Voices of Summer: Ranking Baseball's 101 All-Time Best Announcers (49 page)

Denny loved their lure also the flat, tall-grass, and endless Plains'.
"That alone would keep me here." He would wait for symmetry to reassert
itself: Matthews, a Hall of Fame candidate: the Royals, again king of baseball's hill.

DENNY MARTNBWS

Raised on J Street on the west side of Pensacola, the Toronto Blue Jays' first
and still-only Voice formed a stickball league, used broom handles for hats,
and played and called baseball. Pre-air conditioned Florida opened doors and
windows. "Like it or not, the whole neighborhood heard me."

Tom Cheek's family bought its first TV the year that a neighbor got a tape
recorder. The conflux let him describe, say, Auburn-Alabama. Tom's heroes were
Curt Gowdy, Mel Allen, and Dizzy Dean. No one asked what he wanted to be.

In 1957-60, the U.S. Air Force sent Cheek to San Antonio, Cheyenne,
rural New York, and Africa. More than 10,000 died in an earthquake in
Morocco's resort of Agadar. To stop rats and flies, the military dropped corrosive lime and bulldozed rubble: Tom knew people buried alive. Discharged, a shaken motormouth missed his neighborhood. The bigs never
looked so good.

In Burlington, Vermont, Cheek aired college football and "a few Expo
games 11974-761." Once he visited Toronto. The city was renovating Exhibition Stadium. "I'm standing on Lakeshore Boulevard, and I tell [wife] Shirley,
`I've put in time. I'm going to be part of a team there some day."'

In 1891, Toronto's first team had left organized baseball. Six years later
the Eastern League moved to nearby Hanlon's Point. The city's minors died
in 1967. In 1977, the A.L. finally granted an expansion club. A baseball
bonanza, eh?-except that Exhibition had a football core.

Foul lines, bases, dirt squares, and plastic grass garbed the Canadian
Football League Argonauts' home. "Almost none of the seats," said skipper
Roy Hartsfield, "even faced the plate." A contest chose the Blue Jays' name.
Tom, 37, won CKFH Radio's audition. Like Toronto, he resolved to make up
for lost time.

Opening Day 1977: Jays 9, Chicago 5, before 44,649. Dinging twice, Doug
Ault is seldom heard from again. The wind chill hits 10 degrees Fahrenheit.
Snow off the lake covers the entire field. The hockey Maple Leafs' Zamboni
repeatedly clears the turf. Any Canadian could share: CBC TV linked Halifax
and Ketchikan.

Bust soon linked each year. Cheek had a saying: "Win a little, die a lot." Hartsfield's went: "If they beat us today, we'll strap 'em on again tomorrow." Tom (lid,
beating hoarseness, laryngitis, and even pneumonia. "At four in the morning I
wondered if I'd see the light of day." Would the Jays? last through 1981.

One night a young man dropped a foul. The next pitch was popped
there, too. Lunging, his girlfriend caught the ball. "Can you believe it?" Cheek
boomed. "He boots it and she catches it." Cooed sidekick Early Wynn: "She
probably knows all about his hands."

Each year Wynn drove a motorcoach from Florida. Looking out the window
in Coon Hollow, Tennessee, he saw his front wheel rolling beside the road.

"Your life must have flashed before your eyes," Cheek said. "What was
going through your mind?"

"Tom, I recalled the lines of that song," popular in the 1970s. "`You
picked a fine time to leave me, loose wheel."'

The something loose was a screw in pitcher Mark Lemongello. Once he
threw an ashtray at team president Peter Bavasi. Hartsfield told him to walk
a batter intentionally. The righty threw a pitch 15 feet to the right of catcher
Rick Cerone. A loyalist blessed any wheels staying on: Tom's included ABC
TV's 1980 and 1984 Winter Olympics.

In 1985, Toronto lost a 3-1 game L.C.S. lead. The '87ers blew a lastweek division: win a little, die a lot. Exhibition Stadium closed May 28,
1989. As usual, the seventh-inning stretch tooted a homey number. "Okayokay, Blue Jays-Blue Jays. Let's play-let's play BALL!" Cheek would call it
two miles and a roof away.

