Ten of the National Pastime’s most honored and respected voices have been named as the finalists for the 2025 Ford C. Frick Award, presented annually for excellence in baseball broadcasting by the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum.
This ballot will mark the third of four consecutive elections 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. The cycle then repeats.
The ballot consists of 10 candidates, including a requirement that at least one candidate be a foreign language broadcaster.
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 2025 Frick Award ballot was created by a subcommittee of the voting electorate that included past Frick honorees Marty Brennaman, Joe Castiglione and Eric Nadel, and broadcast historians David J. Halberstam and Curt Smith.
Final voting for the 2025 Frick Award will be conducted by an electorate comprised of the 13 living Frick Award recipients and three broadcast historians/columnists, including past Frick honorees Brennaman, Castiglione, Bob Costas, Ken Harrelson, Pat Hughes, Jaime Jarrín, Tony Kubek, Denny Matthews, 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 2025 Frick Award:
- Caray called Braves games on TV for 33 seasons for TBS from 1976-2008 and was a six-time winner of the Georgia Sportscaster of the Year Award.
- Cardenas helped create the first Spanish-language MLB broadcast in 1958 with the Dodgers, working a total of 38 years for the Dodgers, Astros and Rangers.
- Cohen has spent the last 36 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 35 seasons, including the team’s three World Series appearances in that span.
- 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.
- Krukow has called games on television for the Giants for the last 34 seasons, including the last 29 on the radio following a 14-year pitching career with the Cubs, Phillies and Giants.
- Kuiper has called games for 39 seasons, including 38 with the Giants on both radio and TV following 12 seasons with Cleveland and San Francisco as a second baseman.
- Sims has called Mariners games on television for the last 20 years, earning three consecutive Washington Sportscaster of the Year Awards (2018-20) from the National Sports Media Association.
- Sterling called Yankees games on the radio for 36 years before retiring in 2024 following stints with Atlanta’s TBS and WSB Radio, where he called Hawks basketball (1981-89) and Braves games (1982-87).
Additional information on the 10 finalists can be found at baseballhall.org/frickaward2025.
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