White Sox broadcaster Steve Stone and Cubs announcer Pat Hughes are among 10 nominees for the Ford Frick Award for excellence in baseball broadcasting by the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum.
Stone has worked 35 seasons on TV in Chicago, 20 with the Cubs and the last 15 with the 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.
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.
Joining Hughes and Stone among the finalists: Dave Campbell, Joe Castiglione, Gary Cohen, Jacques Doucet, Tom Hamilton, Jerry Howarth, Ernie Johnson Sr. and Duane Kuiper.
“I’m honored to be considered with the other nine,” Stone told the Sun-Times. “Reading the list, they are all special broadcasters. Everybody on there is worthy of inclusion. Just to see my name put next to some of those other guys is wonderful.”
The winner 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.
Stone’s former broadcast partner, Ken Harrelson, won the award in 2020.
The ballot was created by a subcommittee of the voting electorate that included Harrelson and past Frick honorees Marty Brennaman and Eric Nadel and broadcast historians David J. Halberstam and Curt Smith.
