LIFE: Foul Language Part 2

As I said in the last post, I tend to hold my foul language to a minimum, hardly ever, when in the presence of elders, women or children. I think I can count on two hands the total number of times I have sworn in front of any of those people. That's because I have suffered for each and every instance.

So, imagine my problem when on TV back in 1980 and about to utter a comment about a player's ass!

I was doing the broadcast of the Canadian National Junior Women's Softball Championship from my home-town field, Chinguacousy Park. The local girls were playing the Richmond Skunks from British Columbia for the right to represent Canada in the inaugural Women's Youth Championships to be held in Edmonton the following summer.

To say I was very familiar with the players would have been an understatement, I'd coached many of them in clinics and as a guest coach, and against them, since they were tweens. Many of them had brothers that I coached in boys' rep ball for the town. One such combination were Kimberly and Larry Quanz, two of my favourite players of all time.

Kim was a second baseman (my position). Gifted and graceful, Kim was a world-class player who hustled like a scrub just trying to make the team. All effort. Her younger brother Larry was a heart-and-soul kid with about as much softball talent as Kim had in her little finger. He made my team one year and worked SOOOOO hard, that he eventually became the starting catcher, despite NOT being able to throw the ball all the way on the fly to second base during stolen base attempts. He just battled the weak throwing arm by having an incredibly quick release. And he caught just about anything his little five-foot frame would let him get close enough to try and catch.

I loved coaching them both.

So, there I was in the back of production truck rolled up close to the backstop behind home plate. I was doing the broadcast with Larry Robertson from Burlington, like me a softballer who also reported for a living. We did the game in largely conversationl style, each one of us doing play-by-play and commentary. I tended to do more of the commentary, simply because I knew all the Chinguacousy kids.

I started to tell the Larry and Kim story. At one point, I decided to stay, "They both really hustle their ..."

Suddenly, I was stuck. I was about to refer to Kim's anatomy in a fashion a young man should not, at least on TV with tape machines rolling. The pause felt like an hour as I tried hard to come up with a word that wasn't liable to get me a long look from her parents. Finally, "... butts off," came out. It was only about a second delay. But it sure felt longer.

That was the closest I ever came to using (even a slight) swear word on TV. But I remember it vividly to this day. The panic. The relief. The fact that nobody noticed.

'Cept me.