I woke up to baseball in 1966.
I was 9 years old and my dad was probably Montreal’s biggest baseball fan so it came naturally. (Elliott’s father was Gerry Price aka “Manush”)
Frank Robinson was told he was an old 30 by the Cincinnati Reds so they shipped him to Baltimore before the start of the 1966 season.
He was just old enough to win the Triple Crown, the MVP (becoming the first player to do so in both leagues) and the first World Series title for the Orioles.
That was my team from mid season in ’66 on and into a broadcasting career that magically saw me work play by play for the Montreal Expos.
I once told a late season Expos acquisition why I hated him.
Poor Terry Crowley. He was the starting right fielder for the Orioles at Tigers Stadium in July 1970. We were on our way to the All Star game in Cincinnati and I was so excited about seeing the Orioles for the first time ever and especially FRANK!
Frank didn’t play that day. Crowley did.
I knew Frank was prickly when he arrived in Montreal to manage the Expos. He had his moments with the media and some of the men who had played for him.
He didn’t suffer fools well.
I imagined that he arrived in Montreal as the person he was by a number of life circumstances.
A black man born in Texas, raised in a country that still holds back his kind in a game that denied entry to them, until they could no longer.
He fought for a place in the game that did not take kindly to black leadership. He fought through that to become the game’s first black manager. He wanted even more but couldn’t quite make it there.
By 2002 he was still a friend to the game and was asked to caretake a dead franchise walking – the Montreal Expos.
I do believe we hit it off almost instantly.
He knew that I knew baseball and I believe he respected that. Sometimes in a room full of baseball reporters there was just two of us talking.
Though he had mellowed quite a bit, there was still a hard Frank somewhere in there, but we had a common love that had come to both of us a little later in life.
Golf!
I was a 40-something broadcaster. Frank was a 70-something baseball lifer. But we were both golfers.
And with a coaching staff of more golfers, golf we did play.
Some speculated that all the golf during the day might have affected his managing at night. But today is not the day to decide.
I saw a side of Frank that I don’t believe many in my profession had a chance to see – The Great Frank Robinson away from the noise with a smile on his face.
I have a lasting image of Frank as I smile thinking of my boyhood hero.
I was playing a round at the Falcon just outside of Montreal with fellow broadcaster Shaun Starr and from 3 fairways over comes this booming holler:
“Elliott! Elliott!”
Frank Robinson – that Frank Robinson – was bellowing my name, having noticed a fellow golfer he knew, in a place that was otherwise strange to him.
Today I mourn his loss and hear his voice calling my name.
