Baseball HOF releases names of the 10 nominees for the Ford Frick 2023 Ballot; Quite a competitive list

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 – in alphabetical order:

Dave Campbell 

Joe Castiglione

Gary Cohen

Jacques Doucet

Tom Hamilton

Jerry Howarth 

Pat Hughes

Ernie Johnson Sr

Duane Kuiper

Steve Stone

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The winner of the 2023 Frick Award will be announced on Dec. 7 at baseball’s Winter Meetings in San Diego and will be honored 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).