Vote For Tom!

As you almost certainly already know by now, the fan balloting for the Ford C. Frick Award, the highest honour that baseball gives to its broadcasters, has begun.

For the entire month of September fans will be able to pick their top three of a huge list of potential nominees for the award, and when the votes are counted the top vote-getter will be added to the final ballot as the fans' choice. The list includes obvious, obvious, long-overdue winner, the late Tom Cheek-- plus our very deserving friend Jerry Howarth (not yet though, Jerry), and a host of other broadcasters with Toronto connections (Don Chevrier, Tony Kubek, Fergie Oliver, Dan Shulman).

Now, since I brought up Kubek, this is probably as good a time as any to mention an awesome New York Times blog post on him from back in July. Seems that the six-time World Series winner and four-time All-Star, who called games for the Jays from their inception until 1989, hasn't seen a major league game, even on television, since he retired from the Yankees broadcast booth in 1994. What?

Hmmm. Wait a second.

Actually, this probably isn't as good a time as any to mention Tony Kubek. In fact, this might be one of the worst times I could have possibly picked to go off on some meaningless tangent about Tony Kubek. Uhh, let's get back on track...

Be sure to vote for Tom every day in September. You can even click the handy link we've provided above the Boggs Head. It will take you right to the ballot.

Now... I don't have to explain to anybody why you should do this, right?

(NOTE: Jeez, maybe the Hall of Fame itself needs a quick lesson here, since they've oddly omitted any specific mention of Cheek's staggering streak of broadcasting 4,306 consecutive Jays games from his bio on their page of potential Frick nominees. They do mangle a sentence that vaguely mentions it, for what that's worth.)


The quickest among you may have noticed that this was originally part of the post below. Upon further review, I realized that the post was way too ridiculously long with this in it, and also that this topic deserves its own post anyway...

Hey, and here's an MLB.com fan chat with Tom, from April of 2002...
... and if that's not enough, listen to his most famous call (try to not get misty, tough guy).