Ken Singleton did indeed move on to greener pastures leaving open the possibility of finally moving into the seat beside Dave. To my thinking there was a better than even chance they would replace Singy with another former player, and that certainly would be fine. However, if it was an announcer that was needed, who else could they choose ?
The call came from Vice President of Communications Richard Morency.
“I’ve got good news and bad news,” he said.
“Give me the bad news,” I requested.
“We’ve decided to go with Joe Cannon,” he replied.
For the first time I believed the job was mine, after waiting patiently for years, I really thought he was joking.
“The Joe Cannon at the radio station?” I asked.
“Yes” he said.
“The one I work with?” I said.
“Yes” he said.
“Joe Cannon? You’ve got to be kidding.”
So what’s the good news?” I wondered.
“You get to keep your job…So, we’ll see you tomorrow at the press conference,” he finished.
I was floored, how could this be?
Joe had never done sports in his life. He was the station’s morning host. Let’s face it, once again it was who you know, not what you know, and he knew the big guy.
There wasn’t a person on earth that knew anything at all on this subject who would have told you this was a good move. Joe and Expos team president Claude Brochu were long time friends and there was clearly nothing I could do. I worked with Joe every morning, sat in the same studio day after day and he had never said a word.
I couldn’t bear to talk to him the next morning and a stoney silence prevailed. He never mentioned it.
Anyone who had ever spent five minutes with me knew what direction I wanted to head in and it certainly wasn’t that press conference with Joe standing up there accepting MY job. The local newspaper story made clear what everyone knew – the Expos had made a bad decision. In fact only one person thought this was good choice. But sadly it was his call.
Three miserable years would pass with Joe getting worse by the game instead of better. Even Dave Van Horne’s performance eventually dropped off because of the ineptitude of his partner. Joe was simply in over his head and it was painfully obvious every time he repeated the same tired information he had spewed the previous day.
Publicly Dave and Joe got along fine. But on the air, cracks began to show. One broadcast found Joe marvelling at something new to him.
“Dave, have you ever seen anything like that before?” asked Joe.
“Yes, I have, Joe.” deadpanned Dave.
The radio station received constant complaints. Joe’s performance bordered on parody.
Meanwhile, Manush was seething.
My dad, not one to take things lying down, decided to call a local talk radio show and vent. Unfortunately his call was to my radio station on Mitch Melnick’s show. His frustrations boiled over and instead of making any real valid points, he just sounded like a mean old man. He even took some direct shots at Mr. Brochu himself when he passed him following a game at Olympic stadium.
Okay, the guy was right but he didn’t make my position any better.
After several months I asked Richard Morency what they planned to do about the long list of complaints that flooded both the team and the radio station concerning the broadcasts and he responded with a terse:
“It was a corporate decision,” said Morency.
As in, the boss says it’s so and so it’s so.
Any other questions?
End of conversation.
One day at San Francisco’s Candlestick Park I was sitting behind Dave and Joe in the broadcast booth alongside our game producer. Every time Dave had something of baseball substance to say he would turn and direct it towards me, ignoring Joe completely since he probably figured Joe just wouldn’t get it, and fearful of what Joe’s response might be. The mood in that booth was so cold. Dave had hit the breaking point. It happened so often during that broadcast that I became uncomfortable. I had to leave the booth to sit in the seats.
You would think that would have made me feel a little better, Joe struggling and all and Dave having given up on him. It did not. The whole thing was just sad. For all three of us.
Joe took a bashing in the press and from behind his back.
For the most part, Dave would leave the booth during Joe’s three innings of play by play so that made the broadcast even worse. The pain for Dave certainly had to come to a head the final weekend of the Expos 1998 season.
The series was in St. Louis where Mark McGwire was setting the home run record. He finished with a flourish over the last two days, hammering home runs 66, 67, 68, 69 and 70. And even though Joe called just the third, fourth and seventh innings, he got to call the final four of McGwire’s historic run.
