Don Chevrier

Don Chevrier was there from the beginning, a 9-5 win against the Chicago White Sox that began as a snowy Thursday on April 7, 1977, at Exhibition Stadium.

And he was there for the next 20 years, too. He would have stayed even longer but the broadcasting contracts were moved as deftly as Roberto Alomar could turn a double play and, voila, “Chevy” was gone.

“I have some other opportunities in baseball and I guess I’d better pursue them,” he told a reporter from the Globe and Mail in 1992. “I would have loved to stay with the Blue Jays, but it’s not possible. The package has been diluted and I can’t build around 30 games as my main base of income.”1

What happened is that Chevrier did continue broadcasting some Jays games on CTV each season until 1997. Here’s how that happened: Baton Broadcasting Inc. held the telecast rights for Jays games and worked primarily with CTV. In 1992, Baton negotiated a new contract to broadcast at least 60 games per year for five years for $60 million.2 At the time it cost about $48,000 per game to produce a Jays telecast and speculation was that Baton wanted to cut about $3,000 per game from that figure. One of the ways it did that was by letting producer Tom McKee go as others took pay cuts. In another belt-tightening move, Baton then resold the rights for some games in that five-year period to CTV and CBC.3 Then, in 1997, Baton, the Jays and CTV failed to reach an agreement.4

“I never imagined 25 or 30 games not being done,” Chevrier said at the time. “I’m out a lot of money and have no means of recovering it. Calling Jays games was the centerpiece of my work. If I’d seen it coming, I would have diligently pursued other avenues in the offseason. I’m very disappointed.”5

It was late March 1997 when Chevrier lamented his financial plight, a time when other baseball broadcasting jobs were filled.

“I’m sorry Don feels that way, but you can’t make those arrangements unless they’re predicated on a justifiable business case,” said Tom Curzon, Baton’s director of communications at the time.6 

But here’s how the Chevrier story begins: Donald Barry (sometimes spelled Barrie on some government forms) Chevrier was born in Toronto on December 29, 1937, but the family moved to Edmonton when he was 6. His father, Romain, was born in Winnipeg and is listed as an insurance salesman when he moved to the United States in 1928. His mother, Orva Heal, was born in Saskatchewan and listed her occupation as stenographer on a government form when she briefly moved to the United States in 1928. That seems to have set a pattern for the pair as they moved between the two countries. Both listed their residence as Detroit when they married in that city on May 16, 1929. Romain was 23 and Orva 24.

In 1953, when he was 16, he began a career in sports reporting/broadcasting that lasted in one form or another right up until his death in Palm Harbor, Florida, near Tampa, on December 17, 2007.

The late singer Robert Goulet, who worked in radio in Edmonton as a teenager at the time, gave Chevrier his first broadcasting job at radio station CKUA (Edmonton), where Chevrier covered high-school sports.7 Chevrier also worked with Goulet on a on a children’s drama program that year.8

From there it was on to CJCA to do daily sports reports. An ad in the Edmonton Journal on November 25, 1955, asked listeners to tune in to Teen Sport Review at 5:05 P.M. on CJCA. By age 20 Chevrier was announcing Edmonton Eskimos home games. Sticking with football, he did play-by-play for CFL teams when he moved to CFRA in Ottawa and then CJAD in Montreal. He called his first Grey Cup game for CBC/CTV in 1969 and then again from 1971 to 1980. In recognition of all that, he was posthumously inducted into the Canadian Football Hall of Fame in November 2016.9    

In 1966 Chevrier joined CBC in Toronto, working first in radio and then television. Then, in the 1980s and ’90s, he was working at CTV. He also covered the Olympics for the CBC, ABC, and NBC television and radio networks handling everything from curling to synchronized swimming. The Olympics portion of his résumé began with him covering team handball and boxing at the Summer Games in 1976; hockey during the Winter Games in 1980 (including the US-Soviet game for ABC Radio); badminton, table tennis, and synchronized swimming in the 2004 Summer Games; and curling at the Winter Games in 2002 and 2006

