Over Easy:”It’s Joe DiMaggio”
It’s the dog days of summer and a good time to be a hard-core Jays fan.
I remember the snowy opener in 1977 featuring Anne Murray in a parka with a pair of giant headphones singing the national anthem. We cheered wildly to keep warm. We won the game and I remember as we all exited that concrete monstrosity known as Exhibition Stadium chanting “we’re number one!”. And for that day we were.
I listened to a lot of Tom (Cheek) and Jerry (Howarth) on the radio, and before that Tom and his first broadcast partner, Early Wynn, for whom a detailed commentary might consist of “I tell you Tom, he’s a big fella”. Or if Early was feeling verbose, “I tell you Tom, he’s a tall drink of water.”
I think I’ve been to most of the landmark Jays games. The opener, the day we clinched our first playoff position, the first World Series game on Canadian soil, Joe Carter‘s “Touch ‘em all“ home run and of course the Bautista bat flip game! I was there for the 62nd All-Star game in July 1991, the first in Toronto, when Alannah Myles sang “O Canada”. It was a beautiful version free of melisma (hold the Mariah Careyisms) that was referred to in the paper the next day as her “choirgirl” version of the anthem. I remember standing on the field right in front of the American league All-Star dugout and scanning the faces, and wishing them good luck. Yes, I’m a geek.
In recognition of two of the greatest records in baseball history, the last player to hit 400 and the owner of the 56 game hitting streak, Ted Williams and Joe DiMaggio together threw out the first pitch. I was absolutely in awe and when we gathered off the field, standing a few feet from two of the greatest to ever put on the uniform, I whispered to Alannah, “Do you know who that is?“, gesturing to the silver-hair man a few feet away. She didn’t and I said quietly, “That’s Joe DiMaggio!”
Her eyes widened, and she whispered to me, “Marilyn Monroe!”.
I said, “Joltin’ Joe!”.
She replied, “Marilyn Monroe!”.
“The Yankee Clipper!!”
And so on.
I think there’s quite a bit of overlap between the lives of entertainers and athletes. The performance aspect, the fan relationship, and the rigours of travel. Geddy Lee is a serious baseball fan, and every time I run into him, all we talk about is baseball. He’s well known for his dedication to the Jays. When I was producing a special on Rush for MuchMusic, we sat down for an extensive interview. We rambled through many topics, including athletes and musicians, about which Geddy had this to say,
“I’ve met a lot of athletes in the last few years, because of my attraction to baseball and their attraction to music. Very similar lives we lead, the kind of concentration, the kind of “live and die” in front of the public, the kind of itinerant lifestyle… the being yanked out of your home life and thrown into a professional life that’s separate but not separate. An athlete can’t hide his mistakes as well as a musician can-I think it’s a more humbling profession.”
I remember when people asked me what it was like doing 4 hours of live television, with no net, no delay, every day. I drew a couple of comparisons. I said it was like improv comedy in that you were expected to mess up and the audience loved watching you figure out how to clean up the mess, live in front of the nation. It also seemed like being a closer in baseball, who has to enter the game in the late innings and try to finish it off. If you got your ass handed to you, as will happen, you had to go home, forget about it and come back for more the next day.
“A humbling profession.”
