Post by Exposgm on Jun 20, 2010 23:15:45 GMT -5
QUEBEC — As the ball bounced toward right, the gray-haired announcer almost bounced right out of his booth.
“Beau jeu de la part du joueur de deuxième-but! Le relai à temps au premier pour le troisième retrait!”
A fine play by the second baseman, his throw retired the side, and Jacques Doucet had brought yet another half-inning to his fellow Québécois. Baseball fans throughout the province had assumed that Doucet’s beloved baritone would fade as quickly as their memories of the Montreal Expos, whose games he called for more than 30 years before they left in 2004. But the void so many still feel is filled with every home game of the Quebec Capitales, when Doucet returns to the airwaves.
The announcer considered Canada’s Vin Scully, Doucet spends his summers behind an eight-foot slab of plywood and a naked fluorescent bulb that form the radio booth for the Capitales, a team of journeyman professionals in the independent Can-Am League. He receives $200 a game. So what if he occasionally must roll his chair over a few feet when the furry head of Capi, the team’s hyperactive feline mascot, obscures his view of home plate? He weaves the action with his halcyon memories of Pepe Mangual and Warren Cromartie, all the time exuding his signature joie de Vidro.
“Everywhere I went, people said, ‘Jacques, we miss you,’ ” Doucet, 70, said before a recent Capitales game with the Pittsfield Colonials. “It was part of my life for 33 years. To me it could be Little League or semipro or Major League Baseball — once the game starts, it’s all the same to me. I still jump out of my seat when I see a fine double play.”
Few outside Quebec appreciate the importance Doucet holds among French-speaking fans who grew up listening to him. Beyond being their version of Red Barber or Ernie Harwell, with his voice forming the soundtrack of their youth, he helped teach them the game in words and phrases he translated into their lingua franca. “Shoestring catch,” for example, became “vol au sol” — literally, “theft at the ground.” Doucet narrated the growth and ultimate gutting of the Expos, whose carcass was finally dragged off to Washington to become the Nationals.
Doucet’s most ardent followers are pushing him for the Ford C. Frick Award, essentially baseball broadcasting’s hall of fame, but they have found that few fans in the United States have even heard of him, let alone understood his game calls. Three Spanish-broadcast announcers have been so honored — Buck Canel, Jaime Jarrin and Felo Ramírez — but their audiences were far wider. Doucet called all the Expos’ important moments, from Bill Stoneman’s no-hitters to Andre Dawson’s homers to the Endy Chavez 4-to-3 groundout that ended Montreal’s last baseball gasp. In French. Bonne chance.
“He should be in the Hall of Fame — he’s the French-Canadian equivalent of Jaime Jarrin,” said ESPN’s Jon Miller, this year’s Frick Award winner. “It’s a tragedy — the Expos leave, Dave Van Horne goes to Florida and doesn’t miss a beat calling games with the Marlins. Where’s Jacques going to go? The Expos would have to move to Paris.”
So Doucet moved to Quebec, at least for summer nights at Stade Municipal, its small concrete ballpark built in 1939. The Can-Am League has a strict $94,000 salary cap for each team — players make less for the season than some big leaguers do per inning — and considers 3,000 a pretty good crowd.
An Expos beat writer before moving to the booth in 1972, Doucet tried to return to writing after the Expos expired but spent that first year away generally miserable. Then his old friend Michel Laplante, who had become the Capitales’ manager, suggested that the Can-Am League become the same life raft for Doucet that it was for many players. Doucet was soon broadcasting games for a team with several fellow French-Canadians also not quite ready to say goodbye.
“I remember as a kid my dad putting on the radio instead of the TV sound so we could listen to Jacques,” said Capitales pitcher Michel Simard, who was raised in Montreal.
His teammate Karl Gelinas, who grew up in nearby St.-Jean-sur-Richelieu and reached Class AAA in the Los Angeles Angels’ system before being released three years ago, said, “Just him saying my name on the air makes me feel like a major league baseball player.”
Doucet’s booth is decidedly minor league. It sits open-air among the stands — whose top rows are essentially high-backed wooden church pews — and Doucet calls games with one earphone propped on his temple so he can gauge the pulse of the fans. The briefcase behind him still has a beat-up plastic Expos tag. Just outside a swinging saloon door is Claude Roy, a 40-year-old janitor who makes sure to sit in earshot of Doucet every game.
“I was a fan of the Expos because of Jacques Doucet,” Roy said through an interpreter. “I never thought I’d be able to sit next to him during a game.”
After the bottom of the sixth, two other fans stopped by the booth to thank Doucet, a common occurrence. They told him how they still cry at Doucet’s final signoff. They said his getting into the Hall of Fame would take some pain out of losing the Expos. All in French, of course.
“I listened to you every night growing up,” said Mario LeClerc, a high school teacher in Quebec. “I really miss you. For 30 years, you’ve been everything to me.”
“You can still listen to me on the radio,” Doucet replied.
“Yeah, I know, but it’s not the same.”
