Know your Ford C. Frick Award Nominees

Voting continues as part of the process to select the nominees for the Ford C. Frick Award.

Just looking at three of the many broadcasters on the ballot.

Mike Hegan: Former Brewer player and broadcaster. He started out his playing career with the Yankees. In 1969, he was a member of the Seattle Pilots. Then, made the move to Milwaukee to be an original Brewer. Hegan was sent to Oakland in the middle of the 1971 season and would win a World Series in 1972. He was sent back to the Yankees in 1973. In 1974, Hegan rejoined the Brewers and ended his playing career in 1977. During that last stint with the Brewers, Hegan became the first Brewer to hit for the cycle. (I'm pretty sure he was the first).

After retiring, Hegan moved into the Brewer television broadcast booth. If I am remembering this right, the Brewer games in the late 70s were on Channel 4 (WTMJ-TV, the NBC affiliate). Then, the games moved to Channel 18 (WVTV-TV, an independent station that was the home of The Bowling Game).

Hegan left the Brewers after the 1988 season. He joined the Indians in 1989 and has been there ever since on both radio and television.

Despite never playing for the Indians, Hegan did have a tie to the franchise before becoming their broadcaster. His father, Jim Hegan, was a catcher for Cleveland from 1941-1942 and 1946-1957.

Tony Kubek: A Milwaukee native who played for the Yankees from 1957-1965 and won the AL Rookie of the Year in 1957.

Kubek stepped into the NBC Game of the Week booth after retiring from the game. He worked many Fall Classics. He was also a member of the original TV crew for the Toronto Blue Jays. Kubek left national broadcasting when NBC lost the rights to baseball after the 1989 season. But, he orked for the Yankees on their telecasts from 1990-1994. Then, he retired.

He called 'The Sandberg Game' at Wrigley Field in 1984 with Bob Costas. But, his Wikipedia page has a good argument for him as at least a finalist for the award:

The Toronto Star said that Kubek "educated a whole generation of Canadian baseball fans without being condescending or simplistic."

Graham McNamee: The pioneer of broadcasters. As the quote from Dick Enberg goes at the top of the page where that link goes to: The father of us all.

Why is that appropriate? From his Wikipedia page:

Radio broadcasting of sporting events announcements were performed by a rotating group of liven up their broadcasts. He wasn't a baseball expert, but had a knack for conveying what he saw in great detail. What he became was baseball’s first was a new thing in the 1920’s. The play-by-playnewspaper writers. Their descriptions were matter-of-fact and boring at best. In 1923, McNamee was hired to help the sportswriterscolor commentator. He allowed the sights and sounds of the game to come into the homes of New Yorkers.

McNamee was the broadcaster on Westinghouse and NBC from 1923-1935. There is a little ore background on him at this link.

Curt Smith, who wrote about McNamee in his history of baseball broadcasting "Voices of the Game," told Radio World it was easy to see why McNamee developed such a huge following.

"He had a marvelous voice, he had a great ability to paint word pictures, to set a stage, set the scene. McNamee made (listeners) see it on the radio. He made it come alive. He certainly was not simply a cause of radio's development, but a great mirror."

...

His growing popularity in the 1920s created jealousy among competitors. Many print journalists resented that McNamee could reach a larger audience with one broadcast than they could with a week's worth of writing.

McNamee was known to take liberties to make a broadcast more dramatic. After sitting near the announcer during an event in 1927, sports journalist Ring Lardner wrote, "I don't know which game to write about; the one I saw or the one I heard Graham McNamee announce."

[Red] Barber said McNamee made mistakes, but owned up to them. McNamee, often working alone, did not have the support enjoyed by many of today's broadcasters.

Rather than try to cover up a mistake or lack of knowledge, said Barber, McNamee would laugh right on the air. "And the nation smiled ... knew he was human."

...

Indeed, network radio linked small towns to the rest of the world. Baseball Hall of Famer Curt Gowdy, who broadcast baseball for the Red Sox, NBC-TV's "Game of the Week and CBS Radio, remembers growing up in Wyoming, listening to McNamee broadcast the Rose Bowl and several World Series.

"He led the way in some instances," says Gowdy, but, chuckling, added, "He was better at describing a sunset at the Rose Bowl than the game."

Gowdy says McNamee may not have had a great knowledge of sports, but belongs in the Hall of Fame as a founding father of baseball broadcasting.