Tom Hamilton named 2025 Ford C. Frick Award winner for broadcasting excellence

(COOPERSTOWN, NY) – Tom Hamilton, who has called Cleveland Guardians games on the radio for 35 seasons, has been selected as the 2025 recipient of the Ford C. Frick Award, presented annually for excellence in broadcasting by the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum.

Hamilton will be honored during the Hall of Fame Awards Presentation as part of Hall of Fame Weekend, July 25-28, 2025. Hamilton becomes the 49th winner of the Frick Award, as he earned the highest point total in a vote conducted by the Hall of Fame’s 16-member Frick Award Committee.

The final ballot featured broadcasters whose main contributions came as local and national voices and whose careers began after, or extended into, the Wild Card Era. The 10 finalists were: Skip Caray, Rene Cardenas, Gary Cohen, Jacques Doucet, Ernie Johnson Sr., Mike Krukow, Duane Kuiper, Dave Sims, John Sterling and Hamilton.

“With an unmatched love for Cleveland, Tom Hamilton has narrated the story of one of the franchise’s most successful eras since joining the team’s broadcast crew in 1990,” said Josh Rawitch, President of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum. “Guardians fans adopted Tom as one of their own as soon as he arrived in Cleveland thanks to his knowledgeable play-by-play and passionate calls of some of the franchise’s most historic moments. For a generation of listeners, Tom Hamilton is the very definition of Cleveland baseball.”

Born Aug. 19, 1954, in Waterloo, Wis., Hamilton came to Cleveland in 1990 after spending the previous three years as the voice of the Triple-A Columbus Clippers. Teaming with the franchise’s beloved former pitcher Herb Score in the broadcast booth, Hamilton soon had a front-row seat to call a resurgent team that advanced to the World Series in both 1995 and 1997.

Assuming duties as the voice of the franchise following Score’s retirement in 1997, Hamilton has partnered with Mike Hegan, Dave Nelson, Jim Rosenhaus and Matt Underwood during the ensuing decades on WWWE-AM and WTAM-AM, the longtime radio home of the Guardians.

A seven-time winner of the Ohio Sportscaster of the Year Award, Hamilton has called more than 100 postseason games and is the only broadcaster in franchise history to call three different Cleveland World Series teams.

The 16-member Frick Award voting electorate, comprised of the 13 living recipients and three broadcast historians/columnists, includes Frick honorees Marty Brennaman, Joe Castiglione, Bob Costas, Ken Harrelson, Pat Hughes, Jaime Jarrín, Tony Kubek, Denny Matthews, Al Michaels, 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 list of 10 Frick Award finalists was constructed by a subcommittee of the electorate that included Brennaman, Castiglione, Nadel, Halberstam and Smith. The Ford C. Frick Award is voted upon annually and is named in memory of the sportswriter, radio broadcaster, National League president, baseball commissioner and co-founder of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum. Frick was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1970.

For a complete list of Frick Award winners, click here.

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.”  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 Frick Award election cycle rotates between a composite ballot featuring local and national voices whose careers began after, or extended into, the Wild Card Era in four consecutive years, followed by a fifth year featuring a ballot of candidates whose broadcasting careers concluded prior to the advent of the Wild Card Era in 1994. The cycle began with the 2023 Frick Award, with composite ballots of local and national voices continuing with the Awards through 2026 before the pre-Wild Card Era ballot is considered for the 2027 Award. The cycle then repeats.