Howarth - Hello, friends!: stories from my life and Blue Jays baseball

I love baseball and I love the Toronto Blue Jays, but I dont write about them. I write about leadership, and I was up against a deadline for my first book when I heard the news: Jerry Howarth was retiring.

I felt stunned, then emotional, then grateful for what he had given us all. I put the book aside and began writing what I know: a profile of someone who uses their gifts to celebrate and empower others. A profile of a leader.

I missed my deadline, but it felt good to celebrate someone whose career had touched me so significantly. I posted it online, hoping it would make my dad smile, and tried not to think about how different the upcoming season would sound.

Sure enough, the post made its way to Jerry, who reached out with a profoundly kind note. A few weeks later came a request I consider one of the great honours in my life: would I allow him to include it in his book? That couldnt be more Jerry: asking someone of whom most people have never heard to contribute to his book.

Most of the leadership on the planet comes from people who dont see themselves as leaders people who say theyre just doing their job but do so in ways that serve and strengthen our communities. They teach our children, staff our coffee shops, drive our buses, and in some rare cases they create shared experiences over the airwaves experiences that bring families, cities, and sometimes even entire countries together. Thats leadership. Thats Jerry Howarth.

Jerry Howarth is the radio voice of the Toronto Blue Jays, who were born six weeks after I was in 1977. My father was at each one of those births and has loved both of us ever since (I think). Naturally, his love of the Jays became mine.

Jerry joined the Jays broadcast team five years later in 1982 around the time I remember first hearing the Jays on the radio in the car or at the cottage with my dad. I had never been to a baseball game, and it would be a while before wed get them on television, so major league baseball was created for me through the voice of Jerry and his broadcast partner, Tom Cheek. I didnt know what my baseball heroes looked like, but I knew what it sounded like when they played.

Seeing my first game live wasnt exactly a letdown, but I wasnt used to having to watch the game instead of Tom and Jerry painting images in my mind. There werent stories and lessons during the breaks in the action. There was no explanation of obscure rules or insights that helped you better appreciate the beauty of what had just happened on the field. There were just people yelling and eating.

Live baseball didnt have a voice. And to me, baseball was supposed to have a voice.

You see, if youre a baseball fan, you dont remember moments you remember the calls of those moments, how they were described as they happened. As such, the voice of your team is the voice of your memories.

I witnessed Jose Bautistas bat flip live, yet my memory of that moment still features Jerrys call: Fly ball, deep left field! Yes sir! There. She. Goes!

When I heard the news of Jerrys retirement, I went online to watch his call of that moment again. The goosebumps came, as they always do. But for the first time, I realized something: in the absolute bedlam that followed in the midst of that deafening roar that I swear shook the concrete beneath my feet Jerry Howarth didnt say another word for almost a full minute.

I recently heard what has become one of my favourite leadership insights: In your life, you will be given countless opportunities to shut the hell up. Seize every single one that you can.

To have the power to be heard yet recognize your voice is not called for is a powerful skill for any leader, and there was Jerry Howarth demonstrating how it was done.

It suddenly occurred to me: its likely that only my mother and my father have spoken more words to me in my life than Jerry Howarth. If Ive grown up to share leadership insights, surely some of them were influenced by this man. What other leadership skills might he have helped teach me?