There was an opportunity to do Canadian Football League play by play in 1985 but
I was afraid that would hinder my chances should the radio station manage to wrestle the baseball broadcast rights away. But, alas that didn’t happen as CFCF Radio continued to be the Montreal Expos flagship station.
While Dave Van Horne was the voice of the Expos, he spent up to 40 games a season on television. It was the radio station that provided the second second play by play voice that replaced Dave when he was on TV. It was a job that rarely opened up. One such opportunity came and went as the other radio station retained the rights. Their sports director Jeff Rimer knew full well of my interest in the job and my knowledge of the sport. He told me I might have a good chance at the position. Instead, however, the radio station hired from within, letting sportscaster Rob Faulds have a go at it despite no baseball background and next to no knowledge of the history of the team and, like me, no previous baseball play by play.
Rob was and is a nice man, was and is a fine television announcer with a keen
knowledge of hockey and other sports but sorry Rob, as much as I like you, baseball was not to be your forte. Not on radio with the Expos and not further along on television with the Toronto Blue Jays where he was replaced following the 2004 season. Therein lies another story we’ll tackle down the road.
So it was another season covering the Expos. The team would bounce back nicely in 1985, at least enough to seemingly recover from the debacle of the ’84 season. The real thrill here was covering a young Montreal Canadiens hockey team throughout the playoffs, home and away into 1986 as they went on to win a surprising Stanley Cup. It allowed me to witness first hand one of the most impressive individual one game performances of all time. Games 1 and 2 of the Stanley Cup semi finals had already gone to the Habs in Montreal. Game 3 played at Madison Square Garden in New York was owned by the Rangers. A win and they were back in it, a loss and they were toast. Though they threw the kitchen sink at the rookie Montreal goalie, Patrick Roy was not to be denied and toast them he did when an equally young Claude Lemieux scored the overtime winner. The most pressing memory is of a cool and collected kid sitting on a stool outside the winner’s dressing room answering questions calmly in his second language like he’d been there a hundred times. He hadn’t of course but that would just take a little time.
The flight home from Calgary the night the Cup was won is something I’ll never forget.
An all night party of relief, release and pure jubilation punctuated by constant interruptions by class clown and tough guy Chris Nilan on the plane’s intercom should anyone think that a cat nap of any kind was a possibility. Nilan was capable of saying anything which was at times as tough to understand in his New Englandese as any of his French Canadian teammates. There was however no doubt what he was singing with the refrain of that well known hit from another New Englander or two, the pop group Steam’s enduring “Na Na Na, Na Na Na, Hey Hey, Goodbye”. It wasn’t my beloved Black Hawks but to me they were no longer the hated Canadiens, I felt as though MY team had finally won it’s first Stanley Cup.
I love hockey tough guys. Almost never the guys who seem like such nasty folks when protecting their mates from the other team’s tough guys but real salt of the earth individuals. Todd Ewen was another former Habs’ enforcer and he could have done plenty of other things besides spend his career trying to make sure nobody hurt his mates. After one late hotel arrival and while waiting for room keys to be handed out, he sat down at the lobby piano and played a concerto. Another time he picked up the left over tape from the dressing room floor and fashioned it into a pair of mini hockey gloves, an amazing man indeed.
By this time the radio station had finally started taking care of me although it took a two man effort. Mitch Melnick and I kind of made them feel like they might have to replace both of
us if they didn’t. CJAD always made you feel like working for the city’s longtime #1 station ought to be reward enough. I think the ploy made us feel kind of like Drysdale and Koufax in a way, although since both of us are Jewish, maybe we felt like Koufax and Koufax.
The pitching duo had found other things to do while holding out from the Dodgers in tandem in 1966
Since the baseball rights were currently tied up, when the play by play for the
Canadian Football League Alouettes came around again, I jumped at it. Why not ?
They had paid my predecessor more than five digits to handle two exhibition games
and the regular season schedule. Bob Linney, the man who had recommended me for the job five years earlier was now the station’s Program Director. Bob called me into his office and asked if I would be interested in handling the Alouettes play by play
and I told him I was very interested.
“Fine” he said “You’re In”
“Fine” I said “How much ?”
“Nothing” He said, “We’ve decided to just change your duties to include the play by play.”
“So, what you’re telling me is that if I don’t do it, you can find somebody else to do
it for free ?” I asked.
