New Canadian ball hall inductee Doucet helped create French baseball language

Legendary Montreal Expos broadcaster Jacques Doucet (Montreal, Que.) has been elected to the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame in St. Marys, Ont. Photo: Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame

February 4, 2020

By Kevin Glew

Canadian Baseball Network

He helped create a French baseball language.

That’s how important new Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame inductee and legendary Montreal Expos broadcaster Jacques Doucet has been to baseball in this country.

When Doucet was hired to call games for the Expos in 1972, French terms had not been established for some regularly used baseball jargon. So Doucet and his broadcast staff sprung into action and began to listen to old Montreal Royals broadcasts. The Royals were an International League club that played from 1928 to 1960.

“When I was offered the job by the Expos, we tried to dig up everything that was done before,” explained Doucet on the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame’s conference call on Tuesday afternoon. “So that was a good start and a big basis for us. And then when I was stuck on the radio, trying to come up with a French equivalent for something, like a pick-off at first base or a shoestring catch or a Texas Leaguer, I was not afraid to say on the air, ‘Well, if anyone out there can come up with an expression in French to really describe what a pick-off move is or a shoestring catch or a Texas Leaguer, please let me know.’

“So a lot of people from the University of Montreal and baseball fans throughout the province really helped us come up with expressions that people could understand and then throughout the years, by repeating and repeating and repeating, the people started to adopt those expressions and they shied away from the English expressions and I’m very proud of that.”

A shoestring catch, for example, became “vol au sol” on his broadcasts. A pick-off attempt was a “tentative de prendre a contre-pied.”

So for his work in helping to invent such French baseball terms, it’s only fitting that Doucet was one of four new Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame inductees announced on Tuesday. Canadian slugger Justin Morneau (New Westminster, B.C.), former Blue Jays first baseman John Olerud and ex-Blue Jays set-up man Duane Ward will also be inducted in a ceremony on June 20 at the Hall of Fame grounds in St. Marys, Ont.

Doucet called his election to the Canadian ball shrine one of two of highest honours he has received for his career, equal to the Medal of Honour of the National Assembly of the Province of Québec he received in June 2012.

“I am deeply honoured to be admitted into the Canadian Baseball Hall Fame,” said Doucet.

Born in Montreal in 1940, Doucet has been calling major league baseball games for more than four decades. He had served as a Montreal Expos beat reporter for La Presse from the time the franchise was awarded to the city in 1968 to 1971. He began performing play-by-play for the Expos’ French language radio broadcasts in 1972 and when he started there was no real blueprint for broadcasting baseball in French.

“There were not too many that were broadcasting baseball in French at that time,” said Doucet in the Hall conference call. “On French CBC, we always had the World Series, but I have a lot of admiration for René Lecavalier who was known as the voice of hockey across Canada and especially across Quebec.

“When I started broadcasting, I knew that I was not very knowledgeable about the game, so I had the opportunity of mixing and talking with our [the Expos] first manager Gene Mauch, who taught me really the basics of Major League Baseball. I had followed baseball throughout my youth, but never on a major league basis. I was covering the junior ranks in Montreal when I was a sportswriter at La Presse. But I think teachers like Gene Mauch and then after that, [Expos managers] Buck Rodgers and Felipe Alou, who became really a close friend [were very helpful].”

In his 33 seasons providing play-by-play for Expos games, he called virtually every meaningful match-up in the franchise’s history, as well as a number of playoff and World Series games in French.

“There are three games that really stand out in my mind,” said Doucet on Tuesday. “I had the privilege of broadcasting two perfect games – the one that Dennis Martinez pitched against the Dodgers in Los Angeles [on July 28, 1991] and the one that David Cone pitched against the Expos in Yankee Stadium [on July 18, 1999).

“And the third one that really stands out in my mind was the 1982 All-Star Game and it was played in Montreal – that was the first time that the All-Star Game was played outside the U.S.A and we had the privilege of seeing five members of the Expos in the lineup.”

After the Expos left for Washington following the 2004 season, Doucet continued his broadcast career in his home province, calling games for the independent Can-Am League’s Quebec Capitales from 2006 to 2011. In August 2011, he returned to the big leagues to broadcast select Blue Jays games in French for TVA Sports. He continues to broadcast Blue Jays games today.

In total, Doucet has called more than 5,500 big league games during his storied career. For his efforts, he was inducted into the Quebec Baseball Hall of Fame in 2002 and the Montreal Expos Hall of Fame in 2003. The following year, he won the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame’s Jack Graney Award, which is handed out annually by the Hall of Fame to a member of the media who has made significant contributions to baseball in Canada through their life’s work.

This past year, he was one of eight finalists for the National Baseball Hall of Fame’s prestigious Ford C. Frick Award.

Doucet has also been a strong supporter of baseball at the grassroots level in Quebec. As an ambassador for Baseball Quebec, he has been an active supporter of many fundraising activities for minor baseball teams in the province. He also served as an executive with the Quebec Junior Elite Baseball League from 2004 to 2010 and was involved in the Quebec Summer Games held in Longueuil in 2014.

Doucet is grateful for his Canadian ball hall honour.

“I want to thank all the partners whom I had the privilege to work with during all the years and who made this possible,” he said in a statement. “I want to thank the members of the selection committee of the Hall of Fame for making this day possible.”