Howarth shares how his legendary broadcasting career began

Legendary Toronto Blue Jays play-by-play man Jerry Howarth (middle) accepts the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame’s Jack Graney Award from the Hall’s director of operations Scott Crawford in 2013. His wife, Mary, was also on the field for the presentation. Photo: Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame

December 2, 2019

By Elisabeth Rositsan

Canadian Baseball Network

After listening to perfectly flowing words pieced together throughout Blue Jays broadcasts, it is hard to believe that it wasn’t always this easy for Jerry Howarth.

In 1980, Howarth made his major league debut in the Blue Jays radio booth calling three games. Two years later, he was hired full-time beginning his 36-year broadcasting career.

However, Howarth’s path began far away from Canada’s largest city. He grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area in Marin County, where he graduated from Novato High School and then started his higher education studies at Santa Clara University.

Surprising to many would be the fact that Howarth majored in accounting and later switched to economics, graduating with a degree in economics and a minor in philosophy.

“I always tell people that I thought I was the one who put Santa Clara on the map until basketball star Steve Nash came along,” Howarth says jokingly.

“I didn’t know what I wanted to do until I was 25 years old and began my first job as the athletic department fundraiser at Santa Clara,” added Howarth.

He started to test his abilities as a broadcaster by taping Santa Clara football and basketball games doing the play-by-play.

“For me, the preparation for any job always gets back to the Nike commercial and their slogan ‘Just Do It,’” says Howarth. “I taped games for two years at Santa Clara to see if I could actually just do it."

After doing this for two years, he moved on to broadcast triple-A games for another five years to see if he was ready to pursue his dreams.

Like most success stories, Howarth honed his skills through hard work and dedication to something he wholeheartedly loved. After five years of testing his abilities, he finally felt fundamentally sound to go on the air as a major league broadcaster.

Then it was all about finding the right opportunity.

“I followed my heart to thoroughly enjoy each day and all that went along with doing that,” says Howarth. “Offering it all up to God as a way of saying thank you.”

While living in Salt Lake City, Utah, he called triple-A games for the Salt Lake Gulls while also helping to run the team as the assistant general manager. During that time the Blue Jays came into existence. Howarth saw an opportunity and went for it.

Unfortunately, he didn’t get the job, but he was told to stay in touch because the Blue Jays’ radio network had taken an interest in his work. Five years later Howarth was hired full-time to work with Tom Cheek calling Blue Jays games. The “Tom and Jerry” duo was born which led to a wonderful 36-year career.

Howarth was dedicated to improving and delivering the best content on a daily basis.

“I learned that the best preparation for each game was doing my homework on a daily basis and paying attention to detail for each and every broadcast,” says Howarth.

While Howarth had an outstanding career and was recognized all across Canada as one of the best baseball broadcasters, for him, it was always about the people listening and hearing his stories.

“The greatest reward for me in my career was the realization that I had become a part of everyone’s family across Canada,” he said.