It came from my former co-boss in Montreal, Claude Delorme later that day:
Elliott,
I was sorry to hear that you were not selected as one of the two radio broadcasters
for the Nationals. In speaking with Tony recently, he mentioned to me that you would be strongly considered for one of the two positions if the visa issue could be resolved.
As for me, the Marlins indicated that they will be unable to secure a T1 visa as the government has already reached their limit for the 2005 year. They have initiated the application of a consultant visa in the meantime and I remain hopeful that it will be issued within 10 days.
There may be an opportunity for you in Toronto with The Fan as one of the
broadcasters is really struggling with his health. Lisa Novaks from the Blue Jays gave me the name of the person responsible at the radio station. You can call me on Monday and I will provide you with his coordinates.
I look forward to speaking to you soon.
Claude
The Blue Jays long time play by play voice Tom Cheek was gravely ill with brain cancer.
He had missed plenty of the previous season and was questionable for the upcoming
campaign.
I sent Mr. Tavares an email. I stated that it wasn’t really him that I was venting at, that I knew he was the only one in my corner in the battle for the Washington position.
That was true. In the end it didn’t help much, but it was true.
I wrote that we were still in a state of shock and stunned after the circumstances of the past twenty four hours. I asked if it would be possible for him to put in a good word with his Toronto counterpart, Blue Jays president Paul Godfrey.
His answer came back quickly:
“I spoke to Paul Godfrey yesterday, they are in a difficult position with their
broadcaster who says he is coming back but his doctors think that he is terminal.
Paul requested that you send him a tape so that they can have a quick back up plan
and he can put it in front of the Rogers people. His address is SkyDome, 1 Blue Jay
Way, Suite 3200, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5V 1J1.”
We were in the process of vacuum-packing the mini van in preparation for that trip back to Montreal where we had nowhere to live. I quickly put together another audition CD, drove it over to the US Post office open on that Saturday afternoon and sent it special delivery. We would leave for home two days later.
I called Claude Delorme just before departing and he told me to call program director Nelson Millman at “The Fan” radio station in Toronto. They would be the ones hiring a temporary replacement for Tom Cheek. I would call both Mr. Millman and Mr. Godfrey as soon as I got back to Montreal.
I had renewed hope that my baseball announcing career was not over, that perhaps there wouldn’t even be a gap in it’s progress. Luckily, my sister spends her winters in Florida.
We would stay at her house until this Toronto thing played out or until we found some sort of work. We were, sadly, homeward bound.
We left Myrtle Beach Monday night and unbelievably drove right into and, amazingly, through the biggest snowstorm of the season. For hours it seemed we were crawling along at about 30 miles an hour. At five o’clock in the morning we finally got off the highway and hoped it would clear a bit. It was the best driving I have ever done or will do and if I ever never see another truck splashing snow and slush on my windshield, it will be too soon.
We were home by Tuesday night and after a short sleep, I was excited to
make those two very important phone calls. If only..This would certainly ease the pain, if only for a limited schedule.
The first call did not go well.
Mr. Millman, the program director informed me that he was not planning on hiring a play by play announcer. He didn’t want to make Tom Cheek feel like he was being replaced, and he didn’t want to make the number two announcer Jerry Howarth uncomfortable.
The next call was frustrating.
Blue Jays president Paul Godfrey would be out of town for the week. His personal assistant told me that she would give him my message and that he would be in touch.
Mr. Godfrey’s call was re-assuring. He told me that while it wasn’t his call to select the announcers, he did have a veto. He would make sure that my audition would find it’s way in front of the Rogers people, the folks who owned the team and the network that broadcast their television games.
But those people had already passed me over once without a call back. They had an opening on the TV side but hired from within. Though the new play by play announcer had done play by play for just one previous game, he had been the host of their broadcasts on Rogers Sportsnet. Heck, how could I argue about that – after all, that’s what I had been when they gave me a shot. So, I waited on this radio thing and checked the reports on Tom Cheek. Newspaper stories suggested that he was improving and hoped to do as many games as possible in the upcoming season.
Early pre-season games told another story.
