Jacques Doucet (sportscaster)

Jacques Doucet (born March 8 1940, Montreal) was the legendary French radio play-by-play voice for the Montreal Expos from 1972 to 2004.

Early career

He began his career in 1959 as a translator for the Canadian Press news agency. After one year in 1960-1961 as a sports journalist for the short-lived "Nouveau Journal" daily, he went to "La Presse" in 1962, still as a sports journalist, where he remained until early 1972.

ports broadcasting

During a long strike in 1964 at "La Presse", he had a brief first experience in sports broadcasting, for Montreal Alouettes football games.

He got the assignment as the Montreal Expos beat writer for "La Presse" as soon as the franchise was awarded to Montreal in 1968, in addition to being the official scorer for games at Jarry Park.

Sometime in the middle of the Expos' first season in 1969, he was asked to replace from time to time Jean-Pierre Roy as colour commentator on the now-defunct CKLM 1570, which held the French radio broadcast rights, as Roy moved to TV broadcasts once a week.

Play-by-play

In 1972, as CKAC 730 became the Expos' new French radio flagship, Doucet was hired by the (now-defunct) Telemedia network to do play-by-play for all Montreal Expos games, in addition to the All-Star, League Championship and World Series games and a selection of pre-season Expos games.

When Télémedia merged with Radiomutuel on September 30 1994, creating the new Radiomédia network, he became an Expos employee and continued to do play-by-play but only for Montreal Expos games, which continued to be aired mostly on CKAC 730 until the end of 2003. (He was heard for a few games on CKVL 850 (now CINF 690) in 1995, and on CJMS 1040 in 2002 and 2003. CHMP-FM 98.5 took over as the French radio flagship in 2004 for the last season of the Expos in Montreal).

Over his career, Doucet described more than 5,500 Major League Baseball games, including two perfect games (by Dennis Martinez in 1991 against the Los Angeles Dodgers and by New York Yankees pitcher David Cone against the Expos in 1999).

Awards

He was introduced in the Quebec Baseball Hall of Fame in 2002, in the Expos Hall of Fame in 2003 and in the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame in 2004.

While fans hope he will be recognized by the Cooperstown Baseball Hall of Fame via the Ford C. Frick Award, this has not occurred yet, and however much local baseball fans might think this would be deserved, there is some pessimism about his chances, as he worked in a language other than English, and the Expos have now moved to Washington, D.C., becoming the Nationals in the process.

Later career

In March 2005 he became the official spokesperson for Encore Baseball Montreal, an organization initially created to keep the Expos in Montreal and which is now focused on promoting baseball in Quebec.

In June 2005, Doucet's efforts to create a French-language version of standard baseball terminology were underlined at length in a front-page story by the Wall Street Journal.

Return to commentating

Since May 2006, Jacques Doucet is the commentator of the Quebec Capitales home games. The Capitales play in the Can-Am League, an independent league of 8 teams, including two in Canada. The games are available on INFO 800 am in the Quebec City market, on the internet on www.info800.ca and on the cable at 105.1