Never for a second did I ever contemplate those innings and homers should have been mine. I was way over it by then (okay perhaps not totally over it).
I’ll give Joe this much. Many years later I was denied another position doing play by play. This time it was for the Montreal Canadiens. Their radio broadcast rights had moved from CJAD to TSN 690. That decision came down to myself and John Bartlett who eventually got the job and continues to be a terrific announcer to this day. After a demo run between the two of us ended negatively for me, I received an email from someone I hadn’t heard from for years.
Joe Cannon wrote – “Elliott, you deserved that job just as you did that other one many years ago.”
Thanks Joe. Brought a tear to my eye.
The next three years were painful on the field as well as in the booth. I had a tough time getting over the latest slap in the face. It’s not like I carried a constant chip on my shoulder but it was evident in my occasional comments that it was tough to let go. Let’s face it, it’s not like Joe was ever going to ever get another baseball job anytime or anywhere. The question was just how much this had set me back. The sad, truthful answer would continue to grow and grow over the years.
Who could have guessed that Dick Irvin would leave the Canadiens hockey job before Dave Van Horne left the number one post with the Expos?
Worried about just how I was perceived within the Expos organization, since they hired Joe Cannon over me, I applied for the Canadiens’ play by play job this time back at my old radio home at CJAD.
Ted Blackman was still the sports director. It would be his call. A few years earlier, Dino Sisto had been hired after I lhad turned down the post a few years earlier. Ted decided to stay in house and promote him. At least one radio station and sports organization rewarded it’s employees for what they perceived as a job well done instead of simply hiring their friends.
One thing had been clearly established. Whatever my future was in Montteal and play by play would be in baseball. (As it turned out however, I would be turned down for the Canadiens job twice more.)
There were some great moments in those years. None more exciting than my first trip to Yankee Stadium. It started like any other day until the players bus was full and ready to leave outside the Grand Hyatt in Manhattan. Just as it was pulling away, young reliever Guillermo Mota charged at it, trying to get the bus driver to stop and let him on. Catcher Chris Widger and reliever Bobby Ayala yelled at the driver to keep moving. Contrary to team rules, Mota was wearing shorts and sandals with no socks. The tall right-hander chased that bus down 42nd avenue, hoping for a change of heart and a ride. It wasn’t to be, with Widger and Ayala continuing the verbal assault on the driver all the way:
“Don’t open that door bussie, keep driving!!”
Somehow Guillermo beat the bus to Yankee Stadium in a cab.
He, like the rest of us, watched David Cone toss a perfect game.
Don Larsen tossing the ceremonial first pitch to Yogi Berra should have been an omen. It almost wasn’t to be with Ricky Otero losing a fly ball in the sun late in the affair. He never saw it. “God put that ball in my glove” he was quoted as saying. And so I called my second perfect game, and if you could have tossed in that Pedro Martinez gem in San Diego that went nine innings, that would have been three. Vin Scully called four perfect games on the radio. Other than Vin, no announcer has called more perfect games than me. As the great Mel Allen would have said, “How about that?”
The next three years were rather nondescript. Heading into the 2000 season the Expos had lost 87, 97 and 94 games.
The new stadium issue was hung out to dry under team president Claude Brochu and there would be a palace coup. Brochu couldn’t get the provincial government on his side and he sure as hell didn’t have the money to build the much needed stadium on his own. The local consortium wanted him out and they went looking for a new boss. They would get more than they bargained for.
On October 7, 1998 Brochu announced the team was up for sale to potential local investors and that he would take no part in the new consortium. The worry, as always, was whether the team would manage to stay in Montreal should a local owner not be found and that was a distinct possibility.
But first Brochu got to line his pockets.
He had spent many years grabbing major league money in the form of revenue sharing while keeping the team’s payroll at or near a league low. Now he grabbed all he could, hand over fist.
In came the New York art dealer, Jeffrey Loria.