Cheek sounded disoriented and slow and it was clear that all was not right.
When Mr. Godfrey finally returned from Florida and received my audition CD the following week he called again. He said he had sent a letter about me to Nelson Millman at The Fan and that he would get that audition to the ears of the proper people as soon as possible. That afternoon Millman announced the hiring of another Rogers Sportsnet employee as Tom Cheek’s temporary replacement.
I was stunned again.
Double stunned when several days later Cheek announced a recurrence of the cancer that would make his replacement temporarily permanent, and me still unemployed.
That replacement really was a replacement. In the lockout pre-season of 1995 he had been a replacement player. Warren Sawkiw had been a television baseball analyst with very limited experience. Sadly, there is a curtain on the city of Toronto that doesn’t allow anyone to see out. Good chance most in Toronto have never heard of me and apparently won’t any time soon.
This is not a country for a play by play announcer to work in. Safe to say all the others who applied for the Washington job are gainfully employed doing some kind of play by play somewhere. The United States presents thousands of options – Minor League Baseball, college sports, professional basketball, football, hockey and more. But there’s not much here. Nine Canadian Football League teams. One Major League Baseball team.
One NBA team. Hockey of course is the one area that presents opportunities, but even that’s limited. One problem is the relative lack of interest in college sports. Another is the size of the markets. Beyond Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver, there’s nowhere to go as far as big time multiple sports are concerned.
What to do?
I started to scour the internet. Let’s face it, if I couldn’t get a visa for something that I had done for thirteen years, I wasn’t about to get one for something I had never done before. I figured my only chance at a visa was Major League Baseball and there were no more of those jobs this year.
It was scrambling time.
I was ready to take anything that would help pay the bills which were starting to pile up.
But there wasn’t much out there.
I applied for a few non-sports jobs and didn’t hear back. I noticed a job opening for a radio sports anchor in Toronto. It was a Rogers radio station, affiliated with The Fan. I never heard back from them. I called The all-sports station in Montreal and set up a meeting. They would have to convince ownership in Toronto that they could sell a mid-day show from 10 AM to 1 PM. The price range would come in somewhere between forty five and sixty thousand dollars. The low end would be really tough with my bills, the high end would be close to where I was before. I could live with that.
We waited… And waited…And waited.
That guy in Toronto was sure hard to get a hold of. The President of the Toronto Blue Jays called me right back but this guy was not to be found. Finally, after two weeks of waiting, an offer was forthcoming. It would be presented at lunch at the Kaizen Sushi Bar.
Seriously, what choice did I have? That was the reason for my email to the station’s manager Wayne Bews earlier that winter. I didn’t want to get stuck in a position of them knowing I had no alternatives, but that’s exactly where I was.
The presentation was made and I wasn’t happy, but what could I do? As expected it came in way at the low end of that price range that was mentioned. Just then a strange thing happened. Across the room, people from another radio station and a weird offer.
What about trying out as a morning news guy? There was an opening with the city’s top morning show at Q-92.
News anchor? Me?
It was explained to me that it was really a newscast under the guise of another voice for the hosts to play off of. Someone who could mesh with them and could give as well as take. And they were offering a LOT more money. What the hell, I figured, why not give it a try?
For a week I got up in the middle of the night and after nothing but sports for the previous 23 years, I delivered the news. Sadly however, even though I had been a small part of this morning show years before as a sportscaster, I was never allowed to fully join the show and we never did find out if I might have meshed. The jury however was still out. The morning crew was going on vacation and when they returned there were a few others they wanted to try out before giving me another go.
I started thinking of that Aesop Fable. The one where the dog with a steak in his mouth sees another dog in the water’s reflection. Of course that dog also has a steak in his chops, and when he snaps to try and snatch the other one, he loses the one he already has. I called The team 990 and agreed to their deal.
‘The Price Is Right’ would be going on the air. A daily sports talk show.
I hated to leave all that extra potential money on the table but I needed to start working again. Surely It would all work out. Somehow it always seemed to.
