Free Up, Up, and Away: The Kid, the Hawk, Rock, Vladi, Pedro, le Grand Orange, Youppi!, the Crazy Business of Baseball, and the Ill-fated but Unforgettable Montreal Expos by Jonah Keri

complimented at a restaurant here and there, but you’re not listening to yourself on your porch every night, not absorbing the impact of your own words. Really, you don’t have much time to consume any kind of baseball other than the games you’re covering, because you’re on the air from late February through the end of September (or later, in a playoff season) every year. But during the strike year in 1981, Doucet found himself with a hole in his schedule, right in the middle of the summer. So he went to see his nephew play.
    “I sat in the stands, and I was so pleasantly surprised to hear fans use all those expressions, all that baseball lingo in French,” he beamed. “French to me is a beautiful language. If I’m doing something in French, I want to do it correctly.”
    A lexicon of French baseball terms could fill an entire book. So here’s an abridged version, featuring some of the basics, plus some of the more delightful ones to roll off your tongue.
    Arrêt-court: shortstop
    Balle: ball
    Balle cassante: breaking ball
    Balle courbe: curveball
    Balle glissante: slider
    Balle papillon: knuckleball (“papillon” in French means butterfly—“butterfly ball” has my vote for coolest French baseball term)
    Balle rapide: fastball
    But volé: stolen base
    Cercle d’attente: on-deck circle
    Champ centre: centre field
    Champ droit: right field
    Champ gauche: left field
    Changement de vitesse: changeup
    Coup à l’entre-champ: Texas Leaguer (a bloop hit between the infield and outfield)
    Coup de circuit: home run
    Coup sûr: hit
    Deuxième but: second base
    Double: double
    Double jeu: double play
    Fausse balle: foul ball
    Flèche: line drive
    Frappeur désigné: designated hitter
    Gant: glove
    Gėrant: manager
    Manche: inning
    Marbre: mound
    Mauvais lancer: wild pitch
    Piste d’avertissement: warning track
    Premier but: first base
    Prise: strike
    Releveur: reliever
    Receveur: catcher
    Retrait: out
    Retrait sur trois prises: strikeout
    Sauf: safe
    Sauvetage: save
    Série mondiale: World Series
    Simple: single
    Stade: stadium
    Triple: triple
    Troisième but: third base
    Victoire: win
    Vol au sol: shoestring catch
    Voltigeur: outfielder
    For newly minted Expos fans, watching Staub and friends play every night was a drug. Jarry Park was the delivery system.
    La piscine de Willie
was just a small part of the ballpark’s charm. With old-fashioned wooden ballparks phased out of the game, Jarry was smaller than every other big-league stadium. It wasn’t just that it seated fewer than 30,000 fans. Its footprint was tiny. There was no upper deck. There was nothing but a low-slung fence circling the exterior of the park from the right-field foul pole all the way to dead centre. On a summer weekend you could watch Rusty Staub and Bob Bailey, then look across the way and see families everywhere, picnics, kids playing soccer—everything you’d expect from a July Sunday afternoon in Montreal.
    The park’s cozy confines made for fine acoustics, which came in handy with Claude Mouton on the mic. The team’s first public-address announcer, Mouton showed uncommon flair, delighting fans by introducing players with wildly unorthodox pronunciations. In French, a word starting in
H
usually leaves the
H
silent; so when some native French speakers pronounce names in English, they might occasionally compensate by adding an
H
sound to the beginning of words with no
H
in them. As Ted Blackman explained in a column for the
Montreal Gazette
, Mouton would introduce Pirates outfielder/first baseman Al Oliver as “Hal Holiver.” In another
H
-related hiccup, the man occupying the left-most infield spot would be recognized as the “tird baseman.”
    But Mouton saved his very best intro for one of the original Expos, John Boccabella. Marshalling a level of enthusiasm youmight use on a future Hall of Famer, Mouton’s greeting for the light-hitting, part-time catcher remains one of the most indelible memories for any old-time Expos fan.