Denied in his attempt to buy the Orioles several years before, he smelled a kill in Canada. At the end of 1999, it was clear that Loria and stepson David Samson would be taking over once the i’s were dotted and the t’s were crossed. Late in the season in Philadelphia they held a team get together. They weren’t officially in charge yet but they were allowed to say hello to the group in a rented hotel ballroom.
I tried to talk to Mr. Samson about my future but he wasn’t handling ownership questions yet since he wasn’t part of the ownership team yet. So I’d have to wait. I was concerned about my future. The radio station – CIQC – had begun the process of shifting to an all-news format. They did this by pretending that the station was going out of business and that a brand new one was starting up. That way they could circumvent a lot of responsibility to employees, most of whom were union members.
That something was afoot was clear that summer when I was asked to renew my contract in the middle of it. They wanted things to end and begin according to management at the beginning of the fiscal year. How, I asked, could my contract come to an end at the beginning of September when there was still a month of baseball to be played? Little did I know at the time that they would be sending a letter to the Expos requesting an end of their contract with the team which had a year remaining. A contract I was personally tied to. And how was I to know that this had been accepted?
Once the season ended it was clear that CIQC radio would be no more. Once CFCF, Canada’s first station (and arguably, North America’s first. KDKA in Pittsburgh made the same claim) was going out of business. The job of letting all staff go was in progress. Employees with seniority would be the first hired at the new place, at a lesser fee of course.
If I was still wanted by new Expos ownership and management to work their games I saw little downside to collecting my severance and head to whichever station the team tied itself to. Why wouldn’t that be the case ?
Little did I know that our good friend Joe Cannon had been handed a golden parachute of his own by his good friend, the outgoing President of the Expos. Claude Brochu made sure his buddy would be taken care of the next year, still earning multiples of what I was being paid.
There was no extension for me.
I was an employee of a dead radio station while Joe was an employee of the Expos. I had no idea how much that fact would kill my future as a baseball play by play announcer. I also had no idea how much I would have to fight for my severance pay.
First I needed to know if I had a job with the Expos. Brochu was no longer in charge but Jeffrey Loria and David Samson were not officially ensconced yet. There was nobody to talk to.
I called minority owner Mark Routtenburg to query him about my future.
His response was succinct.
“Elliott” he said “They know who you are and what a fine job you’ve done, surely there will be something for you.”
My time at CIQC would be up at the end of the year. I needed to know before then.
Finally the press conference was held on December 9th at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel. The new ownership would indeed consist of President and General artner Jeffrey H. Loria and Executive Vice President David Samson.
The team would indeed by staying in Montreal.
I called the Expos office,
“Could I please talk with Mr. Samson?”
“Sorry,” I was told, “He won’t be here until just after the New Year.”
But I needed to know something now.
“Sorry,” I was told. Nothing could be done. So I took Routtenberg’s words to heart and hoped for the best. I told CIQC that I would be taking my severance and I was told I wouldn’t be getting very much.
I was floored again.
They said the payouts were for full time employees only. Well, what the hell was I? If I wasn’t a full time employee after working there for nine years there, then they didn’t have any other such employees.
I was prepared to fight.
I had quite a bit of money saved and I think we both thought that I would have no problem staying on with the Expos once the ownership issue was resolved. So I lied and told management that I had recently acquired documentation from the program director that proved my full time status and I would see them in court. They asked to see the important article and I told them they could not. Eventually they relented, thankfully.
On December 18, I was told that my services would no longer be required. For the first time in almost 18 years, I was unemployed.
The call finally came from the Expos.
I was to meet with Mr. Samson just after New Year’s. I don’t think the word shock quite covers what I was about to hear.
The new Executive Vice President of the Expos explained to me how concerned he was that because of economics, games might not reach the airwaves that season. Not on radio or television. He had talked with representatives in both mediums and at least for now, it didn’t look good. The team had so devalued their broadcast product that rightsholders had become used to the going rate.
