OTTAWA – Being enshrined in the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown is truly an honour for anyone ever involved in baseball. For Jacques Doucet, being included in the temple of the American pastime is very close to being a reality.
Doucet is one of ten finalists for the 2009 Ford C. Frick Award, presented by the Hall of Fame annually to the broadcaster who has made a major contribution to baseball and for excellence in baseball broadcasting.
Doucet was the French radio voice of the Montreal Expos from 1972 until 2004. His career following the
Expos began in 1968 when he was the baseball beat writer for La Presse, until he would take on the play-by-play duties full time in 1972.
Doucet is nominated for the award along with two other legendary voices in Canada, Dave Van Horn and the late Tom Cheek. Van Horn, who is currently the voice of the Florida Marlins, was a long time broadcaster for the Montreal Expos. Cheek described 4,306 consecutive Toronto Blue Jays games in his illustrious career prior to his death in 2005.
The others nominated for the 2009 Frick Award are Joe Nuxhall, Billy Berroa, Ken Coleman, Dizzy Dean, Lanny Frattare, Tony Kubek and Graham McNamee.
For his part, Doucet described over 5,500 Major League Baseball games over his long and storied career, including two perfect games. The first was Dennis Martinez in 1991 against the Los Angeles Dodgers and the second was David Cone in 1999 for the New York Yankees against the Expos.
After the Expos moved to Washington to become the Nationals after the 2004 season, Doucet became the French radio voice of the Québec Capitales of the Can-Am League, a position he has held since 2006.
He has also received numerous awards, including an induction into the Québec Baseball Hall of Fame in 2002 and into the Expos Hall of Fame in 2003. In 2004, Doucet was admitted into the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame as the winner of the Jack Graney Award.
However, Doucet has contributed more than just his voice to baseball. Thanks to his many years of broadcasting baseball in French, Doucet was instrumental in translating the vast vocabulary of baseball into the French language and making it accessible to the millions of French speaking Canadians.
The winner of the 2009 Ford C. Frick Award will be announced on December 9, 2008.
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