Jacques Doucet

Jacques Doucet was born in Montreal on 8 March 1940 and grew up in Granby, Quebec, after his father, Jean-Marcel Doucet, took a secondary-school teaching post there in 1944. American television reached Granby, and baseball filled the Doucet living room. Jean-Marcel rooted for the New York Yankees (a "principal fault," the son later joked). Jacques preferred the Brooklyn/Los Angeles Dodgers. That early bilingual immersion in the game would shape a career spent translating baseball for francophone Canada.

He entered journalism in 1959 as a translator for the Canadian Press (La Presse Canadienne), then spent 1960-1961 at the short-lived Nouveau Journal before joining La Presse as a sports writer in 1962. During a 1964 La Presse strike he briefly called Montreal Alouettes football. When Montreal was awarded a National League franchise in 1968, Doucet became La Presse's Expos beat writer and an official scorer at Jarry Park. Midway through the Expos' inaugural 1969 season he began occasional colour work on CKLM, filling in when Jean-Pierre Roy moved to weekly television.

In 1972 CKAC became the French radio flagship and Telemedia hired Doucet for full-time play-by-play of Expos games, All-Star Games, League Championship Series, World Series selections, and some spring training. He later told The Canadian Press he had not been sure broadcasting would suit him: he was used to writing, not talking, and worried listeners might not "take" to him. They did. For 33 seasons his voice was the summer soundtrack for Quebec households. From 1986 he often worked with Rodger Brulotte. After the 1994 Telemedia-Radiomutuel merger he became an Expos employee and continued calling the club through its last Montreal season on CHMP-FM 98.5 in 2004. Career tallies commonly cite more than 5,000-5,500 major-league games, including Dennis Martinez's perfect game against the Dodgers on 28 July 1991 and David Cone's perfect game for the Yankees against the Expos on 18 July 1999.

Doucet's lasting craft achievement was linguistic. With other Quebec sportswriters he helped build and refine a French baseball lexicon (an O'Keefe Brewery symposium in 1969 was an early stepping stone, he told SABR). Listeners learned terms such as balle papillon (knuckleball), chandelle, fleche, and frappe en lieu sur. The Wall Street Journal devoted front-page space in June 2005 to that French baseball vocabulary as the Expos era closed. Colleagues later said every francophone baseball broadcaster in Quebec was, in some sense, his student. He also taught conversational French to Expos players and coaches on the road.

When the franchise left for Washington after 2004, Doucet became spokesperson for Encore Baseball Montreal (2005) and, from 2006 to 2011, the home-game voice of the independent Quebec Capitales on CHRC. With Marc Robitaille he co-wrote the two-volume history Il etait une fois les Expos (2009, 2011). Earlier he had co-authored Les secrets du baseball with Claude Raymond (1980); later came the autobiographical Memoires d'un micro (2014). In August 2011 TVA Sports hired him as French play-by-play voice of the Toronto Blue Jays. He retired after the 2022 season, closing with familiar partners Brulotte and Denis Casavant. Health issues forced the final exit; in 2024 he publicly revealed an Alzheimer's diagnosis.

Honours accumulated: Quebec Baseball Hall of Fame (2002), Montreal Expos Hall of Fame (2003), Jack Graney Award from the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame (2004), Medal of Honour of the National Assembly of Quebec (2011), election to the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame (2020; formal induction ceremony in St. Marys, Ontario, 17 June 2023 after pandemic and health delays). He was a repeated Ford C. Frick Award finalist for Cooperstown broadcasting recognition but never won, a gap fans and family still discuss in terms of language and market. Media nicknames included "Canada's Vin Scully" and comparisons to Jaime Jarrin. His voice even entered Quebec pop culture via Pierre Falardeau's Elvis Gratton.

Doucet died on the evening of 27 August 2026 at age 86, at home in Longueuil, surrounded by loved ones. Daughter Martine announced the death on social media the next morning. She told Radio-Canada that cognitive problems had been present for some time, that his health had declined sharply over about two months, and that a very severe cancer had been diagnosed about a month earlier. Partner of 43 years Corrie Heeremans asked the public to remember his voice and smile. Tributes came from the Blue Jays (moment of silence and statement), Baseball Quebec, Baseball Canada, Quebec political leaders, and generations of fans who had fallen asleep to CKAC's night games. His longtime booth partner Rodger Brulotte had died only months earlier, on 20 March 2026.