Pat Hughes Nominated For Hall of Fame’s Frick Award

As if the Cubs haven’t had enough wonderful news over the last week, the Baseball Hall of Fame Monday announced the eight finalists for the Ford C. Frick Award, given out for excellence in baseball broadcasting:

The eight finalists for the 2017 Frick Award are: Gary Cohen, Ken Coleman, Jacques Doucet, Ken Harrelson, Pat Hughes, Bill King, Ned Martin and Dewayne Staats. The winner of the 2017 Frick Award will be announced on Dec. 7 at the Baseball Winter Meetings in National Harbor, Md., and will be honored during the July 29 Awards Presentation as part of the July 28-31 Hall of Fame Weekend 2017 in Cooperstown. All candidates except King and Martin are living.

There used to be fan voting for this award, but that’s apparently been changed, according to this Sun-Times article:

Final voting for the 2017 Frick Award will be conducted by a 17-member committee, comprised of the 13 living Frick Award recipients and four broadcast historians/columnists, including David J. Halberstam (historian), Barry Horn (Dallas Morning News), Ted Patterson (historian) and Curt Smith (historian). Past living Frick honorees include: Marty Brennaman, Dick Enberg, Jaime Jarrin, Tony Kubek, Denny Matthews, Tim McCarver, Jon Miller, Eric Nadel, Felo Ramirez, Vin Scully, Bob Uecker, Dave Van Horne and Bob Wolff.

Pat Hughes has been broadcasting Cubs games for 21 seasons, and before that spent 12 years working with Bob Uecker on Milwaukee Brewers games. He’s also one of the nicest men in broadcasting, as you might figure from hearing his broadcasts. There are quite a number of other qualified people on that list, including another former Cubs broadcaster, DeWayne Staats.

From the Hall of Fame’s website, there has been a change in the way they are considering broadcasters for this award:

A new election cycle for the Frick Award has been established, rotating annually between Current Major League Markets (team-specific announcers) for the 2017 Frick Award; National Voices (broadcasters whose contributions were realized on a national level) for the 2018 Frick Award; and Broadcasting Beginnings (early team voices and pioneers of baseball broadcasting) for the 2019 Frick Award. This cycle will repeat every three years.

So, if Pat doesn’t receive the award this year, he’ll have to wait until 2020. Under “Broadcasting Beginnings,” I would love to see Vince Lloyd nominated in 2019.