scouting Director for ten years. Since1998 he has been scouting for the Cleveland Indians and still works part-time.