TORONTO — We’re living in another golden age of Blue Jays broadcasts, both in English and in French.
For every major moment in this dream season and World Series run, the Blue Jays’ French broadcaster in Canada, TVA Sports, has been delivering these moments to Francophone Canadians. Even for English-speaking Canadians trying to piece together the calls with what they remember from French class in their school days, they’re electrifying, a handful of them going viral recently — and for good reason.
Longtime broadcaster Denis Casavant is on the mic for TVA with Karl Gélinas, who pitched four years in the Angels’ organization before a long career with the Capitales de Québec in the Canadian-American Association. Casavant started broadcasting Expos games in 1989 with RDS in Canada up until the Expos left in ‘04, but has remained one of the voices of baseball in Canada.
“You can’t ask for more. There are six games left potentially in this World Series and I ask, ‘How can another one be better than what we’ve had so far?’” Casavant said. “It’s been incredible to call those games. For me, this is the closest that I am to broadcasting an Expos World Series game. In 1994, we were never able to finish the season with the strike, so this is probably the closest I can be to that moment, to have your hometown team or your home country team be this close to winning the World Series.”
Casavant is without his longtime partner, the great Rodger Brulotte, though. Many Canadians know Brulotte for his days as the color commentator next to Jacques Doucet, another giant in Canadian sports broadcasting. Casavant eventually formed a booth with Brulotte, who is a “color guy” by every definition of the word, his personality even larger than his voice.
Brulotte recently underwent surgery to remove a cancerous tumor from his spine. He came out of the complicated surgery well, but he’s continued to receive treatment while this unexpected battle has kept him away from the game he loves so dearly.
Even if you’re not a French speaker, you’ve surely heard Brulotte before.
“The last one that went viral was when [Vladimir Guerrero Jr.] hit the walk-off in the pre-season game in Montreal,” Casavant said. “That was Jacques with Rodger. That keeps getting played all the time. It was Jacques doing the play-by-play, then Rodger doing the color afterwards with his famous, ‘Vladimir! Vladimir Vladimir!’ call.”
What a call. “Bon soir! Bon soir!” Brulotte continued as a baby-faced Guerrero rounded the bases his famous father had once rounded in Montreal. “Good evening!”
That’s a Brulotte classic, born on July 22, 1989. That night in Montreal, former Blue Jays infielder Damaso Garcia walked off the Cincinnati Reds at Stade Olympique with a home run in the bottom of the ninth. The Expos had just erased a 5-1 deficit to walk off with a 6-5 win and Brulotte shouted “Da-ma-so! Da-ma-so! Da-ma-so!” three times.
“If you ask anybody in Quebec, Rodger is Mr. Baseball,” Casavant said. “He’s the most recognizable. His name and his voice are associated with baseball. Jacques Doucet, as well, is always a finalist for the Hall of Fame [Ford C. Frick Award] because he was the first play-by-play man in French when the Expos started. He was the first voice of the Expos, then Rodger came on board.”
These days, the Blue Jays are big business. Sportsnet’s English broadcast is breaking records every game at this point, with its Game 7 ALCS broadcast averaging six million viewers with a peak of 8.3 million. All of this in a country of approximately 42 million Canadians. The TVA broadcast of that Game 7, Casavant says, averaged around 300,000 viewers, and that’s on a Monday, up against a Montreal Canadiens game.
These broadcasts and their memorable home run calls, from Doucet to Brulotte and Casavant, have been such an important part of the game in Canada. Even in a province that still holds the Expos so close to its heart, the Blue Jays have broken through.
“The province of Quebec is now behind the Blue Jays,” Casavant said. “It’s not like in hockey with Toronto and Montreal. When they say they’re Canada’s team, they’re also Quebec’s team now.”
