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| Ottawa Citizen - May 12, 2012 |
During the first intermission, Mendes was walking by and it caught me by surprise to just turn around and see him right beside me. I jumped out of my seat, introduced myself, and even while stumbling over my words and sounding like I had never spoken english before, I asked him for an interview.
I think it might've taken Mendes 0.01 seconds to reply.
"Of course. I've always got time."
A couple days later, I arrived at the TSN 1200 studio and we had a great conversation.
You've done a lot of TV with Sportsnet, you write for TSN and now do radio for them as well. Where do you feel most comfortable? On the air or off the air?
Mendes: Probably off. I don't think my personality changes when I'm on the air or off the air. If you hear me on the radio, that's usually who I am. TV was always you've got to have your suit buttoned down and professional. That was probably never really the real me. Thats the thing I like about radio. There's a real opportunity to let your real personality out and you can be a bit more opinionated about things and have a bit more fun. That's probably a better example of my personality.
Most people, the open-minded types, seem to agree with a lot of the things you say, but sometimes the diehards can get annoyed pretty easily. Is there a fine line you have to walk between being honest and also giving the fans what they want to hear?
Mendes: I think there's a percentage of fans who are so angry that no matter what you say, it's not enough. So, if you go on the radio and say "I don't think Mika Zibanejad's playing very well," they want to hear you say that Mika Zibanejad's a dog, he should be benched and they need to strip him from his salary and trade him. I don't necessarily believe in that. I think there's a fine line between stating a fact and giving your opinion. I'm not a big believer in being over the top for the sake of being over the top and that's probably a reflection of my personality. If you see me in the street, I'm not going to be a moron about most topics, I think I'm a pretty reasonable person. It is a fine line because the one thing you have to remember when you work in sports is you have to be accountable. So, it's one thing to sit in a radio station and say "Mika Zibanejad's a dog" or "Craig Anderson isn't a legit number one goalie", but you then have to march down to the rink and show your face to these guys. And athletes are fine if you're going to be critical, but the keyword is fair. You just have to be fair. I remember when Daniel Alfredsson told me "as long as the criticism is about my play and it's not about me as a person, I'm OK with it." So whenever I'm criticizing anyone, it's always about their play on the ice. You'll never hear me say that guy isn't mentally invested or this guy doesn't care, because they all care and they all go through tough stretches. I think it's a really good measure because whatever you say on the air, whatever you tweet, you better be willing to say that to the person you're talking about. When you sit in a position I sit in, you have to keep that in mind. And that's something some people don't quite understand.
You seem to be well known on Youtube for the video of you getting hit by a foul ball before the World Series. Where does that rank in your broadcasting career? (Video below)
Mendes: That's at the top of the list. You know, because it was the World Series. It was five or six seconds before we were going on the air and the ball comes in and hits me right on the ankle bone and it hurt but I was more stunned than anything. I'll never forget, Mike Bradley was my camera man and he said 'suck it up Mendes, suck it up,' and you just had to go and get through it. But if that ball had hit me in my first two or three years of being a reporter, I would've been screwed. But when you do it as long as I've been able to do it, nothing really phases you. I had been in that job for ten years, so I was really prepared for it. That's the thing I think TV gave me, that ability to handle any situation. I think that's probably at the top of the list. It had a million hits in the first three days, and I think it's up around two million now.
You were in Boston when the bombings happened. What was it like on that day?
Mendes: Boston was really upsetting for a number of reasons because we're right in downtown Boston and this goes on. I happened to find out about it on Twitter and I was sitting in the hotel and I was scrolling through the feed and someone had posted saying 'what the F happened at the finish line of the marathon?' And I look, and there's a picture of somebody's arm laying there and it was really graphic. My initial thought wasn't a terrorist attack, my initial thought was that I had no idea. Someone was saying that a bomb went off and I text my wife right away and I'm like 'you're going to hear that something happened in Boston, but I'm OK.' Then, of course, she phones me right away. And I remember going to the rink that night not knowing if there was going to be a game and just the feeling of not knowing what was going to happen next. Then Sportsnet actually phoned me and said they needed someone to stay in Boston and cover the bombings for City TV. They wanted to flip me into a news reporter and I said no. I had been on the road so much, and I think that was the end of a ridiculous road trip. An eight or nine day road trip, I hadn't been home in weeks, and my wife is going nuts because there's bombs going off and there's reports that there's bombs all over the city. So, I said that I wasn't staying there. I ended up getting a call a few moments later from our V.P. and he told me he wanted me to stay, so we actually got in a really big argument about it. It got pretty heated, but I was in the mindset that I was there to be a hockey reporter and I don't have any experience or desire to be a frontline reporter that puts his life in jeopardy. So they let me fly home with the Sens. But later it turned into this whole philosophical debate where half the people at Sportsnet sided with me and half of them sided with him and it just turned into a big shmozzle. He ended up apologizing to me a couple months later actually and a couple weeks after that, I said I was leaving for TSN and here I am.