We were going to be on a tight budget for awhile. We used some of the money we had saved up for a down payment on a house. To afford the amount of space we wanted, we ended up far from downtown. The drive in would take an hour each morning but we got a lot more house than we would have in the city including a big back yard for the kids and lots of trees. After years of constant summer travel I would learn to be a homebody, and learn I did. The kids didn’t have to wait days. “When will daddy be home?” was now answered with, “Soon.”
I got a cheap local golf membership that allowed me to play Monday to Thursday after work. Most days I started eighteen holes of golf before 2 PM and was home every night to help make supper and drive the kids to their sports events. Being a cup-half-full person I found out I could live with this just by leaving all that behind.
I rarely think about it.
While most baseball announcers my age would finally be at the point where traveling would be easier on their families since their kids had grown, mine were
still pretty much babies. It was great to see them and play with them each and every day. My wife Julie didn’t have to cope for weeks on end as a single mother any more even if she got extra help in the off-seasons. Now the questions were: How did I feel about baseball? Who would I cheer for? When the season ended would I apply for another baseball job? Would a Major League Baseball team ever give me a chance and why would they want to?
In the first few weeks of my new show I tried to find a new team of my own. As an Expos broadcaster I had learned to hate every team in the National League East. How could I now back the Mets, Phillies, Marlins or especially the Braves? I called Washington Nationals outfielder Brad Wilkerson to come on my show and he would be the last of the old crew I invited on all year. I never found a team, but I certainly found one I didn’t want to see win. Despite all the good relationships I had cultivated with players that were now in Washington, I didn’t want them to win. That feeling grew as they rose to the top of their division and I found that yes I could learn to un-hate the Phillies, Marlins, Mets and even the Braves, as long as nobody was going to get to say, “The Nationals win the pennant!” in their first season in what should have been my job.
It turned out that you could take the Expos to a new country and dress them up differently but in the end they provided a nosedive that did their tortured history proud.
I still loved the game however, of that there was no doubt. It was tough of course to follow it as before when I had been almost totally consumed. I stayed on top of it and watched from afar. I thought about catching up with guys when the Nationals were in Toronto but decided to stay home instead.
For the first time in thirty six years I did not not attend a Major League game. Feeling as though I would never again get a chance at baseball play by play I decided to at least explore the earlier option of a lawsuit against the Washington Nationals as suggested by my friend the Senator.
I emailed his lawyer friend:
Mr. Wier:
With the feeling that I would never get a chance to work again in baseball I’ve rethought the offer to press forward with a lawsuit against the Washington Nationals.
Two months ago your friend Senator Bonini called you on my behalf concerning my situation with the Washington Nationals Baseball team.
He told me that he explained some of the particulars and suggested I get in touch with you to see if I had a case.
There were several reasons I didn’t call.
-I wouldn’t have the money to pursue the case
-I probably would never get a chance at another major league job if I sued Major League Baseball
-We were so shaken at the time that we simply needed time to recover and find work
However, in reviewing all the emails and newspapers articles on the subject while researching a book I’m writing not to mention a review of what this has done to us financially, I thought I might get in touch with you to see if there was anything there.
I still don’t have the money to pursue this (Less than before) and was wondering if these things are ever done on a contingency basis.
Thanks for your time
Elliott Price
I never heard back from the lawyer. I tried emailing Senator Bonini. I never heard back from him either. I suspect by this time he was enjoying his old team in their new uniforms. He might have been thinking that he’d already gone over and beyond what might have been expected. I must say he was a beacon of light at a time of supreme darkness. I would not bother him again.
This was my new life. I had to deal with it.
The summer ticked away and I fell comfortably into my new routine. I listened on occasion to the hirings in Toronto that could have been mine and I came away unimpressed with both of the new guys, one for television and one for radio. Maybe it was just sour grapes, though the opinion seemed to be rather universal. Eventually and sadly, Tom Cheek passed away. The temporary job he had left behind was now permanent but unfortunately, as mentioned earlier, already filled. There are no other baseball play by play jobs in this country. The door apparently might not just be closed, but locked as well.
