Joe Buck has already taken home one prestigious award in 2020 for his excellence as a sports broadcaster, as he was surprised with the Pete Rozelle Radio-Television Award during "Thursday Night Football". In doing so, he joined his dad as the only father-son pair to both have received the award.
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Another similarly prestigious honor could be awaiting Joe Buck before the year is over — and he'd join his father for this one, as well — but he'll still have to be named the winner over seven other very deserving finalists to do so. The award in question is the Ford C. Frick Award, presented annually by the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, which aims to honor a figure who covered the following criteria (via Baseball Hall of Fame):
Commitment to excellence, quality of broadcasting abilities, reverence within the game, popularity with fans, and recognition by peers.
Among the other finalists are Al Michaels, a multi-sport announcer like Buck who remains active in 2020, as well as Baseball Hall of Famers Don Drysdale and Dizzy Dean, whose careers in our national pastime did not end on the diamond. Here's the full list:
— Buddy Blattner
— Joe Buck
— Dave Campbell
— Dizzy Dean
— Don Drysdale
— Ernesto Jerez
— Al Michaels
— Dan Shulman
Blattner, Dean and Drysdale have all passed away, while the other five candidates are still with us today.
The 2021 iteration of the award comes during the National Voices rotation of the award's election cycle, which honors "broadcasters whose contributions were realized on a national level." The only previous winner in this category — the different rotations of the award only began in 2017 — was Bob Costas, though legends Vin Scully and Jack Buck have also won the award and are among those who would obviously fit the bill.
Costas won in 2018, followed by Al Helfer in 2019 (Broadcasting Beginnings category) and Ken "Hawk" Harrelson (Major League Markets category) as the 2020 recipient in the last cycle of the three categories. You can see the full list of Ford C. Frick Award winners here.
Ford C. Frick, the namesake of the award, served as the National League's president from 1934-1951 and as the commissioner of baseball from 1951 to 1965, playing a big role in establishing the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum during his tenure as NL president. There are currently 43 winners of the award since its 1978 debut — one winner in each year except for in 1978, when two men (Mel Allen and Red Barber) were selected.
The winner of the 2021 Ford C. Frick Award will be announced on December 9 and honored during Hall of Fame Weekend in Cooperstown in the summer of 2021.
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