Jays’ ‘voice of summer’ honoured
Tom Cheek earns recognition in Hall of Fame
He helped christen a fledgling franchise on a snowy April afternoon in 1977, and brought fans to their feet as George Bell fell to his knees in 1985, and ushered Joe Carter around the bases when the team reached its pinnacle in 1993.
In those historic moments and all the forgettable games in between, Tom Cheek brought Toronto Blue Jays fans into the ballpark while they rode in their cars, sat on the deck at the cottage or relaxed at home with the game on the radio in the background.
Countless fans have called him their voice of summer, his smooth, unpretentious baritone riding the rhythms of the game for 28 seasons and, almost miraculously, 4,306 games in a row.
And finally, on Saturday, Cheek will be added to the roll of honour in the broadcasters’ wing of the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y.
His Ford C. Frick Award, which many believe is long overdue, comes too late for Cheek to enjoy.
He died of brain cancer in October 2005 at age 66. His wife, Shirley, will speak on his behalf at the ceremony, with a multitude of family and friends smiling and dabbing at their eyes.
Cheek was not only beloved from afar by Blue Jays fans who listened to his play-byplay on the radio. He was a friend to countless baseball people, the players, coaches, scouts, executives and stadium staff who formed his extended family.
“He was just a really, really good guy,” his son Jeff said during an interview Friday on Sportsnet 590 The Fan, the Jays’ flagship station.
It has been an uplifting and exhausting week for Shirley Cheek in Cooperstown. In a conference call earlier this week, she said Saturday’s ceremony would be special in all the obvious ways, and in one not so obvious.
“I think what’s really important for my grandchildren is that they don’t really remember their grandfather except the older ones, the oldest one being 17 this summer,” she said.
“But the younger ones really don’t know much about him, so I think there’s kind of an awe about all of this, and I think it will really hit home to them what the true meaning of what their grandfather did for Canada and Toronto Blue Jays.”
The cancer struck in 2004. Cheek soon knew he would not recover.
So it was a particularly poignant occasion in August of that year when the Blue Jays added his name to the Level of Excellence at the Rogers Centre, and, with Shirley at his side, he gave his fans a heartfelt thank you while publicly acknowledging the “situation” that he was dealing with.
“In all of my best imagination, I could never imagine the number of mail pieces I’ve received, email messages, phone calls, everything that you can possibly think of,” he said. “I never could really get the point until somebody said, and a lot of others followed, ‘Since I was a little kid, you’ve been giving the sound of summer.’”
Shirley said this week that only after the cancer came, and he was honoured that day in 2004, did he finally realize the connection he had forged with Jays fans, and how important that connection was.
“He had so many people that would say he was the voice of summer,” she said.
“‘I listen to you on the lake. I listen to you on the tractor out in Saskatoon,’ or, you know, wherever.
“But I think it really hit home when he saw that his name was going up on the wall and how much he had meant to the fans listening on radio.”
He called the Jays’ frigid inaugural game in 1977, and Bell’s game-ending catch when the team won their first division title in 1985, and the winning World Series moments in 1992 and 1993, the latter inspiring his most famous call on Carter’s clinching homer: “Touch ’em all Joe, you’ll never hit a bigger home run in your life.”
On Cooperstown, Shirley predicted, “He would be very humbled and very proud.”