Ron Piché: A lifetime with the pros

BILL YOUNG

As a professional athlete in Quebec, Ron Piché belongs to a select group. He is one of a very few to have enjoyed a career in major league baseball. From 1960-1964 he was a member of the Milwaukee Braves, and before he was done followed up with stints with the California Angels and the St. Louis Cardinals. In all, his entire career in organized baseball covered more than fifteen years.

Steady progress

Mr. Piché was born in Verdun 1935 and today still lives in the Montreal area. A right-handed pitcher, he was something of a baseball prodigy and after several years of junior ball was spotted by Quebec baseball legend and super-scout, Roland Gladu, and signed to a Milwaukee Braves minor league contract. By 1955 Mr. Piché was pitching for Lawton in the Class D Sooner State League (Oklahoma) where he put together a 13-6 record. He was on his way. It is interesting to note that Gladu recruited pitcher Claude Raymond at the same time. A few years earlier, he had signed Georges Maranda from Levis as well. All three made it to the big leagues.

Mr. Piché’s introduction to organized baseball took place in Waycross, Georgia, the spring training home of the Braves at the time. Among the first people to greet him were Roland Hemond, who was just starting out on his own journey through the ranks of baseball’s upper management, and Doc Gautreau, a one-time Brave who had played for the Montreal Royals for much of the 1930s. Both spoke French, enough to make him feel welcome.

Probably that first training camp was the toughest of all his experiences. He was a stranger in a strange land– and nothing was familiar. He was assigned to the Lawton team, and succeeded in making his way in spite of some obvious resentment directed his way because he, a foreigner, was taking the place of an American kid.

His progress through the minor leagues was steady and successful. He had stops with all the traditional Braves farm-teams, Eau Claire, Evansville, Jacksonville and Louisville, and in 1960 made the roster of the Milwaukee Braves.

This is where you belong

At the end of the 1950s the Braves were an almost mythic team. The names Warren Spahn, Lew Burdette, Eddie Mathews, Joe Adcock, Johnny Logan, and of course Henry Aaron still resonate today.

In 1957 they defeated the Yankees in six games to win the World Series, thereby removing that honour from New York City for the first time since 1948. The Braves and Yankees met again the following year, this time losing out in seven games. For the two years following, they took second place in the National League.

When Mr. Piché arrived in 1960 – his salary was $7500 - he was in awe. He recalls repeatedly asking himself, “Where am I?” as he considered the veteran club that surrounded him, “What am I doing here, a Quebecer from Verdun playing beside some of the greatest names in baseball?” Indeed three of his teammates would eventually enter the Hall of Fame – Aaron, Mathews, Spahn.

If there was any comfort zone to be found, it might have been with fellow hurlers, Ken Mackenzie, another Canadian who had been a teammate in Louisville and Carlton Willey who had broken into baseball with the Quebec Braves in 1951.

But in fact his entry to the Bigs was a rude awakening. Eddie Mathews was the first to greet him.” Here’s your locker,” he said. “Talk to us only when we talk you.”

Warren Spahn did offer some measured words of comfort at a time when Mr. Piché showed some hesitancy. “What’s that written on your shirt?” Spahn asked. “Braves. Look at it and remember, this is where you belong!” Indeed, Mr. Piché was surprised at how helpful Spahn was to him.

His best friend on the team was pitcher Don McMahon, and in fact they remained friends long after baseball was behind them. McMahon passed away in 1987.

Mr. Piché is grateful to these veterans on the Braves. He says they taught he how to be a major-leaguer, how to dress, how to act. “Remember,” they told him, “you represent baseball, you represent your city.”

In 1961, almost one year to the day since he joined the team, Spahn, Mathews and others ushered Mr. Piché into a limousine and set out for a party. He returned home at 5 am. “You have been on the team for a year,” they told him. “You are now one of us.”

Playing with the Braves was a remarkable learning experience. Mr. Piché speaks of watching Spahn pitch against Stan Musial – “it was a joy to see” – and of Spahn’s approach to Ernie Banks – “If I could get two balls on him I knew I had him where I wanted!”

 “Study the other pitchers,” advised McMahon, “that’s where you learn.” Mr. Piché was impressed with how seriously his teammates approached the game. It would start as soon as they arrived at the ball park, checking the flags for wind speed and direction.

They had a book on every player and would sit around the clubhouse discussing each one. Catcher Del Crandall was a great leader in this regard, a wonder at handling pitchers. It is very different today, Mr. Piché says. “The players still sit around, but now they all have earphones on.”

        Players spent much more time together than they do today, in the clubhouse, on the trains and with their roommates on the road, talking baseball and going over hitters. By the same token, there was much less fraternization with the opposition than today.

