I spent a good deal of time in the off season covering hockey’s most storied
franchise, The Montreal Canadiens. The team I had grown up hating.
It’s amazing how your perception changes when you actually know these people and
I couldn’t believe after all the years of hatred that I actually wished them the best each night.
These guys, however, were not the Canadiens of the glory years. They had gone through a run of early season playoff exits.
The radio shows still needed interviews and one Sunday morning I had a big gap to fill. With the hockey team’s itinerary in hand I waited until the proper time and called coach Bob Berry in Calgary, where the team had played the night before. Berry was livid, “Elliott, this is a hell of a time to be calling anyone!” he shouted. Stunned and embarrassed, I said I was sorry and hung up. I waited an hour and tried one of the players at the same hotel. They had already checked out. Turns out it was not a hell of time to call anyone. Berry just didn’t want to talk to me.
Now I had to scramble and this would not be a radio show worthy of any awards and I was not happy, vowing revenge.
The winter passed into spring and I was excited about my first chance to go on the
road. This would be a double shot, Expos and Canadiens. It would start with baseball in spring training and continue on to the season opener in Chicago. When the Expos moved on to their second city of the first road trip, I headed to Buffalo for the National Hockey League playoffs to catch up with the Canadiens who were continuing their best of five first round series against the Sabres.
Talk about a dream. Wrigley Field in Chicago. To this day there is no place I would rather watch a baseball game and I’ve been to just about every ballpark in the majors. Come on, how can any of the new parks be more retro than Wrigley? The visit to Chicago would also include my first ever visit to Chicago Stadium to watch two hockey playoff games. Baseball at Wrigley in the afternoon, hockey at night at Chicago Stadium.
The hockey venue was no ordinary building. It was also the stuff of legends for me. I may have grown up with a chance to see hundreds of games in the temple of hockey in Montreal but the Blackhawks were my team. It wasn’t easy growing up in Montreal as a Chicago fan. The Canadiens seemed to win the Stanley Cup every year and the Hawks had last won it when I was four years old. The 1971 final series loss in game seven to the Canadiens was as tough on me as the Rick Monday home run was ten years later. I felt so confident with Chicago leading the deciding game at home 2-0, only to watch in horror as Canadiens’ forward Jacques Lemaire started the turnaround with a shot that seemed to come from centre ice. I believe goaltender Tony Esposito said he lost the shot in the fog and into that fog went Chicago’s last best chance to win the big one.
(Who knew when I wrote that in 2005 that they would win 3 Cups!)
Though I was fourteen it was the first and last time a hockey game had made me cry since that late Rangers’ goal had cost me Charlie’s Forum hockey pool. There was also the matter of an entire high school of Canadiens fans to deal with the next day.
Chicago Stadium was the loudest building in all of sports, bar none. I had spent many a night with the radio secretly under the pillow, listening to the insane noise at this place. The Hawks had hit some hard times but the 1982-83 season had seen them rebound in a big way. They had finished first in their division and were hosting game one of the playoffs. When they took to the ice, it was all too much. The hair stood up on my arms and the back of my neck and tears welled up in my eyes. The Stadium was everything it was cracked up to be – a smelly, old building in a scary part of of town that made noise like no other place on earth.
While the Expos were opening up the 1983 MLB season at Wrigley and the Blackhawks
were kicking off things on home ice, the Canadiens were doing their thing back home. Not only did they not win either game against the Sabres, they had failed to score a goal. So I was off to Buffalo to catch up with them in a series that would last just one more game. They played better in game three but were swept, after losing 4-2. Coach Berry sat with his face down, facing the music.
“Bob” I started, “You suggested at mid-season that if this team didn’t make it
through the first round of the playoffs again that you didn’t deserve to keep your
job, do you have any comment on that now ?”
I felt it was the question to ask, A question I had waited to ask, thinking that this
would somehow give me some measure of revenge for that Sunday morning when
‘Sunday Morning Sportspage’ suffered without a Canadiens presence. I was surprised to learn that it didn’t make me feel any better at all, I felt kind of like a child really.
