Longtime coach Sellers kept Expos in tip-top condition 

April 16, 2024

By Kevin Glew 

Cooperstowners in Canada 

Montreal Expos players used to call him Dr. Death for the grueling exercises he put them through. 

But it was short-term pain for long-term gain, and most players quickly came to appreciate Bill Sellers, the team’s longtime strength and conditioning coach. 

“The players called me Dr. Death, even though I don’t think our program was all that rough, but they thought it was compared to what they were doing before,” said Sellers who worked with the Expos from 1979 to 1996. 

Former Expos ace Steve Rogers remembers the running and stretching programs Sellers implemented and yes, he recalls calling him Dr. Death.  

“The more crap you dish on somebody, the more you like them,” said Rogers. “So, in other words, we were constantly giving him trouble . . . He would tell us we were going to do hamstring stretching and you should’ve heard the bitching and the moaning and calling him every name in the book, and he’d be up there and he wanted to laugh, but he was being serious because it was his job.  

“We were just giving him all kinds of crap, but that was really indicative of how much we accepted him. We all liked him. We hated the way we felt sometimes, but we all liked him.”  

Retired for more than 20 years now, Sellers remains very active. He bikes every day and works out with light weights. He and his wife, Jeanne, who will celebrate their 60^th wedding anniversary in August, now split their time between Montreal and West Palm Beach, Fla., where the Expos used to hold spring training. 

In a recent phone interview, Sellers reflected fondly on his time with the Expos in which he introduced several tests that were considered revolutionary at the time. 

It was a rewarding career for someone who grew up loving sports as a Boston Red Sox and Boston Braves fan in Newton, Mass. 

“My mother was the one who was the big baseball fan, and she would go to all of these ladies day games that they would have back then,” recalled Sellers. “She would take me with her and she liked [Braves pitcher] Warren Spahn. So, we always went to Warren Spahn games when we could.” 

Football scholarship

Sellers was also a standout athlete himself. He played basketball, baseball and football and was rewarded with a football scholarship to the University of Rhode Island where he served as a centre on offence and a noseguard on defence.  

He majored in physical education and earned a bachelor of science degree. He’d later add a master’s degree in education from the University of Pittsburgh and a doctorate from Boston University in exercise physiology. 

“While I was getting my doctorate, I kind of slipped into this field of exercise physiology, which was new at the time and it was all about assessment,” explained Sellers.   

In 1974, he accepted a position in the exercise science program at Concordia University (then called Loyola College) in Montreal. 

Joining the Expos

At Concordia, he met Dr. Ed Enos, who was the chair of the exercise science department and the university’s athletic director. The two collaborated and became highly respected experts in their field. Prior to their tenure with the Expos, Sellers and Enos designed training programs for the NHL’s St. Louis Blues, New York Rangers and Winnipeg Jets. 

“Then [Expos president] John McHale called,” said Sellers. “And it was a lot better to go to spring training than it was to go to Winnipeg in the middle of winter.” 

McHale wanted Sellers and Enos to evaluate the players. The Expos president was particularly concerned that the pitchers were doing too much running and were too tired when they were taking the mound. 

Sellers and Enos came into spring training and introduced a battery of tests for aerobics, strength, flexibility and body composition, which measured the player’s body fat. 

“We would then use these figures [from the test results] to monitor the players over the season,” said Sellers. “And we would also adjust their program if things were going negatively.” 

Revolutionary running program

They also addressed McHale’s concerns about the team’s pitchers running too much. 

“I think one of the big things we did was when we first went there, everybody ran together, whether you had the capacity of a marathon runner or whether you were just an average person,” explained Sellers.  

“And we were able to break those groups down so that everyone was training at the same percentage of intensity, not necessarily doing the same amount of work at the same time . . . So everybody had their own program.” 

Rogers can remember the running program. 

“As much as we pitchers thought we were really smart, we didn’t know running programs and guys would tend to overdue it and do themselves a disservice and it was great to have Dr. Sellers there to say, ‘No, don’t run it that fast,’” said Rogers. “It was the very beginning of science taking over and understanding what the body needed rather than just going out and running 20 sprints.” 

Rogers credit his outstanding 1982 and 1983 seasons to the stamina and strength he developed in Sellers’ program. 

“I wish we had that program from the get go in my career,” said Rogers.  

Leading stretching exercises

Early in their tenure with the Expos, Sellers and Enos worked primarily behind the scenes. The most public role in their jobs was leading the players in stretching exercises on the field. 

Rogers remembers the Expos players stretching three times a day, which he didn’t like but it helped him a lot. 

“At the beginning, our job was over when the game started. We could go home, but over the years, the job progressed to a full-time situation where we went to spring training and every home game,” said Sellers. 

And much to the credit of Sellers, Expos players began to understand the importance of conditioning. 

“I think the biggest change I saw over my time there was that the players used to come to spring training to get in shape, but after a few years, they started to come to camp already in shape, because they knew – especially if they were a borderline player – that if they weren’t, the chances of making the team were minimal,” said Sellers. 

By 1985, Enos was no longer with the Expos, but Sellers remained. He worked closely with longtime Expos trainer Ron McClain. McClain and the team doctors were the ones to decide a course of action when a player was injured. 

“Then once they would be close to being back on the field, that is when they would turn them [the player] back over to me,” said Sellers. 

Of all the players he worked with, Andre Dawson and Tim Raines were two of the lowest in body fat. However, Sellers worked more closely with the pitchers.  

“I worked with seven players who went on to the Hall of Fame,” said Sellers. 

That list includes Dawson, Raines, Gary Carter, Randy Johnson, Pedro Martinez, Larry Walker and Vladimir Guerrero. 

During a significant portion of his tenure with the Expos, Sellers doubled as the chair of the exercise science department at Concordia. Fortunately, he could schedule the university classes he taught for the morning, so he could be at Olympic Stadium for the Expos games later in the day. 

Sellers’ tenure with the Expos concluded in 1996. 

“Today they’ve got three or four guys [on a major league staff] doing what I used to do alone,” said Sellers.  

Success after the Expos

After he departed the Expos, Sellers helped establish the Maurice Gross Wellness Centre in Montreal. It was regarded as one of the leading facilities for seniors across the country. 

Sellers also established an athletic therapy program and a master’s program in exercise science at Concordia and worked on training programs for different sports organizations like Canoe Kayak Canada and Judo Canada. 

These days, he is enjoying his time with his wife and is very proud of his two daughters Leslie, who is a drama teacher in Salem, Mass., and Karen, who works in finance in Montreal.  

He has been retired from Concordia for 20 years this June and it has been 28 years since he has been with the Expos, but he has kept in touch with several former colleagues and players. In fact, he recently got together with Rogers, Tommy Hutton and Dave Van Horne during spring training. He also visited with Marie Fanning, Jim’s wife and their son, Frank. 

“I try to stay in touch,” said Sellers. “Unfortunately, as we get older, that group is shrinking, but as long we can get together, we will.”