One possibility was the upcoming World Baseball Classic. Certainly there would be radio interest somewhere in the country to tune in to the March 2006 exploits of Jason Bay, Justin Morneau and Corey Koskie playing against the best players in the world. I tried to have my boss at The Team 990 Wayne Bews take it to the brass of CHUM LTD in Toronto but they showed no interest at all. They own the baseball rights in Toronto to the country’s only team and would be in the middle of spring training.
I kept thinking of some way to get this done somewhere, somehow, knowing that I would certainly top the list of Canada’s available baseball play by play announcers. If this was hockey of course, the country’s radio outlets would be falling all over each other to try and secure the rights but alas this wasn’t hockey. The midday radio show seemed to be going well enough that a quick change was on the way.
Radio audiences are built around early morning, when folks are heading out to school and work, and afternoons when they come home. Those are the shows you want to work on. Larger audiences, more prestige and hopefully more money. The Team 990’s Morning Show was struggling to the point that even I turned it off after awhile on my long drive in from off the Island of Montreal. I pestered them constantly that a change was needed and that I was the change that was needed. It was explained to me that when it came to Sports Radio, midday shows were on a parallel with the morning show in importance and that a change was not imminent. How surprising than however that I was called in to the big office after just seven months to be told:
“We think your talent is being wasted in middays, How would you like to take over as host of the morning show?”
Why yes, I would.
Early 2006 brought the World Baseball Classic that I had tried to sell interest in and wouldn’t you know it, when the event finally came around, there was no radio voice for perhaps the greatest Canadian baseball victory ever. It was a stunning win against the United States and while it was the last impressive showing for Canada at the World Cup it had fallen on deaf ears. What a shame! As the Canadians were besting the vaunted Americans, surely interest would have spread like wildfire. Sponsors of the radio event would surely have gotten every penny out of advertising money and listeners would have been aplenty for the losses that followed. If a tree falls….
Now the questions were: How much interest did I have in trying to get back into baseball during the new off season? How much chance did I have in securing one of the openings? How would the Canadian be viewed in terms of being able to secure a work visa and was it worth the trouble for an employer to even bother?
I had to apply.
The first openings were in Houston, Oakland and the Mets in New York. WFAN in New York responded with a negatory email. The Oakland Athletics with a team letter head that said no thanks. The classy Astros never got back to me at all.
I always got a chuckle in thinking how many tapes and cd’s arrived at the offices of Major League Broadcast Directors with my voice on it. Tapes and cd’s that I didn’t send. They came from all the people I had worked with in 2003 and 2004.
I am very proud of the announcers we hired to help out with our broadcasts during the final two years of Expos baseball when we searched for free help on the road.
Roxy Bernstein who worked with us in Oakland was the first to get a big league job, ironically sitting next to Dave Van Horne with Florida Marlins to start the 2005 season.
Now came news that Brett Dolan had deservedly been hired as one of two long time minor league announcers to fill the openings in Houston. There is so much talent in the minor leagues that languish sometimes forever. That torture is not just for players.
Lets remember that there are only thirty major league teams and two to a broadcast booth. These jobs are a lot rarer than playing in the major leagues. Brett was the best of the group that helped us out and my personal favorite. There were others not far behind.
Joe Block who would go on to the Milwaukee Brewers before settling in Pittsburgh.
Languishing in Vegas is Russ Langer; in Seattle there’s Mike Curto; Rob Evans is all the way back in Double A after a long Triple A career. I’m sure there are many others who are deserving of a chance that I’ve either never worked with or never heard of. At least Oakland hired a former big leaguer.
Then came the killer.
Washington had fired one of the guys they hurriedly hired instead of me. Dave Shea was let go after one year. I quickly dashed off an email to my good friend Tony Tavares, the President of the Washington Nationals. Not only did he have an opening but there was plenty of time to apply for visa. That had been the reasoning the first time around. We had run out of time as they left me hanging. The return email took a week but there was nothing positive there. They had already decided on Shea’s replacement. They had offered the job to him even before letting Shea know that his services were no longer needed. The hiring off Dave Jageler in Washington left another ‘AAA’ opening in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. The last four Pawtucket announcers had been hired by Major League teams. Now was the time to hustle my stuff up there with a week to go before their decision. But I never sent anything.
