Claude Raymond | Finally a biography worthy of his great career

Claude Raymond is the first professional athlete I met. It was during a baseball camp in the late 1980s. He showed me how to place my fingers on the seams to land a spin ball. I was so impressed, I didn’t dare tell him that I was more of a first baseman.

Ten years later, I ran into him again while I was covering the Expos. I even wrote a chapter about him in a book about the 1959 Chicago White Sox. It was also at this moment that I realized that even after having rubbed shoulders with him at the Olympic Stadium and on the road, I did not really know his career. Yeah, like everyone else, I knew he pitched for the Expos. But in previous years?

All I had found was a short autobiography, The third withdrawal, published in 1973. A curious object. This 139-page pamphlet, written in nearsighted type, included a summary of his life, technical advice, a glossary of baseball terms and dozens of pages of photos. Since ? Nothing.

“Several people approached me to write a real biography, he told me. I always said no. I knew the implication that it was going to require of me. » Until the day when the author Marc Robitaille (A summer without points or hits) met him, in Cooperstown, and then convinced him to tell his story. All of its history. “He said to me, ‘You should leave this as a legacy to your children and your grandchildren.’ He scored points [rires]. »

Thus was born Frenchiethe biography that Claude Raymond deserved.

The story is rich, detailed and, above all, full of anecdotes. Claude Raymond’s generosity contrasts with that of other former athletes, whose biographies are only an enhanced version of their Wikipedia page. With Frenchie (his nickname), what happened in the locker room finally comes out of the locker room.

He speaks fondly of his childhood idol, Robin Roberts of the Philadelphia Phillies. “When I was a child, he explains to me, the Montreal-Morning had posted four photos showing how he placed his fingers on the seams. I was trying to replicate his stuff. Fifteen years later, we were roommates. »

He admires his former teammates Warren Spahn, Eddie Mathews, Nellie Fox or Hank Aaron, all admitted to the Hall of Fame. He also has good words for former Expos manager Frank Robinson, whose assistant he was during the club’s last seasons in Montreal. It surprised me, because Robinson really didn’t make a good impression here.

“We started from afar, he and I,” he wrote in his biography, told in the first person.

“Since I had shot him in 1961, he had always looked at me with a wary, almost hostile air. But in Montreal, we got to know each other. To Frank, his players were like his children. His instructors, like brothers. In our meetings, he really wanted to hear our opinion, it was important to him. He did everything in his power to support us, to protect us, sometimes even against the advice of his bosses. »

* * *

Frenchie, warns Marc Robitaille in his introduction, “speaks very frankly. He says things exactly as he has seen or understood them”. Thus, Claude Raymond does not hesitate to send a few rapids inside to those he has less appreciated.

Former Expos manager Gene Mauch falls from his pedestal. He is presented as a vile, mean and toxic man. “I could have told even more about him,” Claude Raymond told me. My career ended because of him. »

A former teammate with the Braves, Rico Carty, is also flayed. Raymond says he saw him fight with Hank Aaron on a plane. Felipe Alou then challenged Carty – a champion boxer – to a fight. ” When [Felipe] stared at you with his piercing gaze, we thought twice before replying. Carty had slipped away.

But it was for former Expos owner Jeffrey Loria and his son-in-law and club vice-president David Samson that Claude Raymond saved his harshest words. He returns to an incident that occurred during a friendly game between journalists and Expos employees, in which Samson had taken part. Raymond had hit him with a shot, then forced him to hit a small fly ball in the infield. Samson never spoke to him again until he fired him over the holidays.

The big class.

Other anecdotes reveal the social tensions of which he was a privileged witness in the 1950s and 1960s.

In several cities across the United States, he writes, racial segregation was “pervasive.” “When we were playing in Houston, it was terrible to see our team bus stop in a city ghetto to drop Hank off. [Aaron], as we continued on our way to our luxury hotel. It revolted our Spahn veterans, Lew Burdette and Mathews, who did not hesitate to get up on the bus and denounce the situation. »

At another time, Claude Raymond found himself in a winter league, in the Dominican Republic. A remarkable adventure. His team owner pulled out a gun to settle a referee’s case. “The climate around the club was not the healthiest: in the evening, we had to barricade ourselves in our rooms and if there was a knock, we wouldn’t open without a baseball bat in our hands. He left the country in a hurry, in the middle of the night, with a teammate.

His career, you will understand, was not linear. There have been ups and downs, in which all readers will recognize themselves. But what I remember most from the story is Claude Raymond’s deep love and gratitude for his sport.

Baseball allowed him to travel all over North America. To meet astronauts. To visit the NASA installations in Houston, during the conquest of space. To meet Maurice Richard, Jean Béliveau, Roberto Clemente, Willie Mays and Robin Roberts. To befriend her hippie apartment neighbor, singer Kenny Rogers. He would also have liked to meet Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau during a visit to Jarry Park in the early 1970s. But Gene Mauch intervened and preferred to delegate his three favorites…

With Frenchie, Claude Raymond leaves a very beautiful legacy. Not fair to his children and grandchildren. For all Quebec sports fans.

Frenchie – The story of Claude Raymond

Claude Raymond and Marc Robitaille

Editions Hurtubise

320 pages