Patrick Johnston: A poker debate when one angry TSN host ‘folded’ is among 1040’s finest
Former TSN Radio sports host Dave Pratt is featured in the station's Top 40 moments thanks to a golf-poker interaction that got heated in a hurry.
A decade after Dave Pratt and Don Taylor engaged in a heated debate about whether poker is as demanding as golf, the moment has reached legendary Vancouver media status
It’s shortly after 4 p.m. on July 20, 2009.
Team 1040 radio host Dave Pratt is delivering his “Pratt’s Rant” essay.
The day before, golfer Tom Watson had held global golf fans in rapt attention as he almost won the Open Championship at Turnberry Resort in Scotland. At 59, Watson would have been the oldest champion of the famous British tournament.
In his rant, Pratt started in on the veteran golfer’s age-defying performance.
Co-host Don Taylor, still with the AM sports radio station, arrives as Pratt is delivering his commentary.
The rest, many of you know. On Wednesday, TSN 1040 named this intense interaction its top highlight in a top 40 countdown of the biggest moments in the station’s almost 19-year history.
Today, nearly 11 years later, we bring you the full story.
The comparison — Doyle Brunson vs. Tom Watson
In his commentary about what Tom Watson did the day before, Pratt mentions Doyle Brunson, the famous 75-year-old poker player, still considered one of the world’s best card players.
Dave Pratt (afternoon drive co-host): He was 59, he had a one-shot lead at the Open and he takes the wrong club and he loses in the playoff. The thing about the rant, the point was that life was not over at 40. I rattled off that all these guys were doing well after 40. Including a poker player. And Donnie pulled that out.
Don Taylor (afternoon drive co-host): I was like, ‘this is really well written, it’s outstanding.’ And then he brings up Doyle Brunson and I’m like, ‘I’m out.’
Rob Gray (program director): What’s so great about it and what made the Pratt and Moj show work too, which we had on prior to Don joining us, was Dave speaks in absolutes, which is such an important part of sports radio. He paints in big bold colours. It gives people lots of opportunity to freak out!
Don Taylor in 2016.
“I expended more energy folding laundry yesterday.” “I played go fish with the kids.”
It didn’t take long for Taylor to starting interjecting with barbs.
RG: I was watching from the control room and thinking ‘oh boy, Donnie’s pushing Dave’s buttons.’ I could see the steam coming out of Dave’s ears.
DT: I used all the dad comparisons because that’s where I was, three kids under 10. (Laughs) I spent 23 out of 24 hours a day tired and bitchy.
RG: If you’ve ever done any improv, you know you never say ‘no,’ you just go with what it is. There’s kind of an element like that in sports radio, however goofy the point is you just go with it. Don never gets enough credit, he knew exactly were to go. He knew how to poke the bear, he could have gone in many other directions.
DP: Sports radio is good cop, bad cop and Donnie always played the game well. He knew he had me and he just kept throwing gasoline on the fire.
Back in 2011, sports talk radio host Dave Pratt was enthusiastic about paying off on a losing bet, riding a bicycle around Vancouver City Hall while wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the slogan ‘I love Gregor,’ in reference to then-mayor Gregor Robertson.
The “physical” element of poker
“They’re sitting there, slugging it out,” Pratt argues. “You just said it, sitting,” Taylor retorts.
DT: I was late to golf. I started golfing when I was 30, 35. I didn’t realize how hard it is. Even just walking the course, it’s a physical grind and there’s the mental focus. This is an amazing accomplishment physically.
DP: The poker rooms in Vegas are, to say the least, a little stressful. I don’t have the patience to be a poker player, to go through what they go through. There is a real mental toughness to play at that level. To play with those guys and to be at his age to stay with it, against all these young guys, that’s tough.
DT: I think he honestly believed that it was a fair comparison. I just had a hard time comparing — and I still do — someone involved in the Stanley Cup playoffs or the British Open with a guy sitting down.
The blood is boiling
Pratt finally calls Taylor “completely ignorant.”
Tyler Green (producer, filling in for vacationing Paul DeBron): Physically you could see Dave getting more frustrated, you could see it. Donnie tries to wind people up, it just snowballed. It was almost like Dave thought Don wasn’t taking him seriously.
DP: I’d spent an entire day researching this thing and he rips on poker!
DT: This story has the advantage of it being at another level: you had one of the hosts leaving the studio! It’s funny, at the time, we got all sorts of accusations of it being staged. But it was real. If you know Dave, it was real.
RG: That debate was the classic married couple type of thing, it goes to Defcon-12 almost immediately. It’s like the cap on the toothpaste. It’s not about the cap on the toothpaste. You get friction, it comes out in funny ways. What made it so great was it was so real. Real emotion.
Paul DeBron (regular afternoon show producer): I would have liked to have see it in person! For the record, I totally agreed with Don on that one.
Pratt walks out
In a totally unexpected twist, Pratt takes his headphones off and storms out. Taylor and Green’s jaws drop. Taylor quips: “Dave Pratt, the first guy to use sitting and slugging it out in the same sentence.”
TG: I know that he’s had arguments with a variety of hosts before but it was a huge surprise when he walked out. He looked at me with this look like ‘I’m out of here.’
I’d been at the station since it started in 2001. I’d produced five different combos of morning shows. Moj once threw his chair out of the studio, though I think that was more because the chair broke on him, though it was during an argument with Dave.