The dream was over.
But my life wasn’t and neither was my career. The morning host position would be enough to pay the bills if not push us way over the top like a Major League position would have done. It would take a few years to pay off the bills of all that dream chasing but that was okay. As long as the current employment didn’t somehow die a quick death, I could settle into life as father, husband, radio host and summer golfer. I would grab on to whatever play by play opportunities came my way. For me, the thrill of calling a sports event live doesn’t lie in the level of play. I find as much thrill and enjoyment in a hockey, football or basketball game with unknowns as I did with Major League Baseball players.
2005 afforded me the surprising chance to call a sport I had never worked on before.
With the World Aquatic Championships held in Montreal, I called every race for a world audience of more than a billion people on television. I called basketball games for the first time with the Matrix, Montreal’s new entry in the ABA.
The saddest part of being a radio play by play announcer in Canada is the limited interest we have in our college sports. Whereas college sports is a big time business in the United States, it barely registers a blip in this country. There are exciting college games daily in football, hockey, and basketball in this city alone. Montreal is filled with colleges and universities with myriad of talented amateur athletes. Sadly, for the most part they go unnoticed. And so I was under worked. I must then feel privileged to have been given many years at the microphone for a Major League Baseball team. I might never work a big league game again but nobody can take away the thirteen years I had.
The highs and lows of the Montreal Expos. Two perfect games, one at Dodger Stadium and the other at Yankee Stadium no less. The warm feeling I get when I’m reminded of the positive effect I had on some others.
Thank you to all the Torre Grissom’s that made me feel special:
Elliott:
I haven’t had the heart to check in on the Montreal radio scene since the Expos left…
I had no idea you were doing a morning show… You can be certain I’ll check in from now on!
Elliott, you need to know that I was becoming a pain in the neck around the office during 2003 when the Expos made that run in August. I would cue up your great calls during that sweep of the Phillies–it gave me Goosebumps when you’d yell, “I BELIEVE!” over a roaring Big O crowd–and insist that my buddies listen. I did my part to try and convince others here what a crock it was to dismiss Montreal as a baseball town (and that August really made major league baseball uneasy…how great it would have been if Montreal could have snuck in…but that subsequent trip to Florida was so disastrous.)
I simply loved your announcing, too…so much so that I secretly wished you would get the job as the National’s voice, even though the city, and baseball, didn’t deserve
your passion in that market. I was crestfallen when they didn’t wait for your visa.
Just another indignity, just another slap in the face of Quebec and Canada. Baseball says they want to grow the game, but they lie. They turned their back on a country and a culture where cultivating the game should have been the highest priority, not turning them off the game forever. Again, we are so progressive here, right? Our high ideals are often so hollow. On behalf of many American baseball fans, Elliott, I apologize to you and yours. You deserved so, so much better. And try as they might, baseball can never purge the archives of your terrific voice. Even with my Tribe having a magical season, there is something empty inside not having the Expos in the league. I cannot shake the feeling. I really, really do miss tuning into your calls and listening to the fans of Montreal who cared right to the bitter end. Please know you will not be forgotten. I hope I get the opportunity some day to thank you in person for giving me some of the most exciting moments in a lifetime of following the game.
Sincerely,
Torre A. Grissom
Apex, NC
Finally a special thank you to that special being that has helped me look on the positive side. Helping me feel like I haven’t lost a huge chunk of my lifelong dream, but found it by being surrounded by my wife Julie and three beautiful loving children. Hopefully I can impart just some of the same.
Thanks Mom.
——————————————————————————-
And that’s how I left this book a decade and a half ago.
Much has happened since.
I hosted the morning show at what became TSN 690 for almost 12 years. I did a lot more play by play, as it turned out – the Montreal Juniors hockey. And finally a Montrealer in Toronto when the network asked me to be the National radio voice for the World Junior Hockey Championships. A nice piece of change as well as it pushed me to near $100,000 for the year. We were finally more than just paying the bills. I did tennis, basketball, boxing, swimming and more.