He nodded and so I got up and headed out his door. He called after me and asked where I was going and I told him I was going back to work with the thought that zero was a very poor negotiation starter. Eventually Sports Director Ted Blackman stepped in and we settled on 500 dollars per game. Next to absolutely nothing, 500 bucks seemed like an awful lot.
That season of football taught me a very important lesson – that doing play by play was a rush and it didn’t have to be baseball. Once the game started there was such a kick, it left me high for several hours. After two exhibition games I was ready for the season opener and I was in the aforementioned natural euphoric state as game time neared. I was paired with Canadian Football League Hall of Famer George Dixon who had been the star running back for the team in the 1960s.. The players came out on the field for the pre-game warm up and there was no George. Pre game show – no George. Opening kickoff – no George. End of first quarter – no George. My soon to be good friend Mr. Dixon was stuck in traffic on the highway between
Montreal and Ottawa and would eventually show up just before half time. Talk about baptism by fire, that was my first ever regular season professional sports broadcast. You couldn’t make this stuff up.
George knew the CFL backward and forward but was a tad emotional. He could see stuff before it happened and react to it. Noticing that a defensive back had been beaten in the secondary, George would yell “NO!” and jump out of his seat while the ball was still in the air. Sure enough an opponent of this terrible football team had caught another touchdown pass and everyone knew it before I could tell them.
It was a season played before a mostly empty house at cavernous Olympic Stadium. Most games drew no more than 5,000 fans (now why does that sound familiar?). I enjoyed my first full season of professional play by play. I loved not being in the office and chasing down telephone interviews. Okay so Regina, Hamilton, Winnipeg and Edmonton were not exactly New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco, but still, it was nice to be somewhere else.
There were still top cities like Toronto, Ottawa, Calgary and Vancouver. I even had the opportunity to take in Expo ’86 in Vancouver although the Alouettes were not exactly an organization that liked to splurge. Travel all the way out west meant a commercial flight to Vancouver, one night’s stay in a hotel, the game the next day and the red eye right after the game, back to Montreal.
There was always baseball spring training coverage in Florida, and hockey playoff travel.
Sometimes, with proper scheduling you could combine baseball and hockey. As long as the Canadiens made the playoffs, and it had been decades since they hadn’t, I would travel with them until their season ended. Since the first two rounds of the playoffs were played in-division, that meant a visit to Boston every year. While the primary task at hand was to cover the hockey playoffs, a secondary goal was to see baseball’s other grand old park, Fenway.
Despite a trip to Boston every single year, there would always be some reason I couldn’t get to a ballgame. Oddly, the Red Sox always seemed to be out of town, or covering the hockey team’s off day practice session got in the way of an early season afternoon game. During the Stanley Cup run of 1986, the Red Sox were home for the Patriots Day game held the same day as the Boston Marathon. It was the only Major League baseball game scheduled all season that would start before noon.
But I was in Hartford.
The Canadiens and Whalers had played a Saturday night game in Montreal and were in Hartford on Sunday. I thought that maybe we could stay in Boston on Sunday night and make it a super sports trilogy. How often do you get to take in an NBA playoff game at Boston Garden on Sunday night, The Red Sox Patriots Day game Monday morning and a Canadiens-Whalers NHL playoff game on Monday night? Sadly, there was no public transportation that would take us from Hartford to Boston and back again in time for that night’s hockey game.
My Fenway Park wait would finally end, four years later. The Canadiens were once again involved in their yearly playoff series with the Bruins. There was an off day and the Red Sox were in town hosting the Angels. It was a short walk from the Canadiens’ hotel and the sight and smells of baseball the way it ought to be, filled me up. I was surprised to have no problem getting a box seat at the ticket booth on game night and was equally surprised to discover how affordable it was. That sure has changed a lot at Fenway since my first visit. It was quite a night, The Red Sox facing the Angels. It was a chance to see one-handed phenom Jim Abbott and the game ended with a superior climax, when shortstop Jody Reed hit a game winning homer into the net over the famed Green Monster in left field in the bottom of the ninth inning.
We hadn’t missed much at Fenway back in that 1986 Patriots day game. But the NBA playoff game we didn’t get to would have been my first NBA game ever. That turned out to be a somewhat more memorable performance from one Michael Jordan. Playing before a national television audience in basketball’s most hallowed hall, Jordan firmly cemented his place in history. He dropped in 63 points, extending the Celtics into double overtime before falling 135-131. It was just his second NBA campaign, a season in which he missed 64 games with a broken foot. Bulls management wanted him to rest and not risk further injury, but he played the last 15 regular season games. Then he went out and did something that folks would talk about forever, with some prodding by Celtics’ star Larry Bird:
“I didn’t think anyone was capable of doing what Michael did to us. He is the most exciting, awesome player in the game today. I think it’s just God disguised as Michael Jordan.”