The first stadium with a retractable roof convened that June. Eight
Boeing 747s could fit in SkyDome. The first homestand, it began to rain. The
roof jammed without closing. Another night, millions of gnats forced umpire
Don Denkinger to put the top down. The hugs were not a monkey wrench:
Ontario loved its new-age digs.

Toronto won the East. In 1991, it hit a bigs-first four million attendance.
Joe Carter batted in the ninth inning, October 2. "A fly ball will win it!"
Tom said. "The winning run ninety feet away. The pitch-a swing-and a
base hit! And the Blue Jays are the champs of the American League East!"
Some edge: Like 1989, they lost each L.C.S. north-of-the-border game.

By contrast, Dave Winfield, 40, became the oldest I 00-RBI man in 1992.
On October 14, beating Oakland, 9-2, Toronto took its first flag. The Series
bound an ump-blown triple play, first non-U. S. team, and Winfield's Game
Six 1 1 th-inning up. "A base hit down the line!" said partner Jerry Howarth.
"White scores! . . . Alomar scores on Dave Winfield's two-base hit!" Blue
Jays, 4-3: Win a little, win it all.

"Everywhere people were thanking you," said Cheek, more thankful in 1993. Again Toronto made the Classic. Game Four welded Nutcase and roller
derby: record score (Jays 15, Phils 14), runs (29), and time (4:14). In Game
Six, hits splattered around the Dome. The Jays trailed, 6-5, two on, one out,
in the ninth.

Mitch Williams threw would-be strike three. "A swing-and a belt! Left
field! Way hack! Blue Jays win!" cried Tom. "Joe Carter hits a three-run home
run in the ninth inning as the Blue Jays have repeated as World Series champions! Touch 'em all, Joe! You'll never hit a bigger home run in your life!"
Carter leapt around the bases. Tom celebrated by becoming a Canadian citizen.

"It won't last," said Leafs head Cliff Fletcher, correctly. Hockey's huh hugging
baseball was a gas while it did. North America's largest McDonald's moored
the on-site 348-room SkyDome Hotel. One couple kept blinds open, making
love. "Forget my play-by-play," said Cheek. "The crowd liked theirs." Security
applied the kibosh, like the bigs' 1994 work stoppage.

"We didn't have baseball roots," he mused, "so it hurt more than, say,
Boston." The '93 Blue Jays drew a still A.L.-high 4,057,947. Now tickets lingered for a game. In 2003, I visited SkyDome: fewer than 10,000 paid. Even
the motormouth worried. "Anyone who loves this sport wants to see others
love it, too."

TOM CHEEK

Next year life, unlike love, changed. Cheek's father died, ending a 4,306-
consecutive-game streak. Ten days later, like a Hardy plot, Tom braved brain
tumor surgery. The Jays named him to their Level of Excellence-only the
third non-player. Voice cracking, Cheek hailed people he had never met.
"`Thank you [cards and calls] and God bless you."'

As a child, Tom deemed baseball "my main course." Many now preceded
theirs with a prayer.

August 1960. John F. Kennedy arrives two hours late for a flight from Washington to Hyannis Port. The Democratic presidential candidate enters the
plane, kisses his wife and sister, and shakes aides' hands. A stewardess brings
clam chowder. A barber begins cutting hair. "It was almost as if those around
him were figures in tableaux who came alive only when Kennedy was in place
at the center," wrote Richard Reeves. "He was an artist who painted with
other people's lives."

Dave Niehaus grew up in a 1950s Indiana of farms and fields and boys
playing basketball. Often he visited the Palace Pool Room in Princeton, current pop. 8,175. Each inning a man, dipping chalk into water, posted a tickertape score on the chalkboard. Dried, it illumined, say, Cardinals-Cubs. "I
can still see the brilliant white against the dark."

At night, Dave sipped lemonade, caught fireflies, and heard Harry Caray
on the porch. In 1957, he graduated from Indiana University, joined the military, and did Armed Forces Radio. "I'd call games fromYankee Stadium," then
Dodger Stadium and Big A. Taking an apartment in North Hollywood,
Niehaus befriended unknown actor Jim Nabors: surprise, surprise, surprise.

