Elliott: Memories of Milo, CDN HOF's Graney winner

Richard (Downtown) Milo who covered the Montreal Expos for more than 20 years for La Presse Canadienne.

December 5, 2022

By Bob Elliott

Canadian Baseball Network

Spend any time in a press box and you wind up with a nickname.

For Richard Milo, he had a couple that we remember:

One was Downtown ... because he either never went downtown with the other ball writers covering the Montreal Expos or because Le Journal de Montreal’s Serge Touchette used to say Milo reminded him of “Downtown Ollie Brown.”

The other was Secretariat ... because he wrote so quickly. I think.

And we’re sure Milo had others -- Gold Glove? -- according to none other than the late Expo scouting director Jim Fanning, who had scouted Milo as an outfielder with Laval-Ahuntsic in the Montreal junior league.

Milo, who covered the Expos for more than 20 years with La Presse Canadienne (Canadian Press) is the winner of the 2022 Jack Graney Award, presented by the Canadian Hall of Fame in St. Marys. Scott Crawford made the call to Milo with the news.

Milo covered Dennis Martinez’s perfect game in 1991 for the Expos against the Dodgers in Los Angeles and then almost eight years later, New York Yankees David Cone’s perfect game at Yankee Stadium against the Expos. He pointed out in 2007 there have been 20 perfect games in big-league history and he had the opportunity to cover two of them.

The talented Mark Whicker remembers covering the Los Angeles Kings visit to the Montreal Forum in the 1993 Stanley Cup final. He was reading La Presse, or as Whicker said “trying to, and Richard was writing from Houston.” Expos catcher Tim Laker had a bad game and Houston’s Andujar Cedeno was the flashy rookie shortstop at the time.

Milo quoted someone saying, “Cedeno, il deservez le Gant D’or,” meaning Gold Glove.

“Then Richard writes, ‘And Laker? Il mérite le gant de ciment,’ meaning cement glove,” recalled Whicker. “I was either in a restaurant or at the airport when I read it, but I started howling.”

On a trip to San Diego, Milo and Touchette read in the morning papers that Padres great Tony Gwynn had declared personal bankruptcy. In the evening, Gwynn hit one hit ... two hits ... three hits, each barely out of the outstretched glove of an infielder.

After the third hit, Milo leaned over to Touchette and said, “Serge, would you say he places his hits better than his money?”

Already inducted into the Quebec Hall of Fame as part of the Class of 2007, along with former New York Mets first baseman Tim Harkness, Milo’s former Laval-Ahuntsic manager Paul Martin, plus umpires Marc Fortier and Benoît Guay. Milo played for Quebec teams that won the Canadian championships in 1970 and 1971.

Milo began working at newspapers with Le Petit Journal and La Patrie, then with Le Devoir. He joined La Presse Canadienne in 1984. He and Michel (Marcel) Lajeunesse formed a tag-team duo to cover the beat.