November 2, 2020

Official National Baseball Hall of Fame Press Release

2021 Ford C. Frick Award Ballot Finalized

-- Winner to be Announced on Dec. 9 –

(COOPERSTOWN, NY) – Eight of the National Pastime’s most respected and familiar voices have been named as the finalists for the 2021 Ford C. Frick Award, presented annually for excellence in baseball broadcasting by the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum.

Candidates from the National Voices category will be considered for the 2021 Frick Award in accordance with the three-year Frick Award election cycle.

The eight finalists for the 2021 Frick Award are: Buddy Blattner, Joe Buck, Dave Campbell, Dizzy Dean, Don Drysdale, Ernesto Jerez, Al Michaels and Dan Shulman. The winner of the 2021 Frick Award will be announced on Dec. 9 and will be honored during the July 24 Awards Presentation as part of the July 23-26 Hall of Fame Weekend 2021 in Cooperstown, along with 2020 Frick Award winner Ken Harrelson.

All candidates except Blattner, Dean and Drysdale are living.

The Frick Award election cycle rotates annually among Major League Markets (team-specific announcers); National Voices (broadcasters whose contributions were realized on a national level); and Broadcasting Beginnings (early team voices and pioneers of baseball broadcasting). This cycle repeats every three years, with the Broadcasting Beginnings ballot to be reviewed in the fall of 2021 and the Major League Markets ballot to be reviewed in the fall of 2022.

As established by the Board of Directors, criteria for selection is as follows: “Commitment to excellence, quality of broadcasting abilities, reverence within the game, popularity with fans, and recognition by peers.”

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, Vin Scully, 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 2021 Frick Award ballot was created by a subcommittee of the voting electorate that included Costas, Matthews, Nadel, Smith and Van Horne.

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 eight finalists for the 2021 Frick Award:

- Blattner worked 26 seasons for outlets primarily in the 1950s and 1960s including the Liberty Game of the Day, Mutual Game of the Day, ABC Game of the Week, CBS Game of the Week and NBC, along with several stops with individual teams;

- Buck has been with Fox Sports for the last 25 seasons as the network’s lead baseball announcer after calling games for the Cardinals for 11 seasons, broadcasting 23 World Series along the way;

- 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 Giants, Padres and Rockies;

- Dean, elected to the Hall of Fame as a pitcher in 1953, made his mark as the voice of CBS’ Game of the Week from 1955-65 following several seasons with the Cardinals and Browns;

- Drysdale, elected to the Hall of Fame as a pitcher in 1984, called national games for ABC for 10 years starting in 1977, including working the network’s Monday Night Baseball package;

- Jerez has called Sunday Night Baseball games for ESPN Deportes for more than a quarter of a century; he has also called the All-Star Game, the World Series and the World Baseball Classic;

- Michaels called baseball games for 25 seasons with NBC (1972), ABC (1976-89) and The Baseball Network (1994-95), and drew assignments in seven World Series, six All-Star Games and eight LCS;

- Shulman handled play-by-play duties for ESPN’s Sunday Night Baseball package from 2011-17 and called games on ESPN Radio prior to that; he called games for Toronto Blue Jays from 1995-2001;

Additional information on the eight finalists can be found here.

The annual award is named in memory of Hall of Famer Ford C. Frick, renowned sportswriter, radio broadcaster, National League president and Baseball Commissioner.

For a list of past recipients, click on this link.

The National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum is an independent not-for-profit 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.