Beyond the walls of 630 CHED, with Marty Forbes (Part 4)

In the 70’s and early 80’s Moffat Broadcasting held an annual company baseball tournament in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan.

Stations would fly, or drive, in from Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton and Winnipeg for a weekend of fun.

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Few may remember though that the baseball challenge actually started in Alberta first when bro Gord worked at CHED and I was at CKXL, I think around 1973-76.

The stations met ‘half way’ in Red Deer, and split up the ‘you bring this and we’ll bring that’ list and the day was spent bashing baseballs, drinking, laughing and bbq’ing.

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Antics were abound and the best was Calgarys sales guy Skip Hudson decorating up a grapefruit to look exactly like a softball, laces and all.

As CHED’s Don Kay stepped up the plate Skip was pitching and had to do the ‘perfect’ lob of the ball so that Don would bash the grapefruit to smithereens.

Bingo – he did – and the fruit ended up splashed all over Don – much to the delight of the rest of us.

That, however, wasn’t the end of it. Skip had ‘two’ grapefruits done up and who would have thought that we could pull this off twice.

We did!

Bingo. Bash. Juice. Laughter.

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CHED got us back though because Calgary won the game, and we picked up the trophy but left it unattended at dinner and some smartass Edmonton guy scooped it up and simply wouldn’t tell us where it was hidden nor give it back. (I think it was my bro Gord to be honest)

No problem.

About 4 days later Calgary’s (late) PD Wayne Bryant had his pilots licence and calls me.

“Marty – airport – 10 pm – we’re going to get that trophy back.”

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So up we go in a rented Cesna – very cool – and it was my first time in such a small aircraft. It felt like a flying Volkswagen.

It was easy for the boss’s son to get in to the station and in to the creative department we went – finding the trophy, and we also took a few ‘extras’ like somebody’s running shoes (size of the Love Boat so likely Daryl Hooke), a few board games they had, a giant stuffed “Throg” (as they called it) and we ERASED their cart board containing all the info for which client was on which cart – which today would be akin to wiping out the hard drive.

So mission accomplished…we hop back in the two seater and flew home to Calgary landing a bit after midnight.

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The next day in the station we were heroes. Gawd we had fun!

The camaraderie within Moffat was amazing, and if you look at the early 80’s staff list from Moose Jaw’s CHAB alone you’d see the names of some of this countries most successful broadcasters – in all departments.

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Respect!