With induction delayed, HOF awards get Saturday spotlight

By CHARLIE VASCELLARO • Special to www.AllOTSEGO.com

While the Hall of Fame’s induction ceremony has been pushed back to Sept. 8, in order to accommodate the inclusion of fans in attendance on the lawn at the Clark Sports Center, the Hall’s annual Awards Presentation honoring baseball writers and broadcasters is scheduled for Saturday, July 24, as a television only event.

This year’s Ford C. Frick Award and Baseball Writer’s Association of America Career Excellence Award ceremony will include respective 2021 recipients, broadcaster Al Michaels and writer Dick Kaegel as well as 2020 honorees, Ken Harrelson and Nick Cafardo.

‘Do you Believe in Miracles?’
Perhaps best known for his indelible call of the 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team’s stunning defeat of Russia in the 1980 winter Olympics, Al Michaels was already a seasoned and accomplished sports broadcaster at the time breaking into baseball with the Pacific Coast (minor) League’s Hawaii Islanders in 1968. The 45th winner of the Frick Award, Michaels assumed the lead broadcaster responsibilities for the Cincinnati Reds in 1971 and the San Francisco Giants in 1974.

A graduate of Arizona State University, where he minored in radio and television journalism, Michaels began a 30-year run with ABC sports in 1976, beginning as a back-up announcer for Monday Night Baseball.

During his lengthy career, Michales occupied the broadcast booth for seven World Series, including the infamous 1989 Bay Bridge/Earthquake Series between the San Francisco Giants and Oakland A’s.
Prior to Game Three at Candlestick Park, Michaels pre-game show was interrupted by an earthquake registering 6.9 on the Richter Scale.

“I’ll tell you … we’re having an earthquake. … I don’t know if we’re on the air or in a commercial. … That’s the greatest open in the history of television bar none,” Michaels said.

A new award name
Veteran sportswriter Dick Kaegel spent more than 50 years as a writer and editor covering the St. Louis Cardinals and Kansas City Royals for the St. Louis Post Dispatch and Kansas City Star and also served as the managing editor and editor for the Sporting News magazine from 1979 to 1985.

Kaegel closed out his lengthy career by covering every one of the Kansas City Royals 162 games at home and on the road in the 2011 season, just four years after undergoing liver transplant surgery.. Kaegel would have been the 72nd recipient of the J.G. Spink award “for meritorious contributions to baseball writing,” but finds himself as the first to receive the Baseball Writer’s Association of America’s Career Excellence Award.

In Major League Baseball’s continued season of reckoning with its past, Spink’s name was removed from the award after research by the association into what has been deemed Spink’s racist behavior and expressions in the past. By a vote of 325 to 11 (97%) of the associations members elected to remove Spink’s name from the award.

Spink was the publisher of the Sporting News from 1914-1962. The award has carried his name since his death.

It’s an ironic twist of fate that Kaegel, who followed Spink as editor of the Sporting News, some 20 years after his death, would be the first recipient of the award after Spink’s name was removed.
“Spink was the publisher of the largest, most powerful baseball publication in the country for nearly half a century, and he used that position to strongly advocate against the integration of the sport,” Sporting News senior writer Ryan Fagan wrote.

‘You can put it on the Board’
Colorful commentator Ken “Hawk” Harrelson already staked his claim to fame as a Major League first baseman/outfielder, before becoming one of baseball’s best-known broadcasters after a broken leg brought an abrupt end to his nine-year career in the spring of 1970.

After breaking in with the Kansas City Athletics in 1963, Harrelson spent brief stints with the Washington Senators, Boston Red Sox and Cleveland Indians, enjoying his best season in 1968, reaching career-highs with 35 home runs and 109 RBI in Boston.

Harrelson began his broadcast career with the Red Sox from 1975 to 1981, but he was elevated to iconic status in the booth for the Chicago White Sox, where he spent 34 of his 43 years behind the microphone beginning in 1982.

A five-time Emmy Award winner, Harrelson’s catch-phrase calls of “You can put it on the board,” “Yes!” and “Mercy!” are engrained in the South Side of Chicago lexicon. He also helped to create and perpetuate nicknames like the “Big Hurt” for Hall of Famer Frank Thomas and “L. Dog” for All-Star outfielder Lance Johnson.

Harrelson became the 44th recipient of the Frick Award in the pandemic postponed Hall of Fame season of 2020.

“They called me last year and asked me what I thought about it, and I told them I’m not bringing my family because of the COVID. So that’s going to determine everything, because with Derek Jeter going in, there’s going to be 100,000 people. They will break the all-time record, and justifiably so,” Harrelson told MLB.com in January when it was announced that the 2020 and 2021 recipients would receive their awards together this year.

Posthumous award winner
Working as one of Major League Baseball’s busiest reporters up until the last day of his life, Nick Cafardo was still on the job covering spring training for the Boston Red Sox on Feb. 21, 2019, when he collapsed and died hours later of an embolism.

Last year, Cafardo was announced as the 71st recipient of the BBWAA’s former “J.G. Spink Award” now the “Career Excellence Award” at Major League Baseball’s winter meetings in San Diego, CA in December of 2019, 10 months after his death.

The author of four baseball books and the winner of the Massachusetts Sportswriter of the Year Award in 2014, Cafardo covered the Red Sox’s World Series wins in 2004, 2007, 2013 and 2018.

Joining the Boston Globe as a baseball columnist in 1989, Cafardo had previously covered the Red Sox for the rival Patriot-Ledger in Quincy, Massachusetts.

Cafardo followed in the fingerprints of legendary baseball writer and fellow Career Excellence Award winner Peter Gammons, stepping in to write the Globe’s “Sunday notes” section after Gammons suffered a brain aneurysm in 2006.

Cafardo continued to write the Sunday notes every week for the next 15 years.

Cafardo’s colleagues were overjoyed at the announcement of his receiving baseball scribes highest honor and the news was met with rousing standing ovation at the gathering in San Diego.

“Crying tears of joy. Nick Cafardo, wonderful husband and father & an extraordinary journalist, is @officialBBWAA 2020 (JG Taylor Spink Award) winner. Though we honor our friend posthumously, Nick remains alive in our hearts forever. Love to @BenESPN (his son) & family,” tweeted fellow Spink Award/Career Excellence recipient Claire Smith.

Cafardo, 62 at the time of his passing, is the first posthumous winner of the award since his Boston Globe colleague, Larry Whiteside, won it in 2008.

Montgomery is fifth O’Neil winner

Known as much for his philanthropical efforts as his baseball acumen, longtime Philadelphia Phillies executive Dave Montgomery was elected the fifth recipient of the Hall of Fame’s Buck O’Neil Lifetime Achievement Award on March 5, 2020, just about a week before the Covid-19 pandemic brought a temporary halt to MLB and Hall of Fame activities.

Montgomery began his five-decade-long career with the Phillies. He served as the team’s president and chief executive officer during the franchise’s most successful run, winning five consecutive East division titles from 2007 to 2011, and capturing back-to-back NL pennants in 2008 and 2009, as well as winning the 2008 World Series.

Montgomery is perhaps best remembered for his work raising more than $19 million for the ALS Association of Greater Philadelphia, the Phillie’s official charity.

Montgomery passed away in May 2019, at 72.