The newest winner of the
Ford C. Frick Award is Jon Miller.
Growing up in the Bay Area, Giants play-by-play man Jon Miller spent hundreds of days and nights listening to Russ Hodges and Lon Simmons call Giants games.
On Monday, Miller received the ultimate honor for a baseball broadcaster, one Hodges and Simmons each earned.
The National Baseball Hall of Fame announced that Miller was selected as the winner of the Ford C. Frick Award, given annually to recognize excellence in baseball broadcasting.
Miller, on vacation in Cartagena, Colombia, got the news in phone calls from Hall President Jeff Idelson and Hall of Fame second baseman Joe Morgan, Miller's partner on ESPN's "Sunday Night Baseball" telecasts for the past 20 seasons.
"The first people I actually thought of were Russ Hodges and Lon Simmons," Miller said in a conference call.
"It really is kind of astounding to me, that I'm the recipient of the award, because Russ and Lon were larger-than-life people to me. They were as big as the biggest movie stars to me."
I just hope that if Mr. Miller says the name of the man for whom the award is named, he has better luck than his time as a hockey announcer for the
California Golden Seals when he...well,
here is the excerpt from From Peanuts to the Pressbox by Eli Gold.
ESPN's Jon Miller admits that during the first game he called for the NHL's California Golden Seals way back when, he got tongue-tied while trying to say, "The puck fell." Instead he said...well, you know what he said. According to Miller, ever after he has advised aspiring hockey announcers to refer to the puck as "it".
No comments:
Post a Comment