That going rate was nothing.
They were hell bent on not only changing that, but changing it by a lot. Still, I thought, what are the chances that a MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL TEAM wouldn’t have it’s games broadcast.
Let’s face it, baseball on the radio is just 162 games of paid advertising. Like a season long baseball infomercial. I figured 25-40 televised games would put me right back to work. Heck they might even want to find a way to add to the total.
Negotiations with CJAD radio seemed to be getting better but would hit a snag and die.
Montreal has to rank on the low end of any in city North America from a competitive broadcast rights standpoint and that goes for the French side as well. With CIQC dead and no longer interested in the baseball rights it was going to be CJAD or nothing. With that knowledge, why would you think that these people were going to negotiate against themselves?
If they were the only choice, you were pretty much stuck with them, weren’t you?
That’s not how new Expos ownership saw it.
Television would remain a non-starter.
January and February peeled away. March and spring training games arrived and disappeared. Still no deals for radio or television, not French nor English.
Opening day was coming into view.
The Expos’ 32nd season would begin with the new owner throwing out the first pitch.
A French radio deal was secured on that day but there would be no television and no over the radio English broadcasts. The only number one radio voice Expos fans had ever known-Dave Van Horne-would be broadcasting solo over the internet only. Dave was in the final year of a lucrative contract and was seemingly being pushed out the door. Joe Cannon would be paid for doing almost nothing. In the end he would read some public service announcements while collecting that huge final year of cheques given him by his good buddy Brochu.
Loria and Samson hoped their new team would get off to such a good start that radio would surely clamour for baseball. But that died with a rash of injuries to the pitching staff unparalleled in team history.
There would be no games on the radio.
There would be no job for me.
I made a little money covering games as a freelancer for radio networks. I lived off my severance for awhile, collected unemployment and worried only little while the stock market took my saved money up to previously unseen levels.
Better still, Dave Van Horne would not be returning the following year. If and when the team got back on the radio, I would certainly have to be the top candidate for the number one job. Early on I encountered Mr. Samson outside the press elevator and asked if there was some way, any way, I could help. So as to feel like I was still a part of things while he waited to get games back on the air. I could do pre or post game interviews, host an internet show before or after the games, maybe help Dave out with some colour, fill in between innings if need be.
Hell, I would do this for free!
He said he would talk to the team’s head of broadcasting and have him get back to me soon. That conversation I’ve been told never took place. Safe to say he never got back to me on that.
It was a humbling experience. Showing up at Olympic stadium to make a few dollars as a part time reporter after having been one of the team’s play by play announcers. Meanwhile another miserable 90-plus loss season ticked away.
My wife wanted me to find work elsewhere.
There’s not much of that in Montreal anymore for a radio sportscaster, English or French.
Noting that Dave Van Horne would be departing the scene and that they couldn’t possibly keep the games off the air forever, I explained that I needed to stay the course, at least until this baseball play by play thing played itself out. I had waited a long time for the top job, being this close, now was no time to abandon ship. I asked her if she believed I was good enough to get a decent job when we had exhausted this opportunity. I asked for patience, explained that we had more than enough to make it through a year waiting for what might be the big payoff and it would be a chance to spend my daughter’s first year at home with oodles of time to play. That’s certainly not afforded the everyday baseball play by play announcer.
It wasn’t an easy sell, but at least for the time being, she relented. So, after missing but one day of work in 20 years, I was now officially unemployed. I played golf, watched my savings rise to a crescendo as the stock market reached it’s zenith but then started to plummet like a boulder dropped from the sky.
The Summer ticked away. The questions were endless. No matter where I went, it was always the same.
At the grocery store, restaurants, golf courses or even the hockey league I played in.
“Why don’t they put the games on the air?”
“Why should people go to the games if they don’t respect us enough to broadcast games on the radio?”
“What the hell are YOU going to do?”