Bob Berry by the way retained his job for awhile longer as Canadiens’ coach,
starting the next season with another (if even shorter) lease on life, and wouldn’t you know
it, the radio station added a new show to the schedule – a daily conversation during the hockey season called “Behind The Bench” with, you guessed it, coach Bob Berry.
Every call became a hell of time to call anybody.
There was one other story involving coach Berry that needs telling. Young Alfie Turcotte had been a first round draft choice of the Canadiens after a stellar junior career in western Canada with the Portland Winter Hawks. Turcotte had befriended another young player in John Chabot, a second round draft choice from the Maritimes. Through a good portion of their limited two years with the Canadiens, the pair would spend almost as much time perusing Montreal’s late night establishments as they would on the ice. Many a night Alfie could be found behind the bar after closing time mixing drinks for the staff and friends of the staff at one of those late night places. The news however had filtered back to the head coach who decided on a field trip to check on the tip. Coach Berry arrived with team trainer Eddie Palchak and he made a beeline for the bartender.
“I hear my boys Turcotte and Chabot spend quite a bit of time here, is that true?” asked Berry.
“No, not at all” said Skip the bartender, “And I can prove it, here, look at this
ledger.”
Skip opened a book and showed it to the coach.
“When you win money on our poker machines, you can only redeem it with the
purchase of alcohol in this bar, and as you can see, Alfie still has 85 dollars on account from the $100 he won” assured Skip.
“Great” said the reassured coach “Let’s drink until it’s emptied !” And they did,
never noticing the two faces at the door that had come for some fun. Turcotte and Chabot were finally shooed away before their coach could catch a glimpse of their latest visit.
The 1983 baseball season would end the same as the previous four for the Expos. They battled an inferior and aging Philadelphia Phillies team, eventually watching on as their opponents captured the division. The five year cycle was complete with nothing but heartache to show, the downward spiral would be swift from there.
The battle for baseball’s radio rights in Montreal actually meant something back then. Yes the radio stations paid good money to broadcast the games. While our station (CJAD) carried the Alouettes of Canadian Football League and the Manic of the North American Soccer League, our biggest rival (CFCF-600) had the two biggies, The Canadiens and the Expos. The radio rights would be up for auction again after the 1984 baseball season and CJAD was determined to take another run at them.
For the second year in a row CJAD covered the World Series, sending me out to Baltimore and Philadelphia. It was also decided that a reporter would shadow the Expos for all 162 games in 1984, home and away. This would show the Expos how serious they were about the next round of contract negotiations for the radio rights. It was a chance for this reporter to reach places I had never seen. I was really looking forward to the two trips to California, wow, Los Angeles, San Francisco and San Diego. But 1984 turned out to be a horrible season for the Expos. It was one bad situation after another. From the signing of an over-the-hill Pete Rose to the sudden decline of ace pitcher Steve Rogers, the Expos went nowhere fast.
It’s hard to believe looking back that they still managed to win 78 games. The one and seemingly only reason to watch the Expos on a daily bases ended tragically. Terry Francona had blown out a knee earlier in his career on a rather innocent play in the outfield but he was making a sensational comeback. The lad was wielding his lumber like a magic wand, with just a flick, another base hit. The way Tony Gwynn’s career played out, that’s how Francona looked in the early going of 1984. But on another innocent play, Francona saw his career flash before his eyes when a simple run to first base with no contact would blow out the other knee. His season and for all intents and purposes, his career, was over. It was nice to see him manage the end of the curse in Boston but I wonder how many really knew how many curses ended that night.
