By Gary Smith

No, wait. It was worse than that. O flew home from the Dominican Republic, reported to MLB's offices in New York City and discovered -- three days before pitchers and catchers were to report -- that he had six people on his staff. In the entire organization, including his five minor league teams. Loria had stripped the franchise and hauled off the parts -- humans, computers, scouting reports, radar guns -- to Miami.

"What is this?" O asked his administrative assistant, Marcia Schnaar, when she faxed him the employee list from Montreal. "A joke?" He heard no laughter. He reached for the telephone in his office. O.K., so it was the umpire's video room at MLB headquarters. He reached for his Rolodex. O.K., so it was a pile of paper scraps stuffed in a manila folder. But no one in baseball had a circle of friends the size of O's.

Hey, Tony, got a job for you, how 'bout it?

What's the job, O?

What job you want?

He arrived at the Expos' training camp in Jupiter, Fla., looked at his crew of orphans and felt right at home. He saw his backyard in Valverde Mao. He smelled history refried. Hadn't Jackie Robinson, baseball's first black player, and Clemente, its first Latino superstar, been farmed out to Montreal to prove they were worthy of breaking barriers in America? He and his new assistant G.M., Tony Siegle, set to work.

O awoke at four each morning, arrived at five, worked till 10 at night. Lunch? Wolf down a salad from the players' spread. Dinner? Order in sandwiches. The phones sizzled, O looking for help, help looking for O. The office buzzed like mayflies with 24 hours to live. But O trusted tomorrow. The trust spread. "He energized everyone," says his farm director, Adam Wogan. "You wanted to do it for Omar. You'd run through a wall for him." Suddenly it was July and the Expos, 68 -- 94 the previous season, were in second place, their dark, once-empty coffin of a stadium rattling to life.

What was the G.M. of a team on the verge of liquidation, impaled on the spike of a $38 million payroll -- half what his opponents averaged -- doing pestering his MLB masters every day to cobble long-term megadollar deals with Vlad Guerrero and Jose Vidro? What was he doing trading for stars such as Bartolo Colon and Cliff Floyd? What was he doing drafting a Cal State -- Fullerton relief pitcher, Chad Cordero, in the first round in 2003 and using him to patch the Expos' leaky bullpen a few months later, after Cordero had pitched 261/3 innings of Class A ball? O was operating outside the box, way outside it, and most of it was working. Montreal finished second in '02 and was tied for the NL wild card with a month left in '03 before finishing in fourth place, four games over .500 for the second straight year.