RIP Rodger Brulotte was the Face of the Expos in Quebec and did it his way
Re-posting a joyous Griff's conversation with Rodger from November of 2024
On Friday afternoon, the sad news arrived on text and email that Expos’ iconic personality and the face of the franchise for many Quebeckers, Rodger Brulotte, had passed away in Montreal at the age of 79. Rodger in 2025, stepped away from his role as analyst on TVA for French language Blue Jays games, in order to focus on his battle with cancer. I spoke to Rodger and his wife Pascale on Feb. 23, not knowing it would be for one last time and am grateful I had a chance to tell him I loved him.
I first met Rodger as an 18-year-old paid intern with the Expos in March of 1973. He was the second person I encountered when I walked nervously into the tiny working offices at Jarry Park, jammed under some cold concrete beams. I had been hired by PR Director, Larry Chiasson, to be in charge of Expos stats for the summer. Rodger, a former all-star in the Quebec Junior League, had already served a stint in amateur scouting for the young franchise, but was now part of the five-person PR team with Monique Giroux, Francois Ferland, Chiasson and Paul Shubin.
How did Rodger reach this iconic status we describe? After all, he did not type, he did not drive, he did not drink, he did not do heavy lifting, but despite all that he was the one fellow employee that I simply couldn’t take my eyes off of for our 22 years together. And he always had my back.
There was no imitating the way he floated effortlessly through all levels of the Expos organization, aware of the special needs one had to deal with regarding the City, the province and the country. Combining perfect French and English with no identifiable accent, his outgoing personality and refusal to admit defeat, gained him the trust and immediate friendship of American players and coaches whose fans spoke a different language, a suspicious American front office group that was tentative about working MLB in a foreign country, in a second language, and most importantly, he knew how to deal with the French-language media that began in the early years by looking down at baseball as a second sport in a city province captivated by hockey, the Canadiens and the Nordiques.
Rodger had his faults, as do we all, but his undefined role was always clear. He was in charge of levelling the Expos speed bumps. Rodger proceeded on from PR a few years after we met, into promotions, then marketing, traveling secretary and then threw himself into broadcasting. Rodger is part of Youppi’s bloodline ancestry in ‘79, and was the first to invite a young Celine Dion to sing the anthem at Olympic Stadium.
But it is for his unique, over-the-top style of broadcasting that most baseball fans in Quebec know Rodger. His signature “Bonsoir, elle est partie!” he would spit out in dramatic fashion after an Expos or Blue Jays home run. He was in a long, accomplished line of broadcast icons in the French-language booth, led by Jacques Doucet, Claude Raymond, Jean-Pierre Roy, Guy Ferron, Denis Casavant, Marc Griffin and others.
After the Expos departed for Washington following the ‘04 season, Rodger continued on as a broadcaster, adding a city column on Page 2 of Le Journal de Montreal for years that kept him and his readers in the know. He never left the spotlight … but it was always clear he never wanted to leave the spotlight.
At every Expos office Christmas party, or in fact any time anywhere, Rodger would grab a microphone and croon his way through Sinatra’s signature ballad, “My Way.” And he never failed to disappoint.
I always smile at the memories. Rodger when he was travelling secretary, played a lot of golf with us before night games on the road. It was intense. At Pebble Beach on the first Par 3 of the front nine, I could swear I saw his majestic soft hook five-iron head out into the Pacific Ocean where I witnessed a whale leap gracefully out of the water and swallow his Titleist. But, up at the green, Rodger kicked around in the deep grass next to the sea wall and miraculously found his ball, chipped it up and sank the putt for a par. He took my money. Here included, in the following Griff’s Conversation from Nov. 2024, he finally admitted it. I enjoyed getting together again with Rodger in this 16-month old conversation but am saddened that we will never do it again.
RIP Roddy.
Very well done. I know little of Rodger, but now look forward to listening to this.
What a beautiful tribute. I was a passionate expos fan from day one. I still have the program that my father brought back from that opening series against the Cardinals at Jarry Park. I didn’t know Rodger, but felt like I did. I couldn’t conjugate Avoir or Etre when I arrived in Ottawa as a journalist in 1988–French was my bete noire in school—but it was in the midst of the Meech Lake crisis and I was horrifically embarrassed about that. I started French lessons with a tutor Ottawa around 1990, and the next year spent most of the summer in Jonquiere doing French immersion. I learned to express myself OK, but comprehension was a real problem. Then I decided to listen to expos games in French on the radio. And that was the breakthrough. I finally met Roger at one of those expos caravans when it stopped in Ottawa the winter, that horrible winter, of 94-95 when they sold off all their star players for pennies on the dollar. It was a depressing night, listening to management try to justify their actions. But I got to talk to Felipe and had him sign my expos cap. And we talked a bit about their prospects. And then I approached Rodger, shook his hand and told him how much he helped me. That was it. He just smiled.