On Monday, the Baseball Hall of Fame announced the eight finalists for the 2021 Ford C. Frick award, awarded annually for “commitment to excellence, quality of broadcasting abilities, reverence within the game, popularity with fans, and recognition by peers.”
This year’s finalists, with 2021’s election cycle focusing on the “National Voices” category, are Buddy Blattner, Joe Buck, Dave Campbell, Dizzy Dean, Don Drysdale, Ernesto Jerez, Al Michaels, and Dan Shulman. Last year’s winner was Hawk Harrelson, while three years ago, the last time the award went to a National Voices nominee, Bob Costas won. Of this year’s eight nominees, five were nominated in 2017 – eventual winner Costas, the late Joe Morgan, and Pee Wee Reese fell off the ballot, replaced by Campbell, Jerez, and Shulman.
The winner will be announced on December 9th and will (along with Harrelson after the postponement of this summer’s ceremonies) be honored during the Hall of Fame induction ceremony this July.
Here’s the 15 person electorate that will decide the 2021 winner of the award. One living former winner (Vin Scully) is missing from the list, and I assume that’s just a typo on the part of the Hall of Fame.
Final voting for the 2021 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 Marty Brennaman, Bob Costas, Ken Harrelson, Jaime Jarrín, Tony Kubek, Denny Matthews, Tim McCarver, Jon Miller, Eric Nadel, , Bob Uecker and Dave Van Horne, and historians/columnists David J. Halberstam (historian), Barry Horn (formerly of the Dallas Morning News) and Curt Smith (historian).
The national bona fides of Buck and Shulman are well known, and while Michaels is a household name for his football work, he had a lengthy career calling baseball in the ’70s and ’80s. Jerez has been the Spanish voice of ESPN’s MLB coverage on ESPN Deportes for over 25 years, and has an amazing home run call. Drysdale called games for various teams for more than two decades, and was a national broadcaster for ABC for a decade. Dean called games for both St. Louis teams after his playing career prematurely ended, and also called the CBS Game of the Week in the 1950s and 60s. Campbell also had a long career as a national analyst for ESPN, in addition to local worth with several teams west of the Mississippi. Finally, there’s Blattner, who worked in St. Louis, Los Angeles, and Kansas City in addition to national stints at all three networks – ABC, CBS, and NBC.
As for the winner, I think this has to be Joe Buck’s year. In September, the Pro Football Hall of Fame announced that Buck would be honored with the Pete Rozelle award this summer. If baseball honored Buck in the same way, it would be a fitting feather in his cap. It’s not a question of “if” for Buck, it’s a question of “when,” and this is as good of a time as any.