I wasn’t sure myself. I couldn’t wait for the season to end and for the situation to play out.
There seemed to be a glimmer of hope for some baseball work in August.
The CBC, while continuing to ignore the Expos, still broadcast some Blue Jay games and their play by play announcer Brian Williams would be unavailable for some games. Brian would be needed as usual as host of the network’s coverage of the Olympics.
The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation would need somebody to pinch hit.
Keep in mind that this is a publicly funded network by all Canadians. So, it’s safe to say that the replacement would surely be an American? Come again? I was dumbfounded. They were planning on bringing in Rich Walz of Fox Sports Net in Seattle. The network’s official storyline was that there weren’t any Canadian baseball announcers available.
I must have had some golf scheduled on those dates.
I was pissed and wrote to William Houston of the national newspaper ‘The Globe and Mail’. Houston was writing a media column titled ‘Truth And Rumours’. His story the next day did not include my astonishment alone. The esteemed Don Chevrier had called Jays games on television for 20 years and offered his services to the Blue Jays. He told Houston that two calls to Nancy Lee (head of CBC Sports) were never returned.
My letter-printed word for word-directly under Chevrier’s indignation looked like this:
“I’ll tell you who’s available. I am.
After nine years of Expos play by play, I am looking for work because as you know, there are no radio games this year.
Nice that we (Canada) make it so easy for Americans to work here while they (Americans)
make it so tough for us to work there.
Hell, in Montreal, we make it tough for us to work here.”
I had no how idea how prophetic and painful that would really be.
My representative quickly contacted the CBC and they asked us to rush some of my work to them and they would get back to us as soon as possible.
The Canadian Media Guild was not impressed. They hired a lawyer to fight the hiring.
Nothing came of anything.
The CBC just wanted to placate me so the furor would blow over sooner. The media guild lawyer never got to first base. While Walz stepped over the border to take a position that could have easily gone to a Canadian, the unemployed Canadian announcer played golf.
September 1999 brought me a new situation and at least a chance to make some extra money. The burgeoning internet was becoming a new source of employment.
Both in terms of finding work in far off places and it seemed work online itself. A new online radio station was starting up in Calgary Alberta. Jim Duff, who had been the morning man at my previous radio stop had been asked to join them in the same early morning capacity and was asked if he could recommend anyone for a sports talk program and he mentioned my name. They would send me a broadcast box that would connect through the telephone to a computer and I would broadcast through that COMREX directly through their website and out to the world.
They wanted to know if I wanted a partner for the show and explained that the deal would work one of two ways. They would either pay me a flat rate or a percentage of sales for on air commercials. I asked how they could prove to me just how much they were actually taking in for the commercials and I was told that they would be honest.
That would have been a first.
Since I wasn’t doing much of anything else I decided this wasn’t such a bad idea. It turned out to be just that and it died a quick a death. I was forced out before the funeral, lasting all of a month.
Before my departure I had decided to take the flat rate payment while also asking for a portion of the money they were willing to pay the partner they had proposed for me since I would do the show by myself. They told me my services were no longer required. The COMREX broadcast box (value $5000) was to be returned. I wanted my money for the month and the exchange was guaranteed. I sent the machine back and yes, lo and behold, they did send me my money.
Jim Duff on the other hand stayed until the bitter end and was having trouble getting the money they owed him so he ended up keeping his COMREX.
Who knew at the time how important that one month on the internet talk show circuit would be. More importantly, remembering that Jim had that broadcasting box would someday save my job.
Winter came and after what became a most ridiculous baseball season without English broadcasts, several important developments transpired.
Dave Van Horne did leave, filling the full time vacancy with the Florida Marlins.
Locally, negotiations would start anew between the Montreal Expos and Montreal radio.
The problem in Montreal was the same as before. The only radio station with any remote interest in the product was still CJAD. Why would they be any more inclined to bid against themselves than they had been a year earlier?
The answer of course was they wouldn’t.
