For more than three decades, Jacques Doucet was the sound of summer nights across francophone Quebec. The play-by-play broadcaster, whose rich baritone carried the Montreal Expos into living rooms from Gatineau to Gaspé, died on Thursday evening at the age of 86. His daughter, Martine, confirmed his passing on social media the following day. The cause has not been disclosed, though Doucet revealed in 2024 that he had been living with Alzheimer’s disease.
The news closes a chapter not just for a man, but for an entire community of baseball devotees who grew up listening to him describe crackling double plays and moon-shot home runs in a language he helped shape for the sport.
“He was certainly a giant, and his loss is immense,” said Marc Griffin, Doucet’s longtime broadcast partner at TVA Sports, in an interview with The Canadian Press. “His voice was part of our lives for generations. He’s the one who made me fall in love with baseball.”
Griffin recalled the unique intimacy Doucet cultivated with his audience. “His honesty, his frankness, the way he described things… He was in everyone’s living room, so when people ran into him on the street, they felt like he was their buddy. He talked to them every night about what was happening with the Expos. There was a unique bond.”
Tributes from Across the Province
Mourning echoed far beyond the broadcasting booth. Denis Casavant, another veteran Quebec play-by-play announcer who worked alongside Doucet at CKAC and TVA Sports, called him “my teacher and mentor” in a post on X. “Thank you, Jacques, for your generosity and kindness, and especially for the influence you had on my career as a play-by-play announcer. My condolences to his partner Corrie and the entire family.”
Alain Usereau, a baseball broadcaster at RDS, noted that the loss was felt across the entire provincial baseball community. “Anyone who has called baseball in Quebec was influenced in one way or another by Jacques,” Usereau wrote on Facebook. “His was the most-listened-to voice of the summer during the Expos years. Thank you for all those wonderful moments he brought us.”
Quebec Premier Christine Fréchette also weighed in, saying the province had lost “a voice that left its mark on generations of baseball fans.” She added: “His legacy will remain very much alive in our memories and in our sporting culture.”
The Toronto Blue Jays were scheduled to honour Doucet before Friday’s game against the Seattle Mariners at Rogers Centre.
A Career Born in Newsprint
Born on 8 March 1940 in Montreal, Doucet began his career as a sports journalist at The Canadian Press in 1959. He later covered the Expos for the Montreal daily La Presse when the expansion franchise took the field for the first time in 1969, the same year Neil Armstrong walked on the Moon and the Expos were born alongside the San Diego Padres and the Kansas City Royals.
He initially called roughly one game per week before taking over as the team’s full-time French-language radio play-by-play announcer in 1972. He held the role for the next 33 years, until the franchise departed Montreal after the 2004 campaign and was reborn as the Washington Nationals.
In a 2020 interview with The Canadian Press, Doucet admitted he was uncertain about his future behind the microphone. “I didn’t know if I was going to like it: I knew nothing about the job,” he said. “I was a reporter at La Presse. I was used to writing, not talking.” He added: “I didn’t know whether people would take to me. You can do the best job in the world as a broadcaster, but if people don’t take to you, you won’t last long.”
The next three decades proved those doubts unfounded. By the time the final out was recorded in October 2004, Doucet had called more than 5,500 Major League Baseball games, including Dennis Martinez’s perfect game for the Expos on 28 July 1991. For years, he also delivered French-language broadcasts of MLB playoff and World Series contests.
The Cruelest Innings
For Griffin, the departure of the Expos was likely the most painful stretch of Doucet’s life. “The Expos leaving was probably what hurt him the most,” Griffin said. “Because that was 36 years of his life, of passion, of trying to sell his sport, the Expos, of getting everyone to love baseball, which he succeeded in doing.”
The frustration was compounded by the fact that Doucet was repeatedly passed over for the Ford C. Frick Award, the broadcasting honour bestowed by the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York.
But the story did not end at Olympic Stadium. Believing his major-league broadcasting career was over, Doucet received an unexpected call from the Quebec Capitales, then an independent professional outfit in the Can-Am League. He called their games from 2006 to 2011. He later returned to the big leagues with TVA Sports, where he handled Toronto Blue Jays games and French-language MLB playoff broadcasts. His final innings behind the microphone came in September 2022, alongside colleagues Rodger Brulotte, who died in March, and Casavant.
Building a French Lexicon for America’s Pastime
Beyond the box scores, Doucet left a linguistic legacy that may outlast his broadcasting tapes. He played a pivotal role in developing and popularising the French vocabulary used to describe baseball, helping generations of francophone fans follow a sport whose terminology was overwhelmingly English.
He was also an author. Doucet wrote “Les Secrets du baseball” with former major-league pitcher Claude Raymond, as well as “Il était une fois les Expos,” a comprehensive history of the franchise co-written with Marc Robitaille. In 2014, he published his autobiography, “Mémoires d’un micro.”
His contributions were formally recognised over the years. He was inducted into the Quebec Baseball Hall of Fame in 2002 and the Expos Hall of Fame the following year. In 2004, he received the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame’s Jack Graney Award. He was presented with the Quebec national assembly’s Medal of Honour in 2011. And in 2020, he was elected to the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame, though the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent health complications delayed his formal induction ceremony in St Marys, Ontario, until 2023.
Why it Matters
Jacques Doucet’s death marks the loss of far more than a beloved sports broadcaster. He was a cultural architect who helped translate America’s pastime into a language and an identity uniquely shared by francophone Quebecers. In an era when many doubted baseball could thrive in a predominantly French-speaking province, Doucet built a bridge between two worlds, one syllable at a time. His voice carried through long summer evenings, franchise collapses, and moments of national sporting pride, anchoring an entire community to a game that might otherwise have passed it by. As Quebecers mourn, they mourn not just the passing of an 86-year-old man, but the fading echo of an era when baseball, broadcast in French, felt like it belonged entirely to them.
