Pomrenke: The unlikely origins of the Ford C. Frick Award
From SABR member Jacob Pomrenke at The National Pastime Museum on April 17, 2017:
In 1932, when The Sporting News set out to honor the best baseball broadcasters for the first time, Ford C. Frick could have hardly imagined a day when every announcer would dream of winning an award bearing his name at the Baseball Hall of Fame.
Frick would later become the National League’s most celebrated president and then, unexpectedly, the game’s third commissioner, succeeding Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis and A. B. “Happy” Chandler. Frick patiently steered baseball through a tumultuous period of franchise relocation, antitrust hearings, and expansion in the 1950s and ’60s, leading to his Hall of Fame induction in 1970. An award honoring the game’s top TV and radio announcers was established following his death in 1978.
But back in 1932, the 38-year-old sportswriter’s most celebrated role was behind the scenes as Babe Ruth’s ghostwriter, helping the Bambino “write” several syndicated columns a week that appeared in newspapers around the country. Frick, a Yankees beat writer for the New York Evening Journal, was a regular part of the Babe’s entourage during the Roaring Twenties, and he even wrote Ruth’s autobiography, Babe Ruth’s Own Book of Baseball.
Read the full article here: http://www.thenationalpastimemuseum.com/article/ford-c-frick-award
Originally published: April 17, 2017. Last Updated: April 17, 2017.