DP: The thing that upset me about it was that there was a dismissal of the amount of work that I’d done, dismissing this universal theme that life doesn’t end at 40 — 40 is not a death sentence to your career, not anymore.
DT: It’s just something I disagreed with. So many times Moj and I will get into it, Matt too, but not like this. Usually Dave would fist bump me afterwards when we’d had a good argument. That was great when I’d get one. But not that time. He walked out. He was legit mad at me.
TG: Don and I looked at each other and we were both like ‘did he really just walk out?’
RG: I sent them to their neutral corners to cool things down.
TG: I was sitting there playing commercials thinking ‘I don’t know if any one was coming back.’ I played like 12½ minutes of commercials.
Don was about to walk out of the studio but then Rob comes in and then Dave comes in and they start arguing again. At this point the phone lines are just ringing off the hook. Usually we’d do phone calls off the rant.
DP: It was like 10 minutes of screaming at each other.
TG: Rob asked me if we had something to play. I said we had a pre-taped interview we could play, it was something that Dave had recorded earlier, that we had already run. I can’t remember what it was, I maybe think it was a Dick Zokol interview?
Taylor goes home, Pratt puts on a smile
After much haranguing, Gray tells Taylor to take the rest of the day off. Paul Chapman arrives to an empty studio.
DT: I was doing TV for Sportsnet at the time as well, radio was a part-time gig for me. I was doing two or three hours in the afternoon, it was extra money. Initially when Rob sent me home I thought, ‘wait, me? What did I do?’ But then I remember where I was in priority.
TG: They keep arguing and then Rob said let’s go back to my office. The interview is coming to an end. I don’t know if anybody is coming back and I’m trying to call Rob. Then Chappy arrives and we don’t know what’s happening and then Dave just strolls in as if nothing has happened.
DT: I’d walked into the studio as he was doing his monologue and then five minutes later I was kicked out! It wasn’t a long time. Long ago I was told ‘you get any opportunity you’ve got to jump on it, you could be out the door in an instant.’ I didn’t know if I’d be back.
PDB: Probably best I was off. I would have had a hard time not making fun of Dave but the dynamic of that show made it tough to rip into a guy you worked with for the whole day when the level headed co-host came in just for the three hours he was on. Good times!
Paul Chapman (Province deputy editor, Team 1040 contributor): I was at home listening when all this was happening. When I walked in, Tyler was like ‘I don’t what the f*** is going on.’ And Dave was like come on in, come on in. He pointed to Donnie’s empty chair and invited me to to sit down. He was acting as if nothing had happened.
TG: The show just carried on, there was no mention of it. We didn’t take any calls. Rob told me not to podcast it. At the time, back then, we didn’t want anyone to listen it. I think I realized it was significant at the end of the show. A buddy called in, said he was sitting in his car and was listening to the commercials and then a taped interview and was wondering what was going on.
And then pretty much every host was calling me looking to find out what was going on. Donnie phoned me that night and he apologized. Said it wasn’t right what he did.
PDB: My phone blew up with calls and texts while it was going on. I remember calling Tyler and him whispering into the phone telling me what was going on.
Aftermath
Taylor and Pratt were both held off the air Tuesday. Rick Ball and Matt Sekeres filled in.
PC: The next morning I was with BMac (morning show host Barry McDonald), I happened to be co-hosting and we were told by Rob Gray we couldn’t mention it on air. But in-between segments BMac was dishing: ‘Holy s*** I talked to Donnie.’
RG: From what I recall, I told those guys they shouldn’t talk about it because I was still sorting out what to do.
PC: The great thing about it is Sekeres was on air that afternoon with Rick Ball and they took calls.
Matt Sekeres (sports reporter for The Globe and Mail, Team 1040 fill-in host): Rob called me at home later that afternoon. I had not heard the argument. I thought it strange that Dave and Don would be off mid-week together, but Rob soon explained what happened.
Rick was tabbed to drive the bus the next day. I was the two-chair, Don’s seat. Rick called me. It was the elephant in the room. We both agreed. So we decided to have fun with it.
Pratt and Taylor returned to the air on Wednesday afternoon.
DT: We were suspended for a couple days and then dave and I made up and shook hands.
MS: After Rick and I spoke, I just wanted to make sure Dave wouldn’t be upset with us. I knew Dave better than Don at the time. He’d tab me to sit in when Don was away. So I didn’t want to ruffle any feathers.
I called Dave at home and left a message (he never answered, always screened). He got back to me in seconds (as per usual) and — to his infinite credit — gave us the green light. He knew there was no way we couldn’t talk about it. He knew it would be our main topic.
That was the thing about Dave: he was a tremendous sport. Took slings, arrows, shots and always viewed it as part of the bigger entertainment package of the station.
DP: It was one of the defining moments of the radio station.
There were three moments that took it to its peak. There was when Brian Burke called me, we’d been on for six months, and he wasn’t happy with something and he just started with ‘f** you’ and went off and I still to this day don’t know what he was mad about. I went to the GM at the time and told him what Burke had said and then I went on air and ripped him.
And that resulted in Jennifer Mather calling years later, and she went at me on air for 12 minutes about what I’d said that day about her husband. That’s the second. And then the other one was the poker debate.
DT: Dave was never afraid to say anything, he was real courageous. He couldn’t care less what people thought of him. He was at his peak. He was a smart guy, a creative guy.
DP: We’re good n ow. We talk to each other at Christmas. Don Taylor, along with Jim Van Horne are the two best TV anchors of all time and I had the privilege of working with both of them.
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