October 31, 2021

By Larry Downes

Member of Canada first Olympic team

Every October, it’s always nice to associate a bit of Canadiana to postseason play.

This particular year, for the 1984 Canadian Olympic Team, it’s pretty much in our faces.

Rob Thomson, who is this year’s story of the postseason, was our teammate. That was a great summer which we prepared for in Windsor and Detroit and went on to win an international tournament in Holland. Naturally, the Olympic Games played at Chavez Ravine was the highlight of most of our baseball careers.

Rob, as humble as ever even then, was a big part of that team and now represents what all of us in 1984 wanted in baseball -— to get to the highest level we could.

In fact, five were in the majors!

The rest went on to their own level of success in or out of baseball.

We have reunited three times since 1984. In 2016 we got together in Toronto to attend a Yankees-Blue Jays weekend. By then we had lost two members of that team to the big game in the sky. We did invite their widows to attend our dinners.

In 2019, we went to St. Marys, Ontario for Rob’s induction into the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame and finally at the Rogers Centre this July.

Eight Olympians were at Rogers Centre July 12 to see former teammate Robbie Thomson, manager of the Phillies. (Left to right): INF Tom Nelson (Windsor, Ont.), RHP Barry Kuzminski (Waskatenau, Alta.), 1B-C Larry Downes (Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ont.), RHP Michael Carnegie (Toronto, Ont.), C Jim Eliopoulos (Newmarket, Ont.), INF Joe Heeney (Etobicoke, Ont.),,Thomson, OF Henry Andrulis (Etobicoke, Ont.) and OF F Doug McPhail (Calgary, Alta.)

I’ll let you in on a secret, we knew Rob was coming into town so we booked a suite weeks before he was named manager. We figured working as the bench coach, he could slip away after a game and we could share a beer and some time together.

Then he was named the interim manager and we knew there was no way he would have the time to get away.

We texted him instead, asking if we could get on the field before the first game. He replied promptly with “sure, I just need the names of the guys and thanks.”

That’s not the only example of Rob being modest. At the 2016 reunion, his wife, Michelle, quietly sided up to me and said, “Rob would never do this but, I brought his five Yankee World Series rings with me to share with the guys.”

That went over so well.

I have been watching the FOX TV postseason telecasts with John Smoltz broadcasting. (As a matter of fact, he was on one of those elite teams from Detroit that the 1984 team played at Tiger Stadium to prepare for the rest of that big summer.)

Smoltz has often talked about how intense and focused players are in the postseason, how this is a once in a lifetime experience. How true.

Steve Ludzik, the former NHLer wrote in his book, “Been there, Done that” ... how you know your teammates for a very short time in your life but it is a very intense and focused time too.

I think that’s why the 1984 Olympic team feels so close and attached even after all these years.

Here’s to cheering on one of our former teammates “Go Phillies Go.”

Big leaguers from the 1984 Canadian team at the Los Angeles Olympics

OF Kevin Reimer (Enderby, BC) played six with the Texas Rangers and Milwaukee Brewers appearing in 488 games with 1,606 plate appearances.

LHP Steve Wilson (Victoria BC) pitched for the Los Angeles Dodgers, Chicago Cubs and the Rangers working 345 1/3 innings in 205 games.

RHP Mike Gardiner (Sarnia, Ont.) pitched with the Detroit Tigers, Boston Red Sox, Montreal Expos and Seattle Mariners winning 17 games, pitching 383 2/3 innings in 136 games.

Manager Eric MacKenzie (Courtright, Ont.) who played with the 1955 Kansas City A’s.

And, of course, Thomson, who played four years in the Tigers system, before joining the New York Yankees, winning five World Series rings and now sits in the manager’s chair in Philadelphia, three wins away from another Series ring.

The other future pros included

RHP Mark Wooden (Windsor, Ont.) who pitched five seasons in the Seattle Mariners system.

OF Scott Mann (Oshawa, Ont.) four years with the Montreal Expos.

RHP Alain Patenaude (Laval, Que.) two seasons with the Detroit Tigers.

OF Scott Maxwell (Lethbridge, Alta.) one with the Blue Jays.

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And then there was … RHP Mike Carnegie, a man’s man, who pitched at Miami of Ohio University, the 1983 Pan-Am Team and the 1984 Olympic team and has coached sandlot ball. He drove to Philadelphia for Game 3 Monday, but had to return home on Tuesday. Said Carnegie: “Unfortunately we have to drive back home tomorrow, but the Spirit of ‘84 was there.”

Hours later around midnight … Carnegie emailed back to say “Just got a text from Robbie. He actually apologized for not seeing my son and I at the game. Imagine that. Managing his first home game in the World Series and he sends me a text apologizing for missing my call and not seeing me. He is the most down to earth teammate I have ever had the pleasure of knowing. What a gentleman.”

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Do not forget the 1984 team and its exploits …..

1984 team was Olympic pioneers

The Fruit of the Loom pick worked

Opening Olympic doors

Canada then and now