Quinn it is.

I wrote a post the other day about the Leafs/Flyers game on Wednesday night, listening to it on the radio, and the memories that awakened for me about following my teams as a kid; in particular, I wrote a little about listening to the radio broadcasts of Windsor Spitfires games.

First, a correction: the games were NOT on CKWW; they were on CKLW AM 800 (I always had trouble, truthfully, keeping the two straight when I was a kid). Second, my Dad and I were having some trouble remembering the name of the fellow who did the play-by-play for those games. I Googled around a bit but couldn’t find anything about the Spitfires’ broadcasting crews of yore, save and except for some information about Budd Lynch, such as this article telling the story of how Budd went from World War II to broadcasting (original) Spitfires games in the 40′s and then moving up to the show and taking over the microphone for Red Wings broadcasts, all in time to call such memorable moments as Gordie Howe’s 545th career goal (breaking Rocket Richard’s then existing career goal-scoring record) and the only two Stanley Cup Final Game Sevens to ever go into overtime.

Finally, I broke down and sought out the answer the old-fashioned way: I asked somebody who I though might know. I sent (in a somewhat less old-fashioned way) an email to CKLW and asked them if they could tell me the name of the play by play guy from the late 70s, early 80s. You will see from the comments following the post in question that my Dad and I were pretty sure the man’s name was “Dave”, and that I had previously hazarded a guess that his surname might have been “Quinn”.

A very nice person by the name of Tania D’Angela, a programming assistant with the company who owns the station, emailed me back (within 14 hours, I might add) to advise that she had made some inquiries of her own and that indeed, the gentleman whose name I was looking for, was none other than – drum roll please – Dave Quinn. Apparently, Mr. Quinn did the games until 1987, possibly starting as early as 1972. Just in case there’s anybody out there searching for the answer to the question, “Who followed Dave Quinn as the Windsor Spitfires’ play-by-play man?” the answer to that question is “Steve Bell”, the current Sports Director at the station.

Thank you Tania and Steve for allowing me to properly identify the man by name, and to thank him for the many hours of enjoyment I spent listening to his calls from the old barn on McDougall Avenue (pictured above in a photo copped from wikicommons): thank you, Dave Quinn, for helping me love the game of hockey.