“Synchronized swimming – he’d never done that in his life,” said Don Duguid, who worked alongside Chevrier on Olympic curling broadcasts for NBC. “We had a lot of fun with that. … I said, ‘What do you know about swimming?’ he said, ‘It’s just one hand in front of the other.’”10 

He called the 1980 Winter Olympics hockey game between the Soviets and the US men’s teams for ABC radio. Even after he was supposedly retired in Florida, he still wanted to keep announcing by trying to land a job with the expansion Tampa Bay Lightning of the NHL. That didn’t pan out but he did hook up with the Ottawa Senators and broadcast games from the 1992-93 through 1997-98 seasons for CHRO-TV.11 If there was a regret, Chevrier said, it was that he never got to broadcast a “Hockey Night in Canada” game.12

Given all that – his résumé included broadcasting 21 different sports13 – his career basically could be centered on three main themes: Blue Jays, curling, and the Olympics. His obituary in the Toronto Star noted, “If there was a sport Don Chevrier couldn’t call, it was probably only because he hadn’t been asked.”14 His success derived from thinking of what the viewer needed to know. Rick Brace, who was president of CBC when Chevrier died in 2007, said about his colleague: “He kind of brought us into the age of the viewer demanding more information and more insight, and not just straight commentary. Don pioneered that.”15

Let us look at some of the accomplishments on Chevrier’s résumé:

• He won an Association of Canadian Television and Radio Artists (“Nellie”) award in 1975 as Canada’s best sportscaster.
• He won the Canadian Sports Media Achievement Award and was inducted into the Canadian Media Hall of Fame in October 2004.
• And, as mentioned earlier, he was inducted into the Canadian Football Hall of Fame in November 2016.
• Away from the world of sports, his voice was also used in a 1988 episode of the TV show The Twilight Zone and in the 2005 movie Brokeback Mountain.

Hockey broadcaster and former NHL goalie Greg Millen summed up Chevrier’s impact: “He will go down as one of those Canadian icons in broadcasting.”16

Clearly, Chevrier had a long and varied résumé, but he is clearly best remembered as being the voice of the Jays (And in the World Series of 1992 he worked alongside color commentator Tommy Hutton and field reporter Ken Daniels.) The fictional Terence Mann tells Ray Kinsella in the 1989 movie Field of Dreams that “People will come, Ray. … The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball.” And so it was with Chevrier, the one constant through all the boxing, curling, Olympic, and all the other broadcasts was baseball, and it was largely defined by the Blue Jays.

Just before that snowy first game in Exhibition Stadium in 1977, Chevrier had already been on the air for an hour doing the pregame show. Then the snow cleared and the game was on. For three hours he called the balls and strikes, the innings and outs, and the sturm und drang of a typical early-season game. It’s 5:18 in the afternoon and the game is already an official W for the hometown good guys, the postgame show is wrapped up … and then they realize they have to fill the time for the next 12 minutes until 5:30. Chevrier handled it with seeming ease because he was ready for emergencies.

“In broadcasting, preparation is everything,” he told a reporter a few days after the game.17

“You just can’t go in and fake it,” he told another reporter. “Baseball, for example, is a game where you can get caught very easily if you don’t prepare lots of material in advance.”18

What also helps is a deep knowledge of the game and its personalities. When told Chicago White Sox owner Bill Veeck would be a guest during part of a game, Chevrier had precious little time to prepare. But he hit a metaphorical home run with the interview.

“Afterward, Veeck told me how impressed he was with how much Don knew about baseball,” said producer Ralph Mellanby.19  

Preparation is important, but a sense of self-effacing humor and comedic timing also helps from time to time when needed. Chevrier wouldn’t hesitate to tell stories about those “oops!” moments that are inevitable in any live production. Like this one: Once, during a game against the Boston Red Sox, his color commentator, Tony Kubek, said that relief pitcher Greg Harris was ambidextrous. Chevrier replied that that “would be a manager’s dream come true because it would save him having to go to the bullpen again because Greg Harris, being ambidextrous, could relieve himself on the mound.” As Chevrier told it, there was 15 seconds of silence before he spoke again. Whether the quip was a mistake or intentional isn’t the point, but know this: Chevrier was a storyteller nonpareil.20

When the Jays won the World Series in 1992 the humor was more confident and intentional, but in those early years it had to be more pronounced to keep the customers satisfied.

