Tom Cheek Headed to the Hall of Fame

Tom Cheek, who was the Toronto Blue Jay's radio play-by-play man for  4,306 regular-season and 41 postseason games, is the 2013 recipient of the Ford C. Frick Award, presented annually for excellence in broadcasting by the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum. The announcement was made today at the MLB Winter Meetings in Nashville, Tenn.

The late Cheek will be honored as part of Hall of Fame Weekend, to be held July 26-29 in Cooperstown, N.Y.

After years of working in radio in Vermont, Cheek began work as a backup announcer to the 2011 Frick Award recipient Dave Van Horne on Expos broadcasts in 1974. Then, in 1976 at the age of 37, he landed the job as the radio voice of the expansion Blue Jays. Paired first with Hall of Fame pitcher Early Wynn, Cheek would later team up with Jerry Howarth in 1981 and the combination of Cheek's rich baritone and Howarth's distinct nasal delivery became the trademark sound of the team until Cheek died in fall of 2005.

Cheek called every regular-season and postseason Blue Jays game from the franchise's birth on April 7, 1977, through June 2, 2004. The next day, Cheek took the first of two days off to attend the funeral of his father. But upon his return, Cheek sensed he was not right physically when he was unable to retain information he had read only minutes earlier. On June 13, 2004 -- his 65th birthday -- Cheek underwent surgery to remove a brain tumor, but some of the tumor was unreachable. Cheek died a little more than a year later.

Cheek will be honored at the Hall of Fame's Awards Presentation on July 27 in Cooperstown, along with Paul Hagen, the winner of the 2013 J.G. Taylor Spink Award given by the Baseball Writers Association of America.

On a personal note, Tom Cheek will always be the sound of my childhood summers. I remember during our weekend family excursions - and this was prior to the time of online streaming and smart phones - we listened to Cheek and Howarth calling the Blue Jay games on the radio. As the team got more competitive in the late 80s and eventually winning back-to-back World Series championship teams of the early 1990s, we listened more intently and hung on their every word - the most memorable words perhaps being Cheek's call of Joe Carter's walk-off home run to win the 1993 World Series.

It's about time you got in Mr. Cheek!

Click here to read the story from the Blue Jays' web page