The only hope was for the baseball team to understand the situation they had on their hands and forge some sort of partnership to share costs and of course commercial time that would hopefully end up as profit. I was told by CJAD Station manager Rob Braide that things were going along fine and that I would be the person who would be offered the number one announcer job if and when those negotiations were completed.
The winter dragged on, no deal was signed.
We now had officially lost our minds.
When negotiations officially fell apart I fell into insanity mode.
It seemed they were about $100,000 apart. That didn’t seem like that much. Hell, I thought if I could get 2000 fans to shell out 50 bucks each, that would do it. Might even embarrass both sides in the process to getting their shit together. I made such a proposal in an online Expos fan website. The donation requests started pouring in to a newly minted email home. But I chickened out and handed the process over to someone else. Perhaps it wouldn’t be best for future employment with either side if I made them look bad. Of course they didn’t seem to need any help doing that.
It was no use.
Spring training had started and there was still no deal and at this point there were no talks. It was time to look elsewhere for employment. Hard to believe that when the job was finally to be mine, there was actually no job. How in the world could there be no baseball on the radio in a city with a Major League baseball team? Wasn’t MLB embarrassed enough to come in and bridge the gap? Apparently not.
The search for another job was now real and considering our state of finances, needed ASAP.
Then this:
Montreal’s dying AM hit station CKGM was going all sports, tied to a new sports network out of Toronto.
I had a quasi-agent in Montreal who had been looking for work for me, but couldn’t find anything. In the end I had found all the leads myself. He had sent an application to the big-wigs in Toronto about hosting a show on the new station but they hadn’t responded. I was doing a daily internet search of sports broadcasting jobs and applied for a couple of them including this one that I had come across:
“America’s Sports Voice” is looking for a Sports STAR!!!
The home of the St. Louis Cardinals has a rare and immediate opening for a nightly sports talk host/reporter/anchor
The WINNER will:
* be passionate
* be knowledgeable
* get the story
* be entertaining
* be connected
* get the best guests
* be creative
* love reporting
* be a great anchor
* respect the listener
“Smack talkers” need not apply. This is not a play-by-play job.
Send a tape of your hosting, reporting and anchoring along with a proposal
on how you will uphold KMOX’s record national number-one winning streak!
Sports Star; Tom Langmyer, Operations Director, KMOX, One Memorial Drive,
3rd floor, St. Louis, MO 63102-2498. Infinity Broadcasting is an Equal
Opportunity Employer. NO CALLS.
Within days of my application the phone rang. It was Tom Langmyer.
They were suitably impressed and most interested.
While this wasn’t as advertised, a play by play job, it was the highlight call of the Martinez perfect game that had him all excited.
I had covered the Olympics, did hockey play by play which included interviews with some of the greats that I sent along. Interviews with Wayne Gretzky, Mario Lemieux and hall of fame coach Scotty Bowman.
His April 20th follow-up email was quite clear:
Elliott:
Nice talking with you… Look for Steve Moore’s call within a two-three days.
Have a good weekend….
Tom
Steve Moore was the stations program director and he did call.
It was agreed that I would be flown down to St Louis and host the show for a night.
If they liked it, the gig was mine.
How much were we talking ?
Well, converted into Canadian dollars, roughly double my previous salary.
“See honey, I told you I could get a good job when the time came!”
Do you believe in miracles? Yes!
Baseball’s best fans, a city with serious NHL interest and an emerging power in the NFL.
St. Louis would be perfect.
That happy day was also a sad one.
I brought my 11 year old daughter Rachel to the park and tried to explain that the time we talked about had come, that daddy couldn’t afford to stay in Montreal any longer. That I was just about to accept an offer to move away to St Louis. To an 11 year old that could have been the end of the world and we both cried buckets of tears.
I always felt that this day would come and was hoping to get Rachel to a certain age that would help cushion the blow. But there was no doubt that 11 was not that age.
To be continued