Sure Michael Jordan was a fine player but he was no Jody Reed.
1986 came to a close and that Boston Red Sox team (a year before Jody Reed joined
them) came within a ground ball to Bill Buckner of ending the curse. Former Expos catcher Gary Carter was a World Series winner with the New York Mets and on his way to baseball’s Hall of Fame.
The Expos were about to return to a pennant race, and I was looking forward to my second season as the voice of the Montreal Alouettes. There had been worries about the football team’s financial situation and of course that would affect mine as well. Rumours were flying that the Als might not be able to make a go of it with dwindling attendance year after year.
I wanted to buy my first new car but waited until the Alouettes officially went ahead with the season. The team played their two exhibition games and readied for the season opener in
Toronto. I was at home studying players’ names and numbers when the phone rang.
“Something’s not right here”, said the voice at the other end.
It was a producer from the radio station and he was out partying on Crescent street.
Amazingly most of the Alouettes were there partying as well, a strange sight considering the season opener was the next day. There were rumours, he said, that the team had folded and there would be no season for the Alouettes. You would have thought that somebody would have called the play by play announcer.
The press conference was the next day. The Als, did, in fact, fold. The CFL would operate with just eight teams. The players would be dispersed to the other teams, but the announcers would not. Too bad they didn’t sell tickets for the press conference because it was better attended than any regular season game during the previous season. The play by play announcer no longer had any play by play to do, but he did have a new car to pay for. It turns out that you just never know what’s right around the corner.
Meanwhile, the National Hockey League had decided to change the usual format for their
annual All Star game. Instead of a show that pitted NHL players against each other it would be an international affair. The NHL’s best would face off against arguably the best team in the world – The Soviet Union’s famed Red Army National squad. CJAD had acquired the rights to not only carry the games but produce them as well. That meant deciding on announcers and that meant back to work for the play by play announcer, even if it would be for just two games. The talk was that this would hopefully lead to another summit series, played half in Canada and half in the USSR. The rematch of the series that ignited Canada 15 years earlier when Paul Henderson became a national hero. The Russians were still on their side of the iron curtain. The floodgates would soon open but the trickle had not yet started.
Players, coaches, scouts, media, basically the entire hockey world had come to Quebec City during the annual Winter Carnival celebration. They had come for what was called “Rendezvous ’87”. I was pumped. It was a chance to call hockey and with the world’s best players involved.
Organizers made all of the NHL’s participants available for interviews. It was a chance to talk to some of the best players of all-time including Wayne Gretzky, Mario Lemieux, Ray Bourque and coaching legend Scotty Bowman. First, however, came the tough part, not only learning the official pronunciations of the Russian names but their coinciding numbers. Some were easy. It wouldn’t be the first time that Canadian hockey fans would see or hear of the big six. Even though Vladislav Tretiak wasn’t their goaltender in this series, the other five stars were there – The defence pairing of Slava Fetisov and Alexei Kasatonov, plus the sensational KLM forward line of Vladimir Krutov, Igor Larionov and Sergei Makharov. I spent a couple of intense days getting things just right and felt fairly confident as game time neared. And I really was fine until the players took to the ice for the pre-game skate. The Soviets changed at least half the numbers they had given us. Two games and that was it for the play by play career, or so it seemed.
It was back to covering the Canadiens and the Expos full time. It would be quite a baseball season. The 1987 Expos got a shot in the arm from a couple of retread pitchers. Dennis Martinez and Pasqual Perez came out of nowhere to push the Expos alongside the St Louis Cardinals and New York Mets in the battle for the National League East, but it was The Tim’s who led the way.
Tim Raines reached first, stole a base or two and Tim Wallach knocked him in. Oddly enough one scored 123 runs and the other drove in that many. But they could have done even better. For the first (but not last) time, baseball’s economics had punched the Expos in the
stomach. It’s safe to say no team would be hurt more by baseball’s 1994 strike. Well, the same
goes for the collusive efforts of major league baseball owners during the 1986 off season. There had been a fine group of free agents but many of them received no
offers at all. While all were eventually compensated after owners were charged and found guilty of collusion, the Expos were not compensated when losing one of the best players in club history for a month to start the next season and another forever.
