Cheek wins Cooperstown’s Frick award

NASHVILLE, Tenn. – The lasting impression of Tom Cheek’s work in the broadcast booth during a brilliant career recognized Wednesday with the Hall of Fame’s Ford C. Frick Award is how genuine and authentic his delightfully understated words were.

Never one for shtick or catch-phrases, the late Cheek simply described things as he saw them, booming through in a distinctive baritone, always seeming to capture the happenings before him just right.

That ability came through most in his masterstroke moment on Joe Carter’s World Series clinching home run in 1993, when amid the euphoria he uttered, "Touch ‘em all Joe, you’ll never hit a bigger home run in your life."

"He phrased it a lot better than I would have phrased it – I thought it was a double," former Blue Jays GM Pat Gillick remembered with a smile. "I thought it was going to hit the top of the wall and figured the game would be tied. He called it a lot better than I did."

Added Gord Ash, the longtime Blue Jays executive currently assistant GM with the Milwaukee Brewers: "It was so perfectly suited to the moment."

"Maybe because I’ve heard it so many times, but that really is my favourite call of all-time," his wife, Shirley Cheek, said on a conference call. "It was so off-the-cuff. Tom was just an off-the-cuff guy, whatever came out of his mouth came out of his mouth, nothing was pre-planned, he didn’t have a pre-planned home run call. It was how it happened.

"When Joe Carter was running around those bases, it looked to Tom like a kangaroo jumping up and down, and he was mentally telling him, ‘Joe, don’t miss a base.’ So, it was just how it came out."

It’s a testament to Cheek’s enduring popularity that his wife Shirley was flooded with congratulatory calls and e-mails once word broke, and also speaks to his enduring impact.

For several generations of baseball fans in Canada, his voice is the soundtrack of baseball, catching his break with the Montreal Expos as the backup guy in 1974 and eventually getting hired as lead Blue Jays announcer for the club’s inception in 1977, partnering initially with Early Wynn and then with Jerry Howarth in 1981.

The native of Pensacola, Fla., called 4,306 consecutive regular-season games plus 41 post-season contests, a streak interrupted by his father’s death June 2, 2004. Eleven days later he had surgery to remove a brain tumour, but some of it remained, and he died Oct. 9, 2005 at age 66.

The push from his supporters to get him the Frick (Mike Wilner of Sportsnet Radio The Fan 590 deserves credit for his efforts), has been on since then.

"Very excited, kind of relieved, I’ve been hoping for a long period of time he’d get the award," said Gillick. "He’s very, very deserving … I’m just thrilled."

Cheek’s honour extends what’s been an impressive period of recognition for Canadian baseball by the Hall. In 2011 former Blue Jays second baseman Roberto Alomar and Gillick were inducted into Cooperstown while longtime Montreal Expos broadcaster Dave Van Horne received the Frick, and this year Toronto Sun columnist Bob Elliott was honoured with the Spink Award for meritorious contributions to baseball writing.

Cheek is next, chosen from a field of 10 finalists by a 21-member electorate made up of the 16 living Frick winners and five historians and columnists.

"I’d done some conversing (Tuesday) trying to get a sense of where he stood and it wasn’t very optimistic," said Ash. "So I was a little surprised (Wednesday), pleasantly surprised.

"I’d always hoped it would have come before now, but for this day to arrive is a tremendous honour for him, for the Blue Jays, and for those of us who knew Tom."

In a statement, Blue Jays president Paul Beeston echoed those sentiments, saying: "Since the inception of the Blue Jays he played a vital role in promoting Baseball in Canada in an extraordinary and enduring way. Tom Cheek was the constant. … The Blue Jays are extremely pleased and excited that Tom is being so honoured."

While Howarth’s continuing presence eased the void left in the Blue Jays radio booth created by Cheek’s illness and eventual death, Cheek’s presence around the ballpark is still missed, particularly his easygoing manner and mischievous ways.

"Very gregarious, loved to play golf, loved to sing Neil Diamond songs," said Ash. "He was very loud, he always had this phrase, that he learned to whisper in a sawmill, and he had all these country clichés he would use.

"That was him, what you saw was what you got, he was genuine, he cared about what he did, he cared about his family."

Over the weekend Cheek was inducted into the Vermont Association of Broadcasters Hall of Fame and Shirley Cheek received word of the Frick Award on Wednesday morning, while waiting to see her doctor. He walked in as she got the news, becoming the first person to find out.

"I said (over the weekend), first of all, if this was Tom, he’d get before you and say, ‘There are so many people more deserving than I.’ The same thing with Cooperstown, if he ever gets in, he would say the same thing, ‘There are so many more deserving than I.’ But I for one feel Tom deserves to be there."

She was far from alone, and now, he will be.

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