Posted by OMDQ

Attention, baseball fans: for the entire month of November, you get to help choose the next recipient of the Baseball Hall of Fame's Ford C. Frick Award.

Well, sort of. Right now, there is a list of 200 broadcasters who are eligible to receive the award and have, I'm assuming, passed through some sort of rigorous screening process. Every day this month, fans can choose to cast votes for up to three, with the top three earning a place on the final ten person ballot that will be released December 5.

I toyed with the idea of posting my own top ten list here, but that can wait at least until the official ballot is released. In the meantime, let's share top threes - mine are, in no particular order:

Ned Martin (Boston Red Sox, 1961-92): You had to know there was gonna be a Sox announcer on any ballot I filled out. My sincerest apologies to Joe Castiglione and Ken Coleman that it couldn't be them.

Joe Nuxhall (Cincinnati Reds, 1967-2004): A win for Nuxhall would mean that the Reds had a pair of Hall of Fame announcers in the booth from 1974-2004; Marty Brennaman won the Frick award in 2000.

Tom Cheek (Montreal Expos, 1974-76; Toronto Blue Jays, 1977-2004): Called more than 4,300 consecutive games for the Blue Jays, from the team's first contest in 1977 to June 2004. Cal Ripken, eat your heart out.

Honorable Mention: Ray Fosse (something about the idea of Fosse being in the Hall while Pete Rose isn't makes me chuckle), Dave Niehaus (has been behind the mic for all of Seattle's 31 seasons) and Ralph Kiner (no one has ever been honored by the Hall as both a player and a broadcaster; by my count, there are sixteen Hall of Famers among the 200 names on this year's ballot).

Those are my choices. Who have you guys got?

On a night where ESPN kept the Roger Clemens hype machine running at full speed by televising his first outing of 2007 (against the Class A Fort Myers Miracle), the Boston Red Sox and NESN countered admirably, taking advantage of a rain out to air the "Red Sox Classic" from April 29, 1986 - the day Clemens mowed down twenty Seattle Mariners. (I don't know what was shown in the game's regular time slot, but this came on around the time they would have been doing the "Sox in 2" encore.)

Well played, NESN. Well played.

I don't remember this game at all - I was 6 1/2 when it was played - so it's always good to hear the broadcasters (Ned Martin and someone I can't place - thought it was Jerry Remy at first but now I'm not so sure) and the way they call the action. It's a very laid-back approach that works because Martin managed to weave all the necessary information into the in-game banter with his partner. They covered a lot of ground, but never allowed the broadcast to stray more than a step or two off the path of the game.

The video of the game doesn't appear to be available on YouTube, so you'll have to be content with a link to the box score from Baseball-Reference.com. Check out that attendance. And, just believe I love you all, here's another link, to his second twenty strikeout game ten years later against Detroit. Note the pitch count. - OMDQ

Interviewer Jose de Jesus Ortiz of the Houston Chronicle says it best: "This is my eleventh season covering major league baseball. I received my first Hall of Fame vote this year. But I still become a child every time I hear your voice and your voice."

The voices he is referring to are those of Los Angeles Dodgers broadcasting legends Vin Scully and Jaime Jarrin, two announcers who have combined for more than 100 years of service to the team. Both are members of the Hall of Fame's announcers wing: Scully was honored for his contributions to the game in 1982, Jarrin in 1998.



The most jarring thing about this video is Scully's appearance vs. his voice. For the first twenty seconds, while Ortiz sets up the interview for the audience, Scully sits idly by and waits to be addressed. He looks like any other 80-year-old man. Then his mouth opens and magic happens. No exaggeration. He talks and you can almost hear sixty years of history in his voice. Does that make sense?

Jarrin also comes off as likeable - I might compare him to Red Sox radio broadcaster Joe Castiglione, only Jarrin announces the games in Spanish and with a much stronger voice than Duke's father. He just seems like the type of guy who loves baseball, loves the team he works for and possesses almost unlimited knowledge about the game. I envy those who have the chance to listen to either of these guys on a regular basis (although NESN's Orsillo and Remy are two of the best in the business, in my opinion, so I'm lucky to have them).