I was getting ready for a second WJHC in the late fall of 2016. Then, after a morning show and with layoffs swirling through the industry I was tapped on the shoulder by Program Director Chris Bury.
“We have to go upstairs,” he said.
I was led into and left in a room with people I had never met before. There were papers for me to sign in this haze. I was essentially fired because I made too much money. It was going on throughout the company and all over the country. Go cheap. It didn’t matter how you sounded. It was about profit margin and shareholders.
My keys were taken away. My profile scrubbed off the website. The estimable Bob McKenzie told the boys on the show that morning that “The show would never be the same.” They edited that out of the podcast that was put out that day. I was escorted to my car. I drove around the corner, stopped the car and shook.
What to do? Where to go? How to tell my wife?
I should have seen it coming. A new contract for me had just been drawn up. There was a big clause in there stating they were capable of letting me go without cause. I kind of missed it. I did show the contract to lawyer Eric Macramalla and he told me there was nothing I could do. They would have to give me a half a years salary. Almost 60k in a country with limited opportunity is not where you want to be but there I was.
I heard from a few sponsors that were willing to help if I had a next stop – Ye Olde Orchard Pub. Lesters Deli. Truck and Roll. My financial advisor Lorne Rubin of Paramount Financial Services would advertise. So I started looking for a place to continue.
I thought the folks at Sportsnet in Toronto might be interested in getting a foothold in Montreal. A market that was served in sports on radio solely by their competition TSN.
First I needed a place where this show could take place. I got in touch with two potential landing spots. Both ran multilingual programming with shows in different languages.
Eventually I bought time on Sunday nights on CFMB. The late Ted Tevan did a stint there late in his career. It was helpful to be getting both a half year’s salary and the advertising money from those that still believed in me. Commanding radio voice Jim Connell was kind enough to lend himself. Danial Iorio recorded many promo songs.
Price is Right was born.
Thanks to my daughter Sophie for the drawing.
Not THE Price is right, owned my someone else, but Price is Right.
Special thanks to 2nd chair Grant Robinson and Producer Frey Iuni who gave up a lot of their time to help make this new show a reality
It never made sense to me how an all-sports station in my hometown could not use the only person to call games of the Canadiens, Expos, Alouettes and Impact. Somebody who had years of experience and knowledge of the local scene. Somebody who had helped build up a following after almost 35 years on the air.
So many people that helped get the new show off the ground. The biggest early splash came from two titans of hockey media in Canada – Bob McKenzie and Elliotte Friedman.
The night before the trade deadline they both came on the show to talk about the obvious subject matter and about each other. The podcast drew thousands.
Former Habs radio play by play man John Bartlett put me in touch with Dave Cadeau, the Program Director at The Fan 590 in Toronto.I explained to him what I was hoping for –
The Sportsnet name.
In June I bought time for 5 days a week. We were going to go Monday to Friday from 8 to 10 pm. We lined up a Canadiens segment with a different Habs guy every night:
Arpon Basu (Now the editor-in-chief of the Athletic in Montreal)
Eric Engels (Now a writer-reporter with Sportsnet)
Marc Dumont (Now special collaborator with the Habs)
Andrew Berkshire (Formerly at Sportlogiq now at Montreal Gazette)
Kyle Bukauskas (Sportsnet, was the Habs in-game host)
Mr Cadeau listened and apparently liked what he heard. Sportsnet was on board. I traded my name for their imaging. Traded our own produced podcast for a spot on their website. We ran some of their commercials and they did promos for us. Price is Right became ‘Sportsnet Tonight with Elliott Price’. They added five of their people to give us a full NHL segment each night with a respected voice from Sportsnet and low and behold every night we had a full hour of hockey.
I wrote the show. Contacted people for interviews. Recorded the guests or set them up for live hits. I wrote the commercials. I also recorded and mixed them. I selected all the music for the show. The one thing I could not do was sell radio time to make money. I’m not a sales guy.
