Great work, Griff. BTW we had an exchange last column about Rodger passing, and only after reading it did I remember that we met once.
It was the summer of '89 or 1990, when the Meech Lake Accord was tearing the country apart. I was a politics writer on Parliament Hill and somehow convinced my editor that I could do a national unity story related to the Expos. The linchpin to convince parochial editors at the Vancouver Sun was that the Expos had BC's own Larry Walker.
You were very helpful in arranging a one-on-one the afternoon before that evening's game, after BP, but warned me that Walker was really, really bad at offering quotes.
Sure enough, I'm there with my little recorder trying to get an athlete to engage in a politics debate and was getting one-word answers. He never looked at me once. Kept spitting out sunflower seed shells. Sending a message of utter contempt. Awkward!!!
But I had a card up my sleeve. For the first half of the 80s I was a catcher on a fairly competitive team in Richmond, BC., and one of our stars was Greg Franklin. He came from a big family of jocks in Maple Ridge, and one of his brothers played on Walker's hockey team.
I mentioned that, and he peered over: "You know the Franklins?"
I'm not saying I got anything great out of that, but I got enough to build a story around it and not end up with egg on my face.
As an added bonus, the press pass allowed me to get multiple autographs from the Expos (laughable security back then, I was in the stands with my "little brother" Alfonso -- a refugee from El Salvador -- and jumped a fence to go down the hallway just before the game to get some signatures on a ball Alfonso retrieved during BP from a Walker bomb. Dennis Martinez wrote: "Para Alfonso, con carino, DM" -- he was moved when I told him about Alfonso's mother being a political prisoner. Alfonso still has the ball.
Damn, I just read your bio and it doesn't say you were PR then. Was it you? Oh well, it's still a great story.
Brilliant as always
Great work, Griff. BTW we had an exchange last column about Rodger passing, and only after reading it did I remember that we met once.
It was the summer of '89 or 1990, when the Meech Lake Accord was tearing the country apart. I was a politics writer on Parliament Hill and somehow convinced my editor that I could do a national unity story related to the Expos. The linchpin to convince parochial editors at the Vancouver Sun was that the Expos had BC's own Larry Walker.
You were very helpful in arranging a one-on-one the afternoon before that evening's game, after BP, but warned me that Walker was really, really bad at offering quotes.
Sure enough, I'm there with my little recorder trying to get an athlete to engage in a politics debate and was getting one-word answers. He never looked at me once. Kept spitting out sunflower seed shells. Sending a message of utter contempt. Awkward!!!
But I had a card up my sleeve. For the first half of the 80s I was a catcher on a fairly competitive team in Richmond, BC., and one of our stars was Greg Franklin. He came from a big family of jocks in Maple Ridge, and one of his brothers played on Walker's hockey team.
I mentioned that, and he peered over: "You know the Franklins?"
I'm not saying I got anything great out of that, but I got enough to build a story around it and not end up with egg on my face.
As an added bonus, the press pass allowed me to get multiple autographs from the Expos (laughable security back then, I was in the stands with my "little brother" Alfonso -- a refugee from El Salvador -- and jumped a fence to go down the hallway just before the game to get some signatures on a ball Alfonso retrieved during BP from a Walker bomb. Dennis Martinez wrote: "Para Alfonso, con carino, DM" -- he was moved when I told him about Alfonso's mother being a political prisoner. Alfonso still has the ball.
Damn, I just read your bio and it doesn't say you were PR then. Was it you? Oh well, it's still a great story.