By Bob Elliott
Canadian Baseball Network
 
Years ago someone renamed Shirley Cheek and Mary Howarth, wives of the Blue Jays radio broadcast team.
 
Since Tom and Jerry were on the road for spring training plus 81 games during the season ... since when they were at home in the GTA they were at the park 81 nights ... and since the Blue Jays played into October five seasons in a nine-year span ... well it only seemed right to call them something other than Mrs. Cheek or Mrs. Howarth.
 
And so they were rechristened: Saint Shirley and Saint Mary.
 
Yet, little did we know how early Saint Mary had gained special status. As Howarth finished his 35th year in the booth this fall, he was honoured with the George Gross Award for excellence in broadcasting at the 21st annual Sports Media Canada luncheon. And Howarth told the crowded Imperial Room at the Fairmont Royal York Hotel how it came to be that he landed in Toronto.
 
“Most speakers at banquets speak say ‘and lastly, I’d like to thank my wife,’ well, firstly ... I’d like to thank my wife,” Howarth told the crowd.
 
When expansion came to the American League in 1976 Howarth was broadcasting games at triple-A Salt Lake City where manager Jimy Williams ran up a 90-win season with the Amazing Gulls. Howarth applied to Seattle Mariners general manager Lou Gorman for a broadcasting job. Eventually he was told that the team was going in another direction.
 
Saint Mary offered a reasonable suggestion. 
 
“Well, why not apply to the other expansion team?” Saint Mary asked her husband.
 
Jerry didn’t think it was a good idea.
 
Again Saint Mary asked.
 
“So down I go to the basement and get out an atlas,” Howarth told the crowd.
 
Kiddies, he was unable to crank up his Google machine back in 1976. Once he found the atlas he had to find out where exactly Toronto was. After looking in the back he found it: “I went Q-R-S-T ... there is was ... Toronto, Ont. ... Page 195 ... D-4.”
 
Howarth flipped the atlas open to page 195, went over to where the D square crossed the fourth row of squares ... and there it was.
 
“Toronto, ONT. I found it,” said Howarth recalling a day from 40 years before, “and ... it was in a different country,” as the fans laughed. 
 
Still Howarth did not want to apply for the job, but ... Saint Mary insisted.
 
So Jerry sent off his resume and tape. Then, he waited and waited.
 
Nothing.
 
Two months later he received an envelope in the mail with the return address reading . . . . the HEWPEX Sports Network.
 
“I didn’t know what HEWPEX was but I now knew Toronto, ONT.,” Howarth explained. Sue Rayson of HEWPEX worked for Len Bramson, who founded the  Expos radio network while living and working in Montreal, wrote the letter.
 
“It read ‘We hope you are THE Jerry Howarth who sent us the tape because all we received was the tap; the resume with your phone number was lost in the mail,” explained Howarth.
 
With the Jays’ approval, Bramson chose Hall of Famer Early Wynn to work with Cheek in Year 1. Bramson told Howarth that they would stay in touch. Howarth filled in for three games in 1980, 20 games in 1981 and was hired full time to replace Wynn for the 1982 season. Now he’s a fixture.
 
Players come and go. Jerry Howarth stays.
 
Cheek won the Ford C. Frick award for broadcasting excellence in Cooperstown in 2013 and one day Howarth should, too. Living in Etobicoke, Howarth’s neighbor was George Gross, former sports editor of the Toronto Sun who founded Sports Media Canada. Howarth singled out his partner Joe Siddall from Windsor in the crowd along with Nelson Millman, former FAN boss, and the legendary Fergie Olver among others.
 
The other awards went to (click here) the Hon. Douglas H. Mitchell, Frank Gunn, Lori Ewing, Masai Ujiri, John Badham, Dave Perkins along with the families of the late George Dulmage, Graham Leggat and John Saunders.

Howarth’s son Joe and his wife, who graduated from Notre Dame and hope to one day have a football team with better than a 4-6 record, were on hand as was son Ben, who attended Purdue (3-7 for those of you tracking the wins and losses). 
 
What came to mind during Howarth’s speech was an email we received the day that heaped praise on the broadcaster after Jose Bautista homered off Sam Dyson in Game 5 of the American League Championship Series and then flipped his bat. At the time, the city and the country was grasped in Blue Jays fever. 
 
“It is pretty apparent,” wrote a veteran sandlot coach, “that with the Jays in the playoffs for the first time in 20 years our local broadcasters sometimes struggle talking about the details of the game 24/7. Jerry is not one of them. Bob McCown, Buck Martinez, Pat Tabler and Gregg Zaun know what they are talking about, yet Jerry clearly separates himself and rises above all the other voices on radio as the most knowledgeable baseball broadcaster in the country. It is not even close!  The man is a national treasure!” 
Howarth’s tale of giving Saint Mary all the credit had the timing of a speech delivered 20 times. Well, we’ve heard him speak plenty, not to mention thousands of games and we had never heard it before. 
 
So, thanks Saint Mary. 
 
Thanks for sending the little guy our way. 
 
Now make sure he takes out the garbage.