A smattering of hometown voices had been finalists for the 2025 Ford C. Frick Award, introduced yearly for excellence in broadcasting by the Nationwide Baseball Corridor of Fame, but it surely’s the Guardians’ Tom Hamilton who can be inducted into Cooperstown subsequent July.
Gary Cohen, who calls Mets video games for SNY, John Sterling, the longtime radio play-by-play announcer for the Yankees, and Dave Sims, Sterling’s successor who simply arrived from the Seattle Mariners, had been additionally up for the award.
Different finalists included Skip Caray, Rene Cardenas, Jacques Doucet, Ernie Johnson Sr., Mike Krukow and Duane Kuiper.
Hamilton, who has spent 35 years in Cleveland’s radio sales space and joins TV analyst Rick Manning because the longest-tenured broadcaster in group historical past, was chosen because the Frick Award winner due to “his knowledgeable play-by-play and passionate calls of some of the franchise’s most historic moments,” Josh Rawitch, president of the Nationwide Baseball Corridor of Fame and Museum mentioned in an announcement launched Wednesday.
“With an unmatched love for Cleveland, Tom Hamilton has narrated the story of one of the franchise’s most successful eras since joining the team’s broadcast crew in 1990. Guardians fans adopted Tom as one of their own as soon as he arrived in Cleveland … For a generation of listeners, Tom Hamilton is the very definition of Cleveland baseball,” Rawitch mentioned.
In contrast to his bigger market friends within the Huge Apple, Hamilton spent the whole thing of his profession within the Midwest.
Cohen, the 66-year-old Queens native, got here up calling video games for minor league baseball golf equipment up and down the east coast earlier than turning into the Mets play-by-play announcer. He spent 17 years as a member of the WFAN radio group and has been calling video games on TV since 2006.
At across the similar time, and proper throughout the East River, a Manhannite named John Sterling was arising calling contests in a bunch of now-defunct leagues together with the WHA, WFL and ABA. In 1989, Sterling assumed radio duties on WABC Radio and, in 2013, moved to WFAN.
In April 2024, Sterling, 86, introduced he could be retiring instantly due to well being points.
The longtime Yankees voice returned briefly for the Bombers’ 2024 playoff run earlier than hanging up the mic for good.
After the season ended, in November 2024, WFAN introduced they’d secured Sterling’s everlasting substitute, naming Mariners’ TV announcer Dave Sims, 71, as their new play-by-play broadcaster.
Sims, who labored for WFAN and WCBS-TV earlier in his profession, will be part of Suzyn Waldman within the sales space on a full-time foundation starting in 2025.
