RIP Tom Cheek (longtime Blue Jays radio announcer)

From the Toronto Star:

Tom Cheek, 66: Voice of the Jays

GEOFF BAKER
SPORTS REPORTER

The man who brought Blue Jays radio legend Tom Cheek to Toronto remembers a pioneer on the Canadian sports scene who became “so much more than a broadcaster.’’

It was 29 years ago that Len Branson, then the president of a company that hired on-air talent for the Telemedia network, made Cheek the first radio voice of the Jays after hearing him do fill-in work on Montreal Expos broadcasts.

Branson and others mourned Cheek’s death Sunday at age 66, after a 15-month battle with brain cancer, as the loss of a man who helped establish the very identity of Canada’s lone remaining major league baseballfranchise.

“He helped us sell tickets, met clients, made pitches with us,’’ Branson said. “He was more than just a broadcaster. He was big, had the voice. He was cordial with everybody, he could talk to anybody. In front of a crowd, he was outstanding. He did it with no notes. He just loved to talk about baseball.’’

And talk Cheek did, throughout 4,306 consecutive regular season games – and every Jays post-season contest -- from opening day of 1977 until June 3, 2004, when he booked off to attend the funeral of his father. It was soon after that Cheek was diagnosed with a brain tumour and underwent surgery on his 65th birthday.

“I thought he was a great ambassador for the Blue Jays,’’ Toronto pitching ace Roy Halladay said. “He always talked very highly about the organization and we did a lot of stuff together to promote the team, with the winter caravan, the Blue Jays cruise. It was always very positive. He would always go out of his way to be nice to you.’’

Former Jays general manager Pat Gillick, now a special consultant to the GM of the Seattle Mariners, remembered the passion Cheek brought “not only to his work as a radio broadcaster, but to his work for the Blue Jays.

“He was sort of like Cal Ripken, in that you knew he was going to show up every day, you knew he was going to be there with the same pride, the same dedication to excellence,’’ Gillick said. “You could always count on Tom to bring his very best each and every day.’’

At an emotional Rogers Centre ceremony a year ago, Cheek was added to the team’s Level of Excellence and spoke candidly of his illness to the crowd of over 40,000, many of them teary-eyed. He described the warmth he’d felt at a letter of encouragement from a fan who called him “my sound of summer.’’

Scores of Toronto baseball fans will remember Cheek as the voice who guided them through their introduction to the sport, first as a broadcast partner with the late Early Wynn, and then alongside Jerry Howarth in the booth since 1981.

It was a voice that boomed “Touch `em all Joe!’’ when Joe Carter’s home run won the 1993 World Series and one that, for varying generations of listeners, will never be completely silenced.

“He was my voice of summer growing up, so for the first few years when I used to come around here (for Jays games), I was so in awe of him that I avoided going over to speak with him,’’ said Jamie Campbell, now the television play-by-play voice of the Jays for Sportsnet.

“I did not have the (guts) to go over and sit with Tom for the longest time. And then about two years ago, the two of us happened to be sitting side-by-side in the dugout and a Blue Jay and an opposing player were high-fiving and he and I wound up having this 45-minute conversation about how in the old days, fraternization was such a sin.

“From that day on, I had no problem engaging in conversation with him. I felt like he’d kind of welcomed me in just by talking to me.’’

Fan 590 radio host and Jays reporter Mike Wilner, who worked in the booth with Cheek and Howarth at home games, had also grown up listening to him.

“I expected, when I went in there, this old gruff, grouchy guy, and he turned out to be the exact opposite,’’ Wilner said. “He was so welcoming. The first game I did with them was at Fenway Park in Boston in 2002 and I had no idea I’d be on during the game. I figured it was supposed to be just before and after. About two minutes before they went on-air, he turns to me and says `Anything you feel you want to add, just jump in. The mike’s open.’ And that’s the way it always was with him. He was always like that and he always encouraged.’’

ESPN analyst and former Jays catcher and manager, Buck Martinez, visited Cheek recently at his Florida home. The pair spent hours reminiscing about baseball and talking about Martinez’s son, Casey, a minor leaguer and onetime Jays batboy with Cheek’s own son, Jeff.

“Nobody ever accepts it, but it had become so final that I think he was almost at peace with it,’’ Martinez said of Cheek’s impending death. “His wife, Shirley, has been such a rock,’’ Martinez added. “Tom was a very demanding man, a very impatient person, a very meticulous, proper person right down to his scorecard. His scorecard gets out of whack, he’s all (messed) up.

“But now,’’ he said, “he couldn’t finish a sentence. I’d talk to him, he’d try to finish a sentence and he was all frustrated. So, she’s just right there saying `It’s OK, Tom. You’ll think of what you want to say.’ ”

And for 29 years in Toronto, he always did.

Up until last year when he missed his first game, I had no clue he'd been broadcasting every single J's game since before i was born. My first year on this earth was shared with the J's first. My dad raised me on baseball and I can't even think of that team without putting his voice to them and it seemed as natural a part of summer as sunshine or the smell of grass clippings. It's a shame he was relatively unknown most his career outside of Ontario. But here he was very much loved and will be greatly missed. rip

How strange he should pass so quickly after his father too.