VIERA, Fla. -- They took the computers. They took the VCRs.

They took the TVs. They took the cell phones.

They took 10 years' worth of scouting reports. They even took the radar guns.

	Vladimir Guerrero remains in a clouded environment for the Expos.

When Jeffrey Loria did his David Copperfield act last month and made the entire Montreal Expos organization magically reappear in Florida, it seemed as if he and his crew packed up pretty much everything in Montreal but the AstroTurf at Stade Olympique.

So when the new Expos management team showed up in Jupiter this spring to try to run a franchise, this was a group that wasn't just starting from ground zero. It was starting, essentially, 20,000 leagues under the sea.

It isn't easy to run a baseball team with virtually no employees, virtually no minor-league staff and virtually no equipment. But that was how the new state-run Commish-spos started their life-after-contraction season.

"At least they left the players here," chuckled manager Frank Robinson. "And they left some darn good players here."

Over the last couple of weeks, as word began to circulate of all the modern necessities the new Marlins brass took with them from Montreal, we've heard one baseball person after another rant and rave about Loria and his stepson, executive V.P. David Samson.

But as it turns out, those fingers might be pointing at the wrong people. The people most responsible, it now appears, were the men at Major League Baseball who allowed this to happen when they negotiated this deal.

"I have a problem with people saying we 'took' these things," Samson said. "We didn't 'take' anything. We were negotiating with Major League Baseball to buy and sell a team simultaneously. All of that equipment was part of a negotiated contract -- a very long negotiated contract. ...

"It's a 200-page agreement. You can go through every line, and it discusses a value and a price for every item. For the price we paid for the Marlins, we got certain assets. For the price we got for the Expos, they got certain assets. They didn't get others."

You may have noticed that the Expos haven't accused Loria and Samson of doing anything illegal, although the Expos did take action to get access to their old minor-league reports. Why? Because they, too, understand it was all legal, all negotiated.

"What they took with him was what was in the deal," said Expos GM Omar Minaya. "I don't know exactly what the deal was. But I've been too busy to worry about the little details. The things they may have taken belonged to them legally."

No one we've talked to, however, can remember any sale of a franchise in which the former owners packed the computers and scouting reports on the moving van. So the question some members of the Expos' staff keep asking privately is: How could Major League Baseball have negotiated a deal that left its own franchise in such disarray?

"It may have been negotiated," grumbled one Expos staffer. "They may not be doing anything illegal. But it's a preposterous thing. The only conclusion we can draw is that they (MLB) didn't care if we operated or not."

Bob DuPuy, MLB's chief legal officer, didn't return a call seeking comment. But whatever the explanation, this Case of the Missing Computers just adds one more chapter to a story so bizarre, you couldn't make it up.

	“	I'll tell you the true test of what's taken place between the Expos and Marlins. They took our whole staff. They've got all our reports. So they've definitely got a book on us over there. It will be interesting to see, at the end of the season, how they did head to head against us. We'll find out what all that stuff really means. ”
		— Mike Mordecai, Expos utility player

It is the story of the Expos and Marlins, two teams that sometimes feel as if they wandered into a giant Cuisinart this winter -- and came out all mixed up.

Those two teams met Monday for the first time this spring, in the Marlins' soon-to-be-former spring home in Viera. It was quite a scene: Expos' players wandering around the Marlins' clubhouse looking for their fomer coaching staff. Marlins' coaches strolling down the hall to hug Expos' players. Even the trainers and equipment men (who switched places) felt as if they were in the wrong locker room.

"It was definitely strange," said Expos utility man Mike Mordecai. "Here we come walking into this ballpark, and our whole staff from last year -- from top to bottom, major-league and minor-league -- is over here. Geez, you feel like you're in the wrong uniform.

"I'll tell you the true test of what's taken place between the Expos and Marlins," Mordecai theorized. "They took our whole staff. They've got all our reports. So they've definitely got a book on us over there. It will be interesting to see, at the end of the season, how they did head to head against us. We'll find out what all that stuff really means."

The players, naturally, have heard the tales of the great computer-napping. And they've got their own theories on Loria's computer motives.

"Who knows?" laughed one Marlins player. "Maybe they don't like Dells. Maybe they prefer Gateways."

With or without computers, though, the games will go on. And Minaya vows the Expos will overcome anything and everything.

"You know, there was a time in this game when nobody had computers," the GM said. "So we'll be OK."

They'll just have to get creative. That's all. So this week, Minaya convinced former Expos GM Jim Beattie to return as a special assistant for pro scouting.

"Hey, we don't have computers, we don't have the scouting information, that's OK," Minaya said. "I'll just hire Jim Beattie. He's got the information in his head."

As philosophical as their leader may be, some of the Expos staffers down in the trenches are more conspiratorial. They still aren't convinced the former Montreal owners didn't want to try to place the team they left behind at a competitive disadvantage. What other reason, they ask, would Loria and Samson have had for taking minor-league reports and scouting reports?

But when told of that competitive-disadvantage theory, Samson denied it vehemently.

"Not at all," he said. "And I'll tell you why. If you talk to people in baseball, generally scouts don't want to rely on other scouts' reports. They want to do their own reports, because it's their job on the line. Our scouts (who went with this group from Montreal to Florida) did those reports. That's why we took those reports. ... I'm sure they (the Expos) will want to assemble a new group of scouts and use the reports from their own people."

And that's exactly what Minaya is doing. Then again, what choice does he have?

"We just keep working," he said. "We can't sit here complaining. We've got too much to do to waste time complaining."

Yes, these are the crazy, mixed up ripple effects of a crazy, mixed up winter. We still see them.

We see them in Red Sox camp, where general managers and owners get fired in the middle of spring training. We see them in Twins camp, where players talk of winning the World Series so Bud Selig can present them their trophy. And we see them everywhere we look in the Marlins' and Expos' camps, where two worlds have turned upside-down.

"I keep thinking about something Bud Selig said at one of his press conferences," Mordecai said. "He said that when you're making changes in baseball that are unparalleled, certain things will happen that have never happened before. And now they're happening. Every day's a first.

"In baseball, you know how you always hear that expression, 'Just when you thought you'd seen it all, you see something you never saw before?' It used to be we'd say that about stuff on the field. Now we say it about stuff off the field."

Triviality
Jeff Kent's broken wrist could endanger his streak of five straight seasons with 100 RBI. Can you name the two other National League infielders who have driven in 100 runs in each of the last five seasons? (Answer at bottom.)

Miscellaneous Rumblings