Even with my bottom line on the line I couldn’t call people up and try to sell them on advertising. I tried to find a sales person but selling a single 2-hour show was not worth their while. By the end of 2016 advertising revenue was dwindling. There wouldn’t be much left by January.
What the hell was I going to do now?
And then the phone rang. It was Dave Cadeau in Toronto.
“I’m going to bring you here,” he said. “Might not be this week but I’m going to bring you to Toronto.”
I cried.
After a couple of tests with potential on air partners it was settled. (Greg) Brady and Price would go on the air in February as the new Morning Show at The Fan.
They did things differently there. A new structure that I needed to learn. Would Toronto accept a Montreal transplant? I already followed the Raptors and Blue Jays. I was huge on the NFL and of course I had to get up to snuff on all things Leafs.
First ratings book was a success. And then something out of nowhere. Long time Blue Jays play by play announcer Jerry Howarth announced he was going to retire. Enter me, right? There is no Canadian with my kind of baseball play by play experience ever except for the great Dan Shulman. If he wasn’t leaving ESPN to replace Howarth then I had to be seriously considered. And my new boss Dave would be one of those to make the decision.
I was in my 60’s, perhaps not a good starting age for a new announcer. I pointed out that Harry Carey didn’t arrive to do Cubs games until he was 68! I was told early on I was not what they were looking for. That was okay, I suppose. I still had this gig doing mornings that paid way over six digits. That was a nice place to soften the blow.
They auditioned many for the Blue Jays job. Just before the start of the regular season they had settled on Ben Wagner, long time voice of Toronto’s AAA affiliate in Buffalo.
There was a 2 game pre-season series to be broadcast from Montreal. Dave asked if I wanted to share play by play duties with #2 guy Mike Wilner as Ben was getting his legal papers together. I asked Dave why he would have me do these games when it was already decided that I was not to be a part of the broadcast team. I was told they needed someone for the two days and they wanted to do something nice for me.
I was grateful. Back in my old booth. Doing baseball again. I did those games and I surprised many in Toronto who had never heard me do a single inning. But It didn’t matter, it was a done deal.
If you’ve read everything up to here you know how I feel about hiring Canadians in Canada. There’s one job. One baseball job in the entire country. It had already been proven to me that taking a job from an American in the U.S. was going to be most difficult. Surely hiring a Canadian for the only Canadian job should mean something.
It didn’t.
If I say so myself I think I would have been terrific. Sadly I didn’t get to do the hiring.
But how could I be mad at Dave Cadeau when he saved my career by bringing me to Toronto? A move that would finish setting me up financially for retirement. That, plus the keen handling of my finances by Lorne Rubin.
I might have had issue with Dave when, after 2 years on “The Opening Lineup with Brady and Price” I was taken upstairs again and told my serviced were no longer needed. This time they would pay me a whole year to do nothing. I will say that Rogers walks you out the door much better than Bell does. And Dave remains someone I still talk to.
Tough business radio.
So with a well paid year to come, what to do now? I saw an ad for a Junior Hockey play by play announcer in St Catharines. Didn’t pay much but I was already being paid. I drove all over Ontario and figured this was the last hurrah. I planned on retirement. I was going to move to the Maritimes and play golf. But then the world stopped.
Covid.
The hockey season shut down. My marriage fell apart. We sold the house in Whitby. The bank wouldn’t give me a small mortgage for a house in Nova Scotia. Time was running out and I needed a place to live.
I inquired about returning to do the IceDogs Junior games in St Catharines. My son and I found a place in nearby Welland, Ontario. I found a beautiful new golf course in Port Colborne.
So here I am, semi-retired. With some Hockey hopefully to work sometime in the future when we are safe again. Golf in the summer.
Maybe Montreal gets baseball again and there’s something for me. Maybe not.
I have few to zero regrets about any of the directions my life and career have taken. I enjoyed reading what I had written years ago. As I age my memory fades a little bit at a time. Thankfully I wrote all that stuff when I did. There is no way I could have remembered it all now. I hope you enjoyed it as well.
Thank you for reading.
Bring baseball back to Montreal!
