10 broadcasters up for Hall of Fame's Frick Award
Ten of the National Pastime’s most beloved voices have been named as the finalists for the 2024 Ford C. Frick Award, presented annually for excellence in baseball broadcasting by the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum.
This ballot will mark the second of four consecutive elections featuring a composite ballot of local and national voices whose broadcast careers have extended into, or began following, the advent of the Wild Card in 1994. This will be followed by a fifth year featuring a ballot of candidates whose broadcasting careers concluded prior to the Wild Card Era. Ballots of local and national voices in the Wild Card Era will continue with the Awards in 2025 and 2026 before the pre-Wild Card Era ballot is considered for the 2027 Award. The cycle then repeats.
The ballot consists of 10 candidates, including a requirement that at least one candidate be a foreign language broadcaster.
The 10 finalists for the 2024 Frick Award are: Joe Buck, Joe Castiglione, Gary Cohen, Jacques Doucet, Tom Hamilton, Ernie Johnson Sr., Ken Korach, Mike Krukow, Duane Kuiper and Dan Shulman. The winner of the 2024 Frick Award will be announced on Dec. 6 at baseball’s Winter Meetings in Nashville, Tenn., and will be honored during the July 20 Awards Presentation as part of the July 19-22 Hall of Fame Weekend 2024 in Cooperstown. All of the 2024 Frick Award candidates are living except for Johnson.
Criteria for selection is as follows: “Commitment to excellence, quality of broadcasting abilities, reverence within the game, popularity with fans, and recognition by peers.”
To be considered, an active or retired broadcaster must have a minimum of 10 years of continuous major league broadcast service with a ball club, network, or a combination of the two.
The 2024 Frick Award ballot was created by a subcommittee of the voting electorate that included past Frick honorees Marty Brennaman, Bob Costas and Pat Hughes, and broadcast historians David J. Halberstam and Curt Smith.
Final voting for the 2024 Frick Award will be conducted by an electorate comprised of the 12 living Frick Award recipients and three broadcast historians/columnists, including past Frick honorees Brennaman, Costas, Ken Harrelson, Hughes, Jaime Jarrín, Tony Kubek, Denny Matthews, Al Michaels, Jon Miller, Eric Nadel, Bob Uecker and Dave Van Horne, and historians/columnists Halberstam (historian), Barry Horn (formerly of the Dallas Morning News), and Smith (historian).
The 10 finalists for the 2024 Frick Award:
- Buck called games for Fox Sports for 26 seasons as the network’s lead baseball announcer after calling games for the Cardinals for 17 1/2 seasons, broadcasting 24 World Series along the way.
- Castiglione has spent 44 years calling big league games, the last 41 as the Red Sox’s lead radio voice.
- Cohen has spent the last 35 years with the Mets, and currently serves as the team’s TV play-by-play voice on SNY.
- Doucet spent 33 years broadcasting for the Expos as the play-by-play radio voice on their French network (1969-2004), and he returned to the booth in 2012 as the Blue Jays’ French-speaking TV voice.
- Hamilton has called Guardians games on radio for 34 seasons, including the team’s three World Series appearances in that span.
- Johnson called Braves games for 35 seasons from 1962-91 and from 1995-99 following nine seasons as a big league pitcher that included a World Series ring with the 1957 Braves.
- Korach has been heard on Athletics’ radio for the last 28 years following a four-year stint with the White Sox, serving as Oakland’s lead radio voice for the last 18 seasons.
- Krukow has called games on television for the Giants for the last 33 seasons, including the last 28 on the radio following a 14-year pitching career with the Cubs, Phillies and Giants.
- Kuiper has called games for 38 seasons, including 37 with the Giants on both radio and TV following 12 seasons with Cleveland and San Francisco as a second baseman.
- Shulman handled play-by-play duties for ESPN’s Sunday Night Baseball package from 2011-17 and called games on ESPN Radio prior to that; he called games for Toronto Blue Jays from 1995-2001 before returning in 2016 to call games for Sportsnet.
Additional information on the 10 finalists can be found at baseballhall.org/frickaward2024.
The annual award is named in memory of Hall of Famer Ford C. Frick, renowned sportswriter, radio broadcaster, National League president and MLB Commissioner.
For a roster of past recipients of the Ford C. Frick Award, please click here.