MINNEAPOLIS -- A lifetime of Twins baseball is worthy of a lifetime achievement award.
The Twins organization and the Twin Cities chapter of the Baseball Writers’ Association of America announced on Tuesday that longtime play-by-play announcer Dick Bremer, who will transition to a special assistant role in the front office, has been named the 2023 winner of the Herb Carneal Lifetime Achievement Award as part of the 19th annual Diamond Awards.
The Twins will also honor Frank White as this year’s Terry Ryan Play Ball! Minnesota Award winner for White’s work as a historian focused on the contributions and history of Black baseball in the area while he immersed himself in the community, including in his role as the head of the Twins’ Reviving Baseball in Inner Cities (RBI) program for 23 years.
Bremer, White and the numerous other recipients of the Diamond Awards will be honored at a banquet and fundraiser on Jan. 25, 2024, as part of the 19th annual Diamond Awards celebration at The Armory in Minneapolis. All proceeds, as always, will benefit research in brain, nerve and muscle disorders, with nearly $4 million raised since the event’s introduction.
Bremer’s lifetime achievement award will put him in an elite echelon of people who have deeply impacted the Twins’ franchise -- a list that features, among others, four members of the National Baseball Hall of Fame, broadcasting legend John Gordon and the most decorated members from the history of the Twins’ front office.
The award most recently went to Minnesota sports media dean Patrick Reusse in 2022 and late longtime scouting director Mike Radcliff in ‘21.
The Twins announced in October that Bremer will be transitioning out of the broadcast booth and into a special assistant and ambassador role in the front office, concluding a 40-year career behind the microphone that made him the longest-tenured television broadcaster for a single team in MLB.
A native of tiny Dumont, Minn., in the extreme western part of the state, Bremer became a Twins fan as a young child as soon as the franchise relocated from Washington D.C. in 1961. Following his graduation from St. Cloud State University, Bremer’s Twins career began in play-by-play for Spectrum Sports from 1983-85, then continued from 1987-2023, most recently for Bally Sports North.
White retired from his role as head of the Twins’ RBI program this year, which he did alongside his work with the city of Richfield and as a youth basketball referee -- in addition to his award-winning historian work as the leader of the Minnesota Black Baseball Project. Born and raised in St. Paul’s Rondo neighborhood, White became one of the foremost baseball historians in the state.