Gallagher: Doucet's invention of baseball phrases helped French listeners

Legendary Montreal Expos broadcaster Jacques Doucet has died at the age of 86.

August 29, 2026

By Danny Gallagher

Canadian Baseball Network

Baseball's vocabulary is decidedly English but Jacques Doucet provided his own inventions for his French audience when he called Expos games on radio.

It was his way of trying to make it easier for listeners to understand the game.

A line drive, for example, was "fleche'' in French, meaning an arrow. A knuckleball was announced as a "balle papillon,'' meaning a butterfly ball.

A grand slam was ''grand chelem.'' A suicide squeeze play was 'amorti suicide.' His signature call for a home run was 'Elle est partie,'' meaning ''she is gone.''

"My fondest memories was how he was a mentor when I started,'' RDS announcer Denis Casavant said in an interview. "I was 21 and he showed me how to be a broadcaster. His preparation, attention to detail and his mastery of the French language were excellent.

"I always said I had a great coach working with him on radio for four years before starting my own play-by-play career.''

For 33 years, Doucet was the main soundtrack in French for the Expos through the end of the 2004 season when the team was moved to Washington. For several years prior to taking on microphone duties, he had covered the Expos as a writer for La Presse in Montreal.

The baseball world is mourning Doucet's passing at the age of 86 Thursday night. He had been battling Alzheimer's disease for a few years. His death came five months after the passing of his long-time partner in the booth, Rodger Brulotte.

"Jacques's voice was a faithful companion to a multitude of baseball fans for over three decades,'' former long-time Expos beat writer Serge Touchette of Le Journal de Montreal wrote on Facebook. "A voice tailor-made for the sport. When I listened to Jacques, I sometimes felt like I was listening to baseball music.

"He played hundreds of games of cards with Dick Williams and participated in a hundred fishing trips with Felipe Alou. We, the journalists, loved teasing him about everything and nothing. Why? Because he was always on the lookout for something. Many laughs!''

Doucet was fishing with Alou on May 22, 1992 when Expos GM Dan Duquette went looking for Alou. Duquette picked Alou to replace Tom Runnells as manager that day.

"Tom Cheek (Jays play-by-play man for many years), Jacques and myself spent many hours broadcasting post-season baseball on the Telemedia network and fishing Pensacola (Florida) waters,'' recalled Bruce Brenner, a broadcast technician.

Doucet was elected into the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame and the Quebec Baseball Hall of Fame and received the Quebec National Assembly's Medal of Honour.

One honour that eluded him was the Ford Frick broadcasting award administered by the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. He was on the ballot off and on over a period of 20 years or so. He was always snubbed in favour of U.S. announcers.

Following the demise of the Expos, Doucet called games for the Quebec Capitales of the Can-Am league and later the Toronto Blue Jays for TVA Sports. He retired after the 2022 season. For more than 20 years, he was a member of SABR's Quebec branch.

“To me, I feel so lucky that at my age that I can go back to Major League Baseball as a broadcaster,” Doucet told me years ago when he began announcing Jays games. “One thing nice about us teaming up again is that Rodger had a lot of experience in TV. I had very little experience. It’s a new medium as far as I’m concerned, but with Rodger’s help, I can get the hang of TV. On TV, you don’t have to describe each play as thorough as you do on radio.

“The good thing about it, too, is that the Blue Jays have really accepted us. If I had not accepted the plan to go to Quebec City and do the Capitales’ games, I probably would not be doing the Blue Jays’ games."

Doucet also taught French to many of the Expos players and coaches over the years. “It was fun,” he told a SABR meeting years ago. “A lot of the Latin boys like Dennis Martínez and others really enjoyed it. They were regulars. We used to have about a one-hour course per city we were visiting. The (team) would lease a suite or a ball room or something like that and supply me with a blackboard. We used to get seven or eight guys who would show up on a fairly regular basis and I would teach them words to get along if they went to a gas station, or a supermarket, or something like that.”

Years ago, Doucet also had a book on his mind to paint the history of the Expos from start to finish in French. So, what did he and co-author Marc Robitaille do? They compiled a two-volume history, the first one 647 pages (released in 2008), the second one a whopping 755 pages.

“Originally, we were talking about one book of 500 pages but I had put down a lot of material for a second book," Doucet told me a few years ago. “Then, we sat down and after many hours of taping my memories, all my stuff, there was no way you can tell a complete story in one book of 500 pages.

“So, we went back to the publisher Hurtubise. In the French market, sports books not based on hockey are very rare. But the publisher was convinced to take on the second volume. We did a very thorough job to mark the Expos evolution over 36 seasons.”