In 1977, Dave fashioned the Mariners' Northwest Opening-their
first/still-only Voice. "It's been a wild, woolly Pier Six brawl," Niehaus said
one night, "and the bullies so far have been the Kansas City Royals." Number
One on this Dave's List: shunning muted tints for hold pastels.

"Say Dave, you think Seattle," said Caray. Many recall his rowing before the
expansion M's set sail. In 1969 and 1973, Niehaus and Don Drysdale, respectively, joined Dick Enberg. Their Halos' Magi worshiped a deity. "Scully started
the West Coast tradition of don't cheerlead or make excuses," said Dave. How
good were they? "Three of us opposed Vin-and lived to tell the tale."

"I'm going to have dinner tonight at Singer's house," Drysdale once said,
apocryphally.

"Bill Singer, the pitcher?" Niehaus said.

"No, Dave," said Big D. "The Singer is Frank Sinatra."

In 1977, the bigs reclaimed Seattle. "[Owner] Danny Kaye knew Dave on
the Angels [also, Rams football and UCLA hoops]," said Dick, "and offered
him the job." He balked. Kaye persisted. Dave finally embraced Puget Sound.
"I sit on my deck watching boats on the lake [Sammamish], listening to birds.
It comes to us from God." Godawfulness sprang from what Niehaus dubbed
The Tomb.

"A large mausoleum that gives ... the impression of being a poorly lit,
damp basement with a beat-up old pool table in the middle," Newsday dubbed
the Kingdome, opening April 6, 1977. "People ask my favorite memory,"
Dave said. "It's that night-against the Angels." Later the roof leaked. Balls
struck speakers, hit support wires, and entangled streamers.

The ceiling was built to dim the echo of dinky crowds. Designers knew
their team. "It was so quiet," said outfielder Jay Buhner, "you could hear fans
knocking you." Most slowly warmed to Niehaus. "People had wanted a local
guy." He never blamed Seattle. "People knocked us as a baseball town. I'd say,
`You fans don't owe us anything, we owe you a team."'

Dave's "My, oh, my!" rose at Anaheim. His early tater call was duller:
"It's gone!" In 1978, hearing Seals and Crofts, he affixed "Fly Away" to each
M's dinner. S&C also sang "Summer Breeze." Lenny Randle's turned personal. A batter bunted toward third base. "Lenny knew the Kingdome's flat
on the base paths. So he gets on all fours trying to blow the ball foul."

"We might be stuck in traffic or mowing the lawn," the Post-Intelligencer
said, "but where we really are is the Kingdome because Niehaus takes us
there." Refusing to fly away was the Mariners' ill-wind.

Seattle flunked .500 its first 14 years. "Oh, for a place like Fenway," Dave
dreamt amid the mourning. "I genuflect when I walk through the gates.You see
where Ted Williams played." In 1980-81, he saw M's manager Maury Wills.

Once the not-exactly-a-workaholic spotted Dave and partner Ken
Wilson entering the clubhouse. "Fellows," he said, "why don't you write me
up a batting order for tonight." Later Maury left an exhibition to fly to L.A.
"He wanted to be with his girlfriend," said Niehaus, "and left us without a
manager.

Another skipper closed a year with four straight victories. Dick Williams wasn't fooled. "Know what?" he told a friend. "We're still horseshit." Their
announcer was a stud. "[Despite] virtually nothing to recommend them," said
a writer, the M's percentage of radios in use was baseball's best.

"I've had offers to leave, but why be miserable in NewYork or Chicago?"
said Dave. "I want to be here when we turn around." Williams was more
prosaic: "When today stinks, you look to tomorrow."

In 1989, Seattle called up Ken Griffey, Jr., 19, son of the Reds outfielder. Two
years later, the Mariners finally made .500, drew a record 2,147,905, and
vaunted junior's franchise-high .327. Griffey smacked 40 homers before the
August 1994 strike. A year later, the Mariners asked the state legislature to
build a park. Pols snorted a belly laugh. "We had no leverage," said Niehaus,
who found that in its 19th year a team's luck could turn.