The Toronto Blue Jays are playing hot these days.

And there is sizzling news that a Jays retired play-by-play man is soon having his namesake Jerry Howarth Drive open to traffic in the Six Points Interchange area of Etobicoke.

Howarth, 75, has been living in south Etobicoke for more than 30 years and coached his son’s baseball teams at a number of area high schools.

The long-time resident of Etobicoke has been the radio voice of Blue Jays for 36 years. He retired in 2018. He was inducted into the Etobicoke Sports Hall of Fame in 2000.

Jerry Howarth Drive is one of three streets constructed in the redevelopment, which after community council approval; were named Adobigok Pathway, Biindagen Trail and Jerry Howarth Drive. Adobigok means where the alders grow and Biindagen means “enter,” “come in,” or “welcome.”

“The City of Toronto’s work to reconstruct the six Points Interchange is almost complete,” Councillor Mark Grimes said in his weekly bulletin.

The work included a realignment of Dundas Street West, extension of Bloor Street West and regrading of Kipling Avenue; new traffic signals, widened sidewalks with trees and plantings and physically separated and painted bike lanes.

A plan to name the road after the famed Blue Jays announcer has been in the works for two years. An attempt to name a street after former Etobicoke Councillor and Mayor Rob Ford was dismissed.

Howarth, who was born in York, Penn., and raised in San Francisco, was an avid sports fan. He graduated with a degree in Economics from the University of Santa Clara in 1968, then served two years as an officer in the U.S. Army. He launched his career as a sportscaster in 1974 by calling play-by-play action for AAA baseball’s Tacoma Twins of the Pacific Coast League, as well as basketball and football for the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, Washington.

He started a new career in 1981 in Toronto where he worked part of the 1981 Blue Jays season as a commentator. In 1982, he joined Tom Cheek as full-time play-by-play partner. For the next 23 years, “Tom and Jerry” would be the radio voices of the Blue Jays. Their partnership covered the rise of the Blue Jays through the 1980s with back to back World Series Championships in 1992 and 1993.

In 2004, Cheek was diagnosed with brain cancer, but continued to call the games with Howarth. Cheek’s health continued to deteriorate eventually forcing him to stop broadcasting. Cheek died in October 2005.

Jerry loved Etobicoke and coached his sons in the Etobicoke Basketball Association from 1989 to 1997. He also served as a volunteer basketball coach at Islington Middle School, Etobicoke Collegiate Institute and Martingrove Collegiate Institute.

He enjoyed working with the Canadian Special Olympics and the 65 Roses Sports Club, which helps raise funds to fight cystic fibrosis.

Jerry and his family became Canadian citizens in 1994.

Jerry recently told the Toronto Star in an interview that he does not miss baseball and has been living a quiet life with Mary, his wife of 50 years. “I’ve been blessed, and that’s the bottom line,” he told the newspaper.