On the day of the Ottawa shooting you did your normal radio show on TSN 1200, but completely no sports talk. All about the city of Ottawa.
Mendes: It was really weird because there was a part of me that said we shouldn't be doing a show. We should just simulcast CTV or something because what, we're going to come on the air and talk about Ottawa's line combos for a game that got cancelled? Everything we were going to talk about was going to be frivolous, I thought, and the producers made the decision for us to go on and do the show. And we had a tonne of listeners, which really surprised me, and we had a tonne of emails. We probably spent more time reading emails that day and the next day than we ever have. There was a little bit of debate to whether or not the game should've been played or should've been postponed so it did generate some legitimate discussion and it did end up being four good hours of radio considering it had nothing to do with sports. We just sat there and read people's emails, seeing what everyone was feeling from that day.
In a world of sports journalism/media where no one seems to have time for anyone but themselves, why are you so approachable?
Mendes: I remember exactly what it's like to be you. All I ever wanted was a chance to step into this world and it always frustrated me when I was 18, 19, 21 or whatever, I was doing my last year at Carleton and I never really had a mentor or never really any connections. I would come to some games to the old AAA Ottawa Lynx, and I even got some passes to go see the Senators, but I would go in there and I'd be petrified. I was intimidated. So I said that if I made it into the industry that I made sure that if I say that there's a young student or a kid that comes to a game, I don't ever want to make them feel intimidated or that they don't belong or that they can't reach out. Because the only way you're going to get into this industry is if you make connections and to ask questions. For me to not have 15 minutes of time or time to go for a coffee with someone, that, to me, is unacceptable. So many times you see reporters complain about athletes having big egos, but then you turn around and wonder, well, why do we have such big egos? We have no reason to have an ego or an attitude. To me it's really important to help out young students and I've tried the last few years to get interns from Carleton or from Algonquin just to help out and answer questions and point people in the right direction.
Some people may not know this but you write quite frequently for Today's Parent.
Mendes: It probably ended up being the most fun I have every week, sitting down and writing a blog for Today's Parent. I found a niche there because there weren't a lot of dads writing there. It was more of a mom-based site. So, I've been able to parlay it into a monthly column so every time their magazine comes out, I write a column. 99 percent of it is humour based, you know, just looking at parenthood from a different perspective. For me, I've spent the first 15 years of my career in sports, so it goes to show that sports is just only part of my life. While my wife would argue that sports actually is my life. We've got two daughters and it's so much fun to write about that stuff. It's something that I've always loved doing but it's nice that other parents can relate to it. It's probably been the most fun I've had in the past couple years for sure.
Daniel Alfredsson is coming back to Ottawa very soon. He's set to retire an Ottawa Senator, but do you think going to Detroit had a big effect on his legacy here?
Mendes: I think in five years from now we'll look back on it, and it'll be a footnote. I think the wounds are still pretty fresh for when he left, but I think the healing is going to start now that he's back. We've had our fair share of villain's in this town with the Yashin's and the Heatley's, go through the list. But Alfie was never like that. I think that even when he left town, his heart never really left. So, this is the right way for it to end.
People give you flack for not necessarily being an Ottawa Senators fan. You also wrote an article a while back about Ottawa being possibly one of the worst sports towns and that didn't sit well with people. How important to you is it to have an unbiased opinion on everything?
Mendes: I grew up a diehard Habs fan. I was obsessive. But the minute I got into this industry, I stopped caring. People don't believe me, but when I watch a Habs game now, I have no emotion. I think it's important to become really detached. I think that once you get to know the players as people, that's when you become detached. Like Alfie, when he scored that goal to send the Sens to the Stanley Cup, I honestly couldn't have ever been more happy for an athlete ever in my life. Knowing what he's been through, knowing when people wanted to run him out of town, just knowing that he's a class act and a class individual, seeing him score that goal, I was excited for him. Now, would I like to see the Sens win the Cup? Of course, but because it would be great for the town, it would be great for our radio station, it would be great for the franchise, it would be great for everything. But I'm not a fan. It drives me nuts when people tell me I'm not a fan, because no shit Sherlock, I'm not supposed to be.