“Well, keep listening,” Doucet said with a smile. “And I’ll keep calling games.”
(Published in the New York Times)
“Beau jeu de la part du joueur de deuxième-but! Le relai à temps au premier pour le troisième retrait!”
A fine play by the second baseman, his throw retired the side, and Jacques Doucet had brought yet another half-inning to his fellow Québécois. Baseball fans throughout the province had assumed that Doucet’s beloved baritone would fade as quickly as their memories of the Montreal Expos, whose games he called for more than 30 years before they left in 2004. But the void so many still feel is filled with every home game of the Quebec Capitales, when Doucet returns to the airwaves.
The announcer considered Canada’s Vin Scully, Doucet spends his summers behind an eight-foot slab of plywood and a naked fluorescent bulb that form the radio booth for the Capitales, a team of journeyman professionals in the independent Can-Am League. He receives $200 a game. So what if he occasionally must roll his chair over a few feet when the furry head of Capi, the team’s hyperactive feline mascot, obscures his view of home plate? He weaves the action with his halcyon memories of Pepe Mangual and Warren Cromartie, all the time exuding his signature joie de Vidro.
“Everywhere I went, people said, ‘Jacques, we miss you,’ ” Doucet, 70, said before a recent Capitales game with the Pittsfield Colonials. “It was part of my life for 33 years. To me it could be Little League or semipro or Major League Baseball — once the game starts, it’s all the same to me. I still jump out of my seat when I see a fine double play.”
Few outside Quebec appreciate the importance Doucet holds among French-speaking fans who grew up listening to him. Beyond being their version of Red Barber or Ernie Harwell, with his voice forming the soundtrack of their youth, he helped teach them the game in words and phrases he translated into their lingua franca. “Shoestring catch,” for example, became “vol au sol” — literally, “theft at the ground.” Doucet narrated the growth and ultimate gutting of the Expos, whose carcass was finally dragged off to Washington to become the Nationals.
Doucet’s most ardent followers are pushing him for the Ford C. Frick Award, essentially baseball broadcasting’s hall of fame, but they have found that few fans in the United States have even heard of him, let alone understood his game calls. Three Spanish-broadcast announcers have been so honored — Buck Canel, Jaime Jarrin and Felo Ramírez — but their audiences were far wider. Doucet called all the Expos’ important moments, from Bill Stoneman’s no-hitters to Andre Dawson’s homers to the Endy Chavez 4-to-3 groundout that ended Montreal’s last baseball gasp. In French. Bonne chance.
“He should be in the Hall of Fame — he’s the French-Canadian equivalent of Jaime Jarrin,” said ESPN’s Jon Miller, this year’s Frick Award winner. “It’s a tragedy — the Expos leave, Dave Van Horne goes to Florida and doesn’t miss a beat calling games with the Marlins. Where’s Jacques going to go? The Expos would have to move to Paris.”
So Doucet moved to Quebec, at least for summer nights at Stade Municipal, its small concrete ballpark built in 1939. The Can-Am League has a strict $94,000 salary cap for each team — players make less for the season than some big leaguers do per inning — and considers 3,000 a pretty good crowd.
An Expos beat writer before moving to the booth in 1972, Doucet tried to return to writing after the Expos expired but spent that first year away generally miserable. Then his old friend Michel Laplante, who had become the Capitales’ manager, suggested that the Can-Am League become the same life raft for Doucet that it was for many players. Doucet was soon broadcasting games for a team with several fellow French-Canadians also not quite ready to say goodbye.
“I remember as a kid my dad putting on the radio instead of the TV sound so we could listen to Jacques,” said Capitales pitcher Michel Simard, who was raised in Montreal.
His teammate Karl Gelinas, who grew up in nearby St.-Jean-sur-Richelieu and reached Class AAA in the Los Angeles Angels’ system before being released three years ago, said, “Just him saying my name on the air makes me feel like a major league baseball player.”
Doucet’s booth is decidedly minor league. It sits open-air among the stands — whose top rows are essentially high-backed wooden church pews — and Doucet calls games with one earphone propped on his temple so he can gauge the pulse of the fans. The briefcase behind him still has a beat-up plastic Expos tag. Just outside a swinging saloon door is Claude Roy, a 40-year-old janitor who makes sure to sit in earshot of Doucet every game.
“I was a fan of the Expos because of Jacques Doucet,” Roy said through an interpreter. “I never thought I’d be able to sit next to him during a game.”
After the bottom of the sixth, two other fans stopped by the booth to thank Doucet, a common occurrence. They told him how they still cry at Doucet’s final signoff. They said his getting into the Hall of Fame would take some pain out of losing the Expos. All in French, of course.
“I listened to you every night growing up,” said Mario LeClerc, a high school teacher in Quebec. “I really miss you. For 30 years, you’ve been everything to me.”
“You can still listen to me on the radio,” Doucet replied.
“Yeah, I know, but it’s not the same.”
“Well, keep listening,” Doucet said with a smile. “And I’ll keep calling games.”
(Published in the New York Times)