Paul Godfrey, who was Jays president from September 2000 to September 2008, said Chevrier was essential during the team’s early, struggling years because his broadcasts at least made the games sound interesting.  

“When the team loses 100 games in its first year, the TV broadcast has to make sure the fans keep coming back, even though they were outclassed by most of the opposition,” Godfrey told a reporter.21 

Chevrier endured, along with the fans, and saw the team’s glory years when the Jays won back-to-back World Series titles in 1992 and 1993. Chevrier was living in Florida when he died at age 69.

“I knew the voice before I knew the person,” Gord Ash, former Jays general manager, told a reporter. “The voice was so dramatic and authoritative and you just felt whatever he was trying to convey, no matter what sport he was doing at the time. It sent a powerful message.

“You don’t see that much anymore, there’s such specialty now. You don’t see a guy cross over as much as he did.”22   

Notes

1 Neil Campbell, “Chevrier Quitting as Jay Announcer,” Globe and Mail (Toronto), October 14, 1992:  C7.

2 Unless noted otherwise, all financial transactions are in Canadian dollars.

3 James Christie and John Partridge, “Jays’ Broadcaster from Early Days Out in Squeeze Play,” Globe and Mail, March 17, 1992: D18.

4 However, CBC picked up 35 games on weekends and TSN had 80 games on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays. “MAKING THE PITCH: CTV Ends 15 Years of Covering the Blue Jays, but CBC and TSN Have Picked Up the Ball,” Globe and Mail, April 5, 1997: F19.

5  William Houston, “Truth & Rumours: William Houston’s World of Sport – Chevrier Slams Baton,” Globe and Mail, March 18, 1997: D13.

6 Houston.

7 Goulet was born in Lawrence, Massachusetts, in 1933. His mother, Jeannette, moved the family to Edmonton after the death of her husband in 1949.

8 John Krobank, “’Voice of God’ Broadcaster Returns to His Maker,” Edmonton Journal, December 24, 2007: B-7.

9 “Don Chevrier, Class of 2016,” at https://cfhof.ca/members/don-chevrier/.

10 Peter James, CanWest News Service at https://www.cfl.ca/2007/12/19/don_chevrier_remembered/.

11 F.F. Langan, “He Was the Voice of the Blue Jays and ‘a Producer’s Dream’,” Globe and Mail, December 20, 2007: S-8.

12 Langan.

13 “First Blue Jays broadcaster Chevrier found dead at 69,” ESPN.com, December 18, 2007, at https://www.espn.com/espn/print?id=3160666

14  Chris Zelkovich, “Mellow tones silenced,” Toronto Star, December 19, 2007: S4.

15 William Houston, “‘Voice of God’ silenced,” Globe and Mail, December 19, 2007: S1.  

16 “Legendary sports broadcaster Don Chevrier passes away,” CBC Sports at https://www.cbc.ca/sports/legendary-sports-broadcaster-don-chevrier-passes-away-1.664796

17 Bryan Johnson, “The golden throat of the Blue Jays,” Globe and Mail, April 9, 1977: 28.

18 “Chevrier career spans 22 years,” Winnipeg Free Press, October 15, 1977.

19 Zelkovich. Also in that same article American sportscaster Howard Cosell, who broadcast boxing with Chevrier, rhetorically asked, “Are all Canadian sportscasters as good as Don Chevrier?”

20 Zelkovich. Also, “Call him Hopeful Harry,” Toronto Star, October 15, 2004: C9. There is a discrepancy in the anecdote. The Zelkovich story has Harris playing for the Red Sox, the earlier anonymous story says Harris was playing for the Texas Rangers. What is known is that Harris pitched for the Rangers from 1985-87, and for the Red Sox from 1989-93 and for part of 1994. 

21 Langan.

22 ESPN.com.