‘It’s incredibly humbling’: Toronto Blue Jays’ PA announcer is originally from northern Ontario
He’s done the job for 20 years now, but Tim Langton has been reading and rereading his scripts this week.
After all, his voice has never been heard during a World Series game before.
“It’s incredibly humbling considering where I come from — a small radio station in northern Ontario,” he said.
Langton, who has been the Toronto Blue Jays’ public address announcer since 2005, grew up in Kirkland Lake, where his dad taught at the high school and his mom worked “across the street” at the hospital.
He said that in his final year of high school, he was a “couple of credits short” of graduating, and was considering enlisting in the military, when an opportunity came up to read news part time at local radio station CJKL.
Langton ended up working the morning shift, never graduated high school and began a radio career that took him across the country.
“Saskatchewan, Elliot Lake, Midland, Sudbury, North Bay, back to Sudbury, to Barrie and then winding up in the audio department at Skydome in 1997,” he remembered.
In 2005, he was asked to become the third public address announcer in the history of the Blue Jays.
“What an honour and a privilege, and to this day, I can’t believe I’m doing it,” Langton said, remembering being “incredibly nervous” for his first game.
He said he loved watching Blue Jays greats Carlos Delgado and Roy Halladay, and these days has lots of fun rolling his Rs when he introduces George Springer or Vladimir Guerrero Jr.
Another favourite memory is from the 2016 playoffs, when right before he hit a game-winning walk-off home run, Toronto slugger Edwin Encarnacion hit a foul ball right into the announcer’s booth, through a window Langton likes to keep open.
“Kind of smashed up my finger trying to catch it,” he said.
But Langton said it is a job, and he can’t just relax and watch the game.
“When I was first learning how to do this, you look away for a second and something would happen and next thing you know there’s another batter up there and you’ve missed introducing him,” he said.
“And that’s a terrible feeling.”
George Springer celebrates after hitting a three-run home run in the seventh inning against the Seattle Mariners during Game 7 of the ALCS (Nick Turchiaro/Imagn Images via Reuters)
Langton said that for the past 15 years, he’s followed the action by filling out an old-fashioned baseball scorecard, just to “keep his head in the game.”
On top of introducing each batter, setting up the national anthems and making “commercial announcements,” one of his favourite jobs is pressing the button to sound a horn when the Jays hit a home run— like the one Springer hit in Game 7 of the American League Championship Series to put the Jays ahead and wrap up their spots in the World Series.
“It’s exciting, I mean, there’s still work to do. I mean, even after George’s home run the other night, I don’t get to watch the celebrations and what’s going on on the field, because we gotta get back to work and introduce the next guy and keep the flow going,” Langton said.
“So I wind up coming home and watching the replays on TV.”
Langton said he’s never heard Rogers Centre so loud and has been drowned out by the fans “every game of the playoffs so far.”
“It’s basically our job to keep the energy level up. And we’ve had good success this season,” he said.
“In a way, the PA announcer is a character, because I don’t talk like that. I’m not that in-your-face normally. So it’s kind of a character that I’ve developed. He’s a little bit cocky, because hey, it’s our Blue Jays, and big and loud.”
