Hello, Friends!

Stories from My Life and Blue Jays Baseball

De: Jerry Howarth

Narrado por: Jerry Howarth

An honest memoir about life, family, and baseball from the longtime, legendary Toronto Blue Jays radio broadcaster

For 36 years, Jerry Howarth ushered in eternal hope each spring and thrived in the drive of each fall as the voice of the Toronto Blue Jays. In 1982, the lifelong avid sports fan joined Tom Cheek as full-time play-by-play radio announcer for the Blue Jays, and for the next 23 years, “Tom and Jerry” were the voices of the franchise.

Jerry became part of the fabric of a nation and a team, covering historic moments like the rise of the Blue Jays through the 1980s that culminated in back-to-back World Series Championships in 1992 and 1993. His Hall of Fame-worthy broadcasting career has been nothing short of legendary. When Jerry retired in February 2018, the tributes poured in and made one thing perfectly clear: Toronto baseball would never be the same.

Howarth brings together thoughts on life, family, work, and baseball. Featuring stories about everyone from Dave Stieb, Jack Morris, Duane Ward, Roberto Alomar, and Joe Carter to John Gibbons, Edwin Encarnacion, Josh Donaldson, and the late Roy Halladay, Hello, Friends! is a must-listen for sports fans everywhere.

©2019 Jerry Howarth (P)2019 ECW Press

Reseñas de la Crítica

“Howarth’s book will entertain baseball aficionados and especially delight Blue Jays fans.” (Publishers Weekly)

“Jerry Howarth is a Canadian national treasure and his story is tremendously inspiring. As joyful a person as I've ever met, Jerry made friends with millions of baseball fans during his long career and brought his warmth, humor, insights and descriptions into their living rooms. Readers of his story will have a further opportunity to revel in his positive outlook on life as well as countless fascinating memories.” (Eric Nadel, Texas Rangers radio broadcaster)

“Whether it was Blue Jays closer Tom Henke saying ‘Hellllllo, friends!’ when Jerry Howarth walked down the aisle on a team charter, an opposing player near the batting cage, or a 12-year-old self-broadcasting his sandlot game to his buddies, ‘Hello, friends!’ became Howarth’s trade mark. In fact, the two words are greeted with the same warmth and familiarity from coast to coast in Canada.” (Bob Elliott, sports journalist)

A treasure for Blue Jays fans

I grew up listening to Tom Cheek and Jerry Howarth and during long summers away from school they were the highlight of my day. Later as an adult, I've sat through dozens of games at the skydome with Jerry as my eyes making me part of the action with the rest of the crowd. I am blind and baseball on the radio is very precious to me. So it's impossible for me to give this book an objective rating.
I do think this book would be of great interest to Blue Jay fans, though not necessarily baseball fans more generally. Jerry describes his time in the booth chronologically. He mostly describes each season by discussing individual players and sharing a couple of memorable anecdotes about each one. There were definitely stories I had not heard him mention on the radio. He discusses his formative years for the first couple hours of the book, and his strong catholic faith is a theme throughout. . I particularly enjoyed when he discussed how his broadcasting style evolved. On this topic two stories stood out to me. He described doing game recreations at the radio station when his triple A team was on the road. He also discusses how sitting next to a blind organist at a particular ball park made his descriptions much more precise.
One gentle criticism is that minor errors occasionally appeared throughout the book, where Jerry would mention an incorrect date or state the wrong year of an event. These didn't take away from the enjoyment of the book, but I am disappointed that the producers of the audio book didn't catch these. I am assuming the print version is correct and Jerry, never having done an audio book before, simply misspoke. Also, though copyright rules may prevent this, it would have been amazing if the makers of the audio book could have imbedded some of Jerry's interviews or calls from the booth to enhance his stories.
Thank you Jerry for writing this book. I miss you and baseball games are not the same without you. enjoy retirement..

amazing

such a wonderful story teller. brings me back to my youth. i sure miss that voice. blue jay games aren’t the same without jerry.

A good book made better thanks to Jerry's reading

Lots of good stories on the Jays that I had forgotten...and inside baseball stuff that I had no idea.

Jerry does make reference to his faith a few times in the book... but it's pretty light dot-dot. so don't let that scare you off if that makes you uncomfortable.

To his credit, I never knew about Jerry's faith until this book - that's a pro.