Charles Bronfman's new memoir worth the read
By: Danny Gallagher
Canadian Baseball Network
I had talked to Charles Bronfman many times in the 1980s and 1990s but there was still trepidation, butterflies and knots in my stomach for several hours before I called the billionaire on the phone in New York to talk about his recently released book.
I told him this story when I hooked up with him and I told him he was still a “superstar’’ after all of these years. Of course, the modest man of 85 years said, “I don’t think of myself that way.’’
Surprisingly, Bronfman had answered the phone directly and I said, “I thought the receptionist would answer and she would put me through to you.’’
Bronfman joked, “I have to do with less.’’
We were talking for a baseball-only story stemming from his candid memoir published by Harper Collins called Distilled: A Memoir of Family, Seagram, Baseball and Philanthropy.
The first question was about his decision to pony up and be a majority owner of the Expos in 1968 at a time when the going got tough when it came to potential investors. Bronfman ended up buying out other shareholders and gained 75% control of the franchise.
“I wanted to do something for Montreal, Quebec and Canada,’’ Bronfman said. “This was in my wheelhouse. With the issuance of inheritance, the motivation, frankly, was to be a pioneer.’’
In helping to bring major-league baseball to Canada.
Even when his famous father Sam asked his son if he could afford to buy the Expos, he replied by saying, “Barely, but I can.’’ In the book, Bronfman said owning the Expos was a “huge ego booster.’’
It was Bronfman’s first major decision as a businessman and a decision he is most proud of, although in the summer of 1968 long before the first pitch was thrown in 1969 he actually submitted his resignation as Expos’ owner for a 24-hour period before he was persuaded not to do so by Montreal mayor Jean Drapeau.
“We had no place to play,’’ the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame member said, in explaining his decision to temporarily defect as owner. “There was talk of the Autostade and other venues that were impossible. It was a frustration. It was terrible. I went to Drapeau and he taught me to take an extra 24 hours. The next day, he showed me a drawing of Jarry Park.
“Fortunately, the Expos swam. It was unique for me personally. Being major-league is a big deal. I gave to baseball more than baseball gave to me. I’m not sure that Toronto would have a team without the Expos.’’
It was during that first Expos’ season that base-stealing legend Maury Wills, in his fading years, was on the roster for a few months after he had played previously with the Pirates and Dodgers. In the book, Bronfman gives Wills a tongue lashing.
“Wills played in Los Angeles, went to Pittsburgh and then for him to go to Montreal to him, it was going down a lousy path as far as a human being goes,’’ Bronfman told me. “Los Angeles is a great city and the team had a lot of history. Pittsburgh with Three Rivers Stadium and its steel wasn’t a great place. Then he came to Montreal with Jarry Park out in the boondocks. He went through the motions.’’
Bronfman also had a tongue lashing for franchise catching great Gary Carter, a story that has been known in baseball circles for years. Bronfman and general manager John McHale gave Carter an eight-year contract worth $16-million but they did it with reluctance. They were furious with Carter and they traded him following the 1984 season to the Mets.
In what may have been the only time Bronfman ever took a player aside off the field, he scolded Carter in what he called in the book a “mano a mano’’ at his apartment in Palm Beach, Fla.
“Here’s my problem with you,’’ Bronfman bluntly told Carter. “We’re down a run with men on first and second. You come up to bat and if you slap a single into right field, we tie the game. But you don’t want to hit the other way.
“You want to hit the game-winning home run and see the headline in the paper. So when you go up to bat in that situation, I go to the bathroom because I know you’re going to hit into a double play.’’
Talk about unflattering stuff. Hilarious, if you really look at it. Bronfman didn’t mince words about his fellow CBHOF member, who died of cancer in 2011. This kind of stuff is what makes the book so powerful.
In one of the photos found in the book, Bronfman is posing recently with his wife Rita Mayo and she’s wearing a golf shirt that has a caricature of an Expos’ player emblazoned on the left pocket.
I took a close look at it and told Bronfman that it looked like Expos pitching legend Steve Rogers. It’s a picture of a pitcher ready to throw a pitch. Bronfman laughed as he searched for the photo in the book. He wasn’t sure who the player was but revealed that Montreal Gazette cartoonist Terry (Mosher) Aislin was the person behind the cartoon.
Bronfman is heartbroken by Rick Monday’s epic home run to dash the Expos’ World Series bid in 1981 but admits the straw that broke the camel’s back in his tenure as owner was the 1989 season when the team faded in the home stretch after leading the NL East for a good portion of the season.
Not long after that 1989 team folded, Bronfman put the team up for sale, eventually settling for a purchase by a consortium of owners. Ironically, there is no mention of the 1989 team in the book but the collapse shook him to his core.
For me, I enjoyed Bronfman’s non-baseball stuff in his book more than anything. It gives you another side of Bronfman that he has never told before. The loss of his wife Andy to a car accident in 2006 and the shocking demise of his family’s Seagram empire shattered him deeply. The inside details make for riveting reading.
His ownership of the Expos lifted him and his shy, introverted personality into the limelight because he had to deal with media, fans and fellow major-league owners. This book sure does, too, with the world in general. The veil of his life-long privacy has been exposed publicly.
Pick up the book. You won’t want to put it down.