The 1984 season began at Shea Stadium in New York. The flight was of the commercial variety (before every trip for the team was chartered). When we arrived at the hotel I waited for my luggage to arrive. It was my understanding that all of the team’s luggage would be transported to the lobby of the Grand Hyatt Hotel in Manhattan. While that was actually the case, I had left out one big detail. I called traveling secretary Peter Durso who asked if I had placed my Expos sticker on the bag. Apparently it was still going around in circles at LaGuardia. I called the airport and had them find the bag and store it so I could pick it up after the ballgame. After left-hand specialist Gary Lucas had served up the game winning hit to feisty infielder Wally Backman, I did my post-game interviews, filed all the tape with the radio station and headed out to find a cab that would take me to the airport. This wasn’t to be a long cab ride, you can actually see Shea Stadium from LaGuardia, but it was long enough. Have you ever tried find a taxi near Shea Stadium on Opening Day?
Try as I might, I couldn’t find one, amazing really since almost every car that drives through Manhattan is a taxi. But this was Queens, and so I started to walk, radio equipment bag strung over my shoulder. All the way to LaGuardia I walked, a few miles, along the highway, past the abandoned water site from the 1964 world’s fair, always thinking that any moment I would be able to flag down one of those yellow beasts. It was not to be.
Two other stories stand out from that 1984 season. We were flying (charter) into Cincinnati when all of a sudden there was a major commotion a little further back in the plane. I stood on my seat to get a closer look and there, face down in the aisle was star reliever Jeff Reardon.
It looked as though he’d had a heart attack or something and a state of panic was starting to ensue. Paramedics were readied below and we dropped out of the sky like a lead balloon into the Indianapolis airport and off went Reardon to the hospital. Turned out he had a bad reaction to the mushroom sauce on his steak, having no idea that wine was used to make it, a substance he was allergic to. Reardon was fine and back in uniform when the Expos played the Reds after an off day.
Meanwhile after leaving Reardon off, the plane went back up and continued on to Cincinnati.
Under normal circumstances the media was scattered on different floors of the hotel, but not this time. We were placed in back to back rooms all on the same floor. After arrival there was quite the scene in the hallway with all reporters out of their rooms on the floor we now owned for a town hall meeting of sorts. So comfortable was this group that Le Journal de Montreal beat writer Serge Touchette had ventured into the corridor in nothing but his underwear. Suddenly, broadcaster Rodger Brulotte charged at Touchette’s door and locked it. Even quicker yet, everybody else ran to their rooms and closed the doors, leaving Touchette alone in the hallway in his skivvies. Not having done enough to freak Serge out, Brulotte than called security to inform them that some crazed nut was roaming the hallway in his underwear and could they please come in a hurry and do something about it. Now it was just a matter of moments until a fantastic group of sophomoric media members got to see one of the great moments in sports while pressed against the eyehole of the door in their rooms. There was Serge standing in the hallway. The elevator opened and staring at ‘Touche’ was a hulking security guard. “Tabarnac!” cried Touchette, freaking out in his underwear in the hallway before he finally managed to explain to this giant security guard that he was just the victim horrible practical joke gone wrong.
The last story concerns that guy who never told a lie – Pete Rose. The Expos were playing an afternoon game at windswept Candlestick Park in San Francisco. The Rose experiment was not working. This was a team going nowhere and it was time to admit that there would be no
Division race that season, thus no reason for the aging Rose to stick around.
A report had filtered through the press box mid-game that Rose was to be unveiled
the next day at Riverfront stadium in Cincinnati as the new player-manager of the Reds.
Following the game, Rose was surrounded by the media and was asked about the
validity of this report.
“No truth to it at all” said baseball’s all time hits leader before disappearing into the trainer’s room. The story persisted and I tried calling Rose’s room at the hotel that evening but was
assured that while he wasn’t answering the phone, he had not checked out of the
the Westin St Francis. History of course documents the next day as day one in the return of Pete Rose to his hometown team in Cincinnati where eventually he’d break Ty Cobb’s hits record in a Reds uniform and begin his descent into baseball hell. The Expos, for their part, managed to acquire utility infielder Tom Lawless for Rose. It must have been thanks to some hard bargaining.
To be continued
