Radio pioneer Graham McNamee wins 2016 Ford C. Frick Award
From SABR member Barry Bloom at MLB.com on December 9, 2015:
The late Graham McNamee, one of the radio voices of the 1923 World Series between the New York Giants and Yankees, is the 2016 winner of the Ford C. Frick Award for a meritorious career in baseball broadcasting, the National Baseball Hall of Fame announced on Wednesday morning.
That World Series was historic for a number of reasons. It was the third in a row for the rival New York teams, it was the first played at Yankee Stadium, and the first of the Yankees’ 27 World Series titles.
From a broadcasting standpoint, McNamee, a nascent opera singer who was raised in St. Paul, Minn., was paired with 1966 J.G. Spink Award winner and legendary sportswriter Grantland Rice on that World Series, setting the standard for all Fall Classic radio coverage to follow.
“Graham McNamee defined what it was to broadcast baseball games to a nationwide audience,” said Hall president Jeff Idelson. “Without any blueprint, he created a genre, bringing baseball to an even bigger, national stage: The new medium of radio. The legendary voices of the last three-quarters of a century can trace their lineage straight to Graham. Baseball’s scope and popularity were forever widened in the wake of his pioneering work.”
Read the full article here: http://m.mlb.com/news/article/159225142/graham-mcnamee-wins-frick-award
- Related link: Read more about the history of baseball broadcasting in SABR’s Calling the Game, by Stuart Shea
Originally published: December 10, 2015. Last Updated: December 10, 2015.