        On the bench they were always trying to steal signs or looking for those unconscious tip-offs that can signal the next pitch. For example, catcher Joe Torre was easy to read – heat or breaking ball - by the way he held his mitt.        

        Baseball is a game that lends itself to tall tales and Mr. Piché had a few. There was the day Junior Gilliam came to bat for the fourth time, have hit safely all afternoon and catcher Ed Bailey said, “What would you like this time?”

Or the afternoon that Leo Durocher showed up to the game with a vicious hangover, and did everything he could to get thrown out so he could go home and sleep.  Unfortunately for him the umpire, Augie Donatelli, was also hung over. “I don’t care what you do Durocher, I ain’t tossin’ you,” he said. “If I have to stay here until the end so do you!”

        Or when Casey Stengel, then with the Mets, wanted to bring Choo-Choo Colman into a game, only to be told he was not available. “You sent him down two weeks ago.”

L’affaire francophone

Mr. Piché spoke about baseball in Quebec during the 1950s and the remarkable fact that a proportionately large number of Quebecers made it to the big leagues. In addition to himself one could name Georges Maranda, Claude Raymond, Ray Daviault and Tim Harkness.

        He stated unequivocally that the person most responsible for this surge was Roland Gladu, a legend in Quebec. Gladu’s own story reads like a work of fiction – he was a power hitter who left his mark everywhere he went - in Montreal with the Royals and all across Quebec, in England, Latin America and even in Boston with the Braves.

Following his playing career which stretched from the 1930s to the 1950s Gladu took to scouting for the Braves – and he was the one as much as anyone who either signed the players or who helped create the atmosphere that encouraged those with talent to move on.

        We forget just how popular baseball was in Quebec, especially when the flashy Montreal Royals were at their peak. Semi-pro and amateur ball thrived across the province and talented youngsters had plenty of opportunity to show their stuff.

This led to a sizeable number being invited to play ‘down south’. Regrettably, most either rejected the offer outright, or did give it a try, only to soon pack it in and come home. The stress of living in a foreign environment where everyone spoke only English and of doing nothing but baseball day after day wore them down. The pull back home, to the family, the familiar ballparks and fans, and the girlfriend eventually became too strong to resist. Homesickness – the bane of every ballplayer’s existence – is a powerful force. 

As an indicator of the game’s popularity in Quebec back then, Low Perini, the owner of the Boston Braves who ran a very successful farm team in Quebec City, was predicting in the early 1950s that Montreal would soon get a major league team. 

In fact, it appears that when he decided to relocate his club from Boston, his first choice was Montreal, but Branch Rickey of the Brooklyn Dodgers who held the rights in Montreal, would have nothing of it. Hence the decision to move to Milwaukee, where the Braves already had a triple A team.    

        It should not have been a surprise to anyone that when the big leagues finally came to Montreal in 1969 they would be a huge. The Expos did a wonderful job of re-energizing the public to the fact of Major League Baseball, and the baseball establishment responded, such as when Pittsburgh announcer Bob Prince would refer to l’affaire francophone.

If the Expos operation had one flaw, and much of this points to the recently-deceased and highly respected John McHale, it would be that they did not do enough to nurture Quebec talent. Had they done so we might still be going to baseball games in this city.

        As Jacques Doucet observes, “The Expos never set up a team of Francophone coaches to help these kids get over the hump.” The same held true for front office commitments.

A million memories

Mr. Piché was fortunate to be present at a time when the game was still enjoying its golden era, before the home run took over. In an era of franchise-shifts he was a member of the first team to change cities in 50 years. He played with legends of the game, in the old parks now all gone or going – why even Wrigley Field is about to sell naming rights. He was a teammate with Henry Aaron, “the best hitter I ever saw” and he can claim “I had pretty good luck with Willie Mays.”

When he broke in with the Braves segregation was still a fact, and it was common for black players to be housed in separate hotels from white players. The Braves put an end to this practice in 1962…He was a teammate of Curt Flood’s and saw the rise of the players’ union and the ascendancy of Marvin Miller. …He came to know John McHale, a good and decent man who treated others well and who broadcaster Roger Brulotte once described as “like a father to us.” …He got to know Gene Autry with the Angels, a man who loved baseball and respected his employees…and he knows Bob Uecker, baseball’s funny man who was funny when they first met back in 1955.

Ron Piché made his mark in baseball and in so doing has given us a legacy of memories. A humble man who is still awed by all he did and saw, he enjoys nothing more than talking about the game he knows so well. We were honoured to have had this opportunity to meet and talk with him.