Tom Hamilton, the radio play-by-play announcer for the Cleveland Guardians over the last 35 seasons, has been named the recipient of the 2025 Ford C. Frick Award for Broadcasting Excellence, granted annually by the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum. The longtime broadcaster is the 49th winner of the award in its history, earning the highest point total among the 16-member committee tasked with voting for the distinction. Hamilton will be honored as part of the Hall of Fame Weekend within its award presentation over the summer in Cooperstown, N.Y.
Criteria for the award, as established by the Board of Directors, is a “Commitment to excellence, quality of broadcasting abilities, reverence within the game, popularity with fans, and recognition by peers.” Hamilton is a sevent-ime winner of the Ohio Sportscaster of the Year award and is the only broadcaster in franchise history to call three different Cleveland teams that have made the World Series. Furthermore, he has called more than 100 postseason games and has worked with various partners, such as Mike Hegan, Dave Nelson, Jim Rosenhaus and Matt Underwood. Newsradio WTAM 1100, which is owned by iHeartMedia, has been the flagship radio station for the team since 1998.
“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,” Josh Rawitch, president of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, said in a statement. “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.”
Hamilton has been a finalist for the prestigious award three times before this year and becomes the fourth straight radio broadcaster to win the honor, following Jack Graney (2022), Pat Hughes (2023) and Joe Castiglione (2024). The 16-member voting electorate consists of the 13 living recipients and three broadcast historians/columnists, some of whom include Marty Brennaman, Bob Costas, Al Michaels and Bob Uecker. The 10 finalists for the award this year included Skip Caray, Rene Cardenas, Gary Cohen, Jacques Doucet, Tom Hamilton, Ernie Johnson Sr., Mike Krukow, Duane Kuiper, Dave Sims and John Sterling.
Following the retirement of former pitcher Herb Score, Hamilton became the full-time voice of the team starting in the 1998 season. The 35 years he has spent in the radio booth for the team tie him with television analyst Rick Manning for the longest-tenured broadcaster in team history.
Prior to his time with the team, he started his career working as a disc jockey at a country music radio station in Shell Lake, Wisc. Hamilton volunteered to call games for the Triple-A Columbus Clippers while working at WBNS in Columbus, Ohio. While he was with the station, he also hosted morning drive, called Ohio State basketball and served as the pregame and postgame show host for Buckeyes football. Throughout his career behind the microphone, he has called seminal moments in franchise history, one of which is the game-tying home run by Rajai Davis in Game 7 of the 2016 World Series.
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