Doucet, Howarth named 2023 Ford C. Frick Award finalists
Legendary Montreal Expos broadcaster Jacques Doucet and legendary Toronto Blue Jays broadcaster Jerry Howarth have been named finalists for the National Baseball Hall of Fame’s 2023 Ford C. Frick Award.
October 5, 2022
Official National Baseball Hall of Fame News Release
(COOPERSTOWN, NY) – Ten of the National Pastime’s most beloved voices have been named as the finalists for the 2023 Ford C. Frick Award, presented annually for excellence in baseball broadcasting by the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum.
A new five-year Frick Award election cycle was established by the Hall of Fame’s Board of Directors in April 2022. It begins with four years featuring a composite ballot of local and national voices whose broadcast careers have extended into, or began following, the advent of the Wild Card in 1994. This will be followed by a fifth year featuring a ballot of candidates whose broadcasting careers concluded prior to the Wild Card Era. This year’s vote marks the start of the cycle, with ballots of local and national voices continuing with the Awards in 2024, 2025 and 2026 before the pre-Wild Card Era ballot is considered for the 2027 Award. The cycle then repeats.
A ballot of 10 candidates will now be set, up from eight in the previous voting system. There will now be a requirement that at least one candidate be a foreign language broadcaster.
The 10 finalists for the 2023 Frick Award are: Dave Campbell, Joe Castiglione, Gary Cohen, Jacques Doucet, Tom Hamilton, Jerry Howarth, Pat Hughes, Ernie Johnson Sr., Duane Kuiper and Steve Stone. The winner of the 2023 Frick Award will be announced on Dec. 7 at baseball’s Winter Meetings in San Diego and will be honoured during the July 22 Awards Presentation as part of the July 21-24 Hall of Fame Weekend 2023 in Cooperstown. All of the 2023 Frick Award candidates are living except for Johnson.
Criteria for selection is as follows: “Commitment to excellence, quality of broadcasting abilities, reverence within the game, popularity with fans, and recognition by peers.”
To be considered, an active or retired broadcaster must have a minimum of 10 years of continuous major league broadcast service with a ball club, network, or a combination of the two.
The 2023 Frick Award ballot was created by a subcommittee of the voting electorate that included past Frick honorees Marty Brennaman, Ken Harrelson and Eric Nadel, and broadcast historians David J. Halberstam and Curt Smith.
Final voting for the 2023 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 Brennaman, Bob Costas, Harrelson, Jaime Jarrín, Tony Kubek, Denny Matthews, Tim McCarver, Al Michaels, Jon Miller, Nadel, Bob Uecker and Dave Van Horne, and historians/columnists Halberstam (historian), Barry Horn (formerly of the Dallas Morning News), and Smith (historian).
The 10 finalists for the 2023 Frick Award:
- Campbell worked at ESPN from 1990-2008 following an eight-year career in the big leagues as an infielder, serving as both play-by-play voice and analyst; he also called games for the Giants, Padres and Rockies.
- Castiglione has spent 43 years calling big league games, the last 40 as the Red Sox’s lead radio voice.
- Cohen has spent the last 34 years with the Mets, and currently serves as the team’s TV play-by-play voice on SNY.
- Doucet spent 33 years broadcasting for the Expos as the play-by-play radio voice on their French network (1969-2004), and he returned to the booth in 2012 as the Blue Jays’ French-speaking TV voice.
- Hamilton has called Guardians games on radio for 33 seasons, including the team’s three World Series appearances in that span.
- Howarth called Blue Jays games for 37 years from 1981-2017 as the team’s radio play-by-play voice after beginning his career calling Triple-A games in Tacoma and Salt Lake City in the 1970s.
- Hughes has called MLB games for 40 seasons, starting with the Twins in 1983 before working Brewers games from 1984-95 and serving as the Cubs’ radio voice for the last 27 seasons.
- Johnson called Braves games for 35 seasons from 1962-91 and from 1995-99 following nine seasons as a big league pitcher that included a World Series ring with the 1957 Braves.
- Kuiper has called games for 37 seasons, including 36 with the Giants on both radio and TV following 12 seasons with Cleveland and San Francisco as a second baseman.
- Stone has worked 35 seasons on TV in Chicago, 20 with the Cubs and the last 15 with the White Sox while also calling national broadcasts for ESPN and TBS. He pitched in the majors for 11 seasons and won the 1980 AL Cy Young Award with the Orioles.
Additional information on the 10 finalists can be found at baseballhall.org/frickaward2023.
The annual award is named in memory of Hall of Famer Ford C. Frick, renowned sportswriter, radio broadcaster, National League president and Baseball Commissioner. A list of the past recipients of the Ford C. Frick Award can be found here.
The National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum is an independent nonprofit educational institution, dedicated to fostering an appreciation of the historical development of baseball and its impact on our culture by collecting, preserving, exhibiting and interpreting its collections for a global audience as well as honoring those who have made outstanding contributions to our National Pastime. Opening its doors for the first time on June 12, 1939, the Hall of Fame has stood as the definitive repository of the game’s treasures and as a symbol of the most profound individual honor bestowed on an athlete. It is every fan’s "Field of Dreams," with its stories, legends and magic shared from generation to generation.