It is pretty safe to say that Expos ownership was forbidden to sign either Andre
Dawson or Tim Raines, perhaps with the misguided promise that since there would
be no offers, the pair would have no choice but to return, tails between their legs, from whence they came. Dawson did receive what he deemed an insulting offer from Expos General Manager Murray Cook. He would not return, eventually offering the Cubs his services for what was a blank check for the Cubs to fill at a bargain basement price (base salary of 500 thousand dollars a year). All “The Hawk” did in Chicago that year was win the NL MVP award with a last place team, smashing career highs in home runs (49) and RBI’s (137).
Raines on the other hand went unsigned. Since baseball rules forced teams to wait until May 1 to re-sign their own free agents, they also had no Raines to start 1987. The Expos went 8-12 in April without their leadoff hitter and that proved costly. The Raines return on May 2nd at Shea Stadium in New York was the stuff of legends. Without spring training and without any minor league preparation time, Raines simply went out and willed the Expos into the win column. Two singles, a triple and three runs scored. But he didn’t drive in a run until the 10th inning when he clobbered a game winning grand slam off Jesse Orosco. There were others (Andres Galarraga hit .300 with 90 RBI’s and Mitch Webster who scored 101 runs while hitting 15 home runs and stealing 33 bases) but for the most part that’s how the ’87 Expos got the job done – on offence it was Raines and Wallach.
On the mound, Perez came out of nowhere to go 7-0. Martinez, acquired from Baltimore for a song, left an alcohol problem behind and went 11-4. Left hander Neal Heaton helped carry the team in the first half and then fell apart. The Expos had sent ace closer Jeff Reardon to Minnesota in the Heaton deal. Tim Burke had the season of his life with a 1.19 E.R.A. in 91 innings and teamed with Andy McGaffigan for 30 saves.
Once again the season would come down to one key series. The Cardinals lead, once at nine and a half games, had shrunk to a game aand a half on the Mets and three on the Expos.
Safe to say this was a bigger series for the visitors at Busch stadium than the home team. Off I was sent to St Louis to cover the latest next chance, beginning with a doubleheader. The season turned on one sensational play in the first inning. With the Expos poised to jump into an early lead, Galarraga smashed the ball down the third baseline. What appeared to be a certain double was brought back from left field by the lightning quick reflexes of gold glover Terry Pendleton. The Expos would not score in that first inning. In fact, they didn’t score in the next 17 either. Swept 3-0 and 1-0, a potential four game swing that could have put the Expos one game back instead left them five games out. The Mets were also in the process of dropping three in a row and for all intents and purposes, another Expos season ended in heartache. I had seen enough (again) and I called the home office. Did they want me to cover the Cardinals’ celebration the next day or two as the teams finished up their four game series
or could I just come home? And so it was two days later that the Cardinals claimed another division title in front of a full house and full press box minus one empty seat.
One day General Manager Murray Cook was there and then poof, he was shockingly dismissed.
His firing made no sense at all.
The Expos would hold a press conference with the Montreal media completely in the
dark and the Expos were in no mood to change that. Why had Cook been let go ?
I found someone who knew the answer. CJAD announcer Joe Cannon had known Expos president Claude Brochu since they were kids growing up in Quebec City. They were good friends and regularly played racquetball together. Joe told me that Cook was having an affair with Brochu’s wife and that it was no longer a secret to his friend. The question I had – should this information be accurate and I had no reason to doubt Joe – was what to do with this piece of news? I headed to the press conference knocking the possibilities around in my head. The journalist in me wanted this out but the future play by play guy thought it best not to cause a scene. So I passed the information along to two reporters – The Gazette beat writer Brian Kappler and La Presse’s Rejean Tremblay who never heard a rumour he didn’t like. That Mr. Cook was English and Mr. Brochu French was even better for Mr. Tremblay. At the podium, Expos owner Charles Bronfman responded to the why of the firing by saying:
“You don’t know, and you never will.” (No, I thought. You’re wrong. I do know! Hell, Brian Kappler and Rejean Tremblay know as well.)
Not a word was heard from any reporter in the room including the three of us who actually knew the back story. Everybody else didn’t know indeed, and when they did, much later, it didn’t seem to matter anymore.
Everyone had moved on.
To be continued
