From 'Carnegie and Ontario' to Cooperstown: Hamilton to be honored by Hall of Fame

The voice that has, for so long, been the sound of summer in Cleveland -- cordial, comforting and unmistakably Midwestern -- will be entering ears in an unfamiliar place.

Not on the “corner of Carnegie and Ontario” but in a corner of Cooperstown, where Tom Hamilton will take his rightful place among baseball’s broadcasting legends on July 26.

Hamilton’s receipt of the 2025 National Baseball Hall of Fame’s Ford C. Frick Award can be seen as validation of that voice, which can at one moment be candid and conversational and the next boom with the boldness the big moments deserve.

But of course, in Cleveland, where the now-70-year-old Hamilton began as a mere “play-by-play person” in 1990 only to quickly ingratiate himself as something so much more familial and familiar, the man known as “Hammy” long ago established himself as a legend.

“You have to be yourself," he once said. "You hear guys that try to imitate Vin Scully. Well, God almighty, he's the best there ever was. There will never be anybody as good as Vin Scully. Ever. So why would you imitate him? I'm a firm believer that you have to work your way up. That's how you develop a style without it costing you your job."

A native of Waterloo, Wis., Hamilton worked his way up, from the upper stands of remote high school gyms, where he would use a cheap tape recorder he bought at a Walgreens to produce practice play-by-play that one of his professors at Minnesota’s Brown College would critique. He got his first break with a radio station in Appleton, Wis., where he read the news, played music and called sports. He wound his way up the Wisconsin radio ladder until an opportunity arrived at WBNS in Columbus, Ohio, where he hosted morning drive sports, broadcasted Ohio State basketball and did the Buckeyes’ football pregame and postgame shows. He would help out on Triple-A baseball coverage pro bono.

That meant working deep into the night, then waking up for his morning host gig, leaving precious little time for his new bride, Wendy.

"I knew if I was ever going to have a chance at a Major League job," he said, "I had to get some experience.”

Come the fall of 1989, Wendy was pregnant with the couple’s first child when Hamilton saw an article in the Plain Dealer about Paul Olden leaving the Indians’ broadcast booth and the team searching for his replacement. Though interested in the job, Hamilton procrastinated, doubting he had much of a chance. But when he read an update about a month later that the club had narrowed its candidate pool down to three, he kicked himself.

“Hey,” Wendy told him, “it’s not too late.”

So there he was on Christmas Day, spending eight hours whittling his best moments down to a three-minute audition tape. His program director at WBNS and the WWWE co-program directors had a longstanding working relationship that allowed Hamilton to get it heard at that late stage of the process.

Two weeks later, Hammy was offered the job.

And now, he’s a Hall of Famer.

“When you’re in baseball, if we don’t have incredible wives or even better mothers, we can’t chase our dreams,” he said recently. “So, without [Wendy’s] support, none of this happens. So it was a full-circle moment to tell her that news [about the Frick honor].”

Hamilton began as the emotive counter to baseball lifer Herb Score’s more even-keeled delivery. Then, as the team moved into Jacobs Field in 1994 and experienced a golden era of sellouts and contention that included Score’s final assignment in the 1997 World Series, Hamilton wound his way into the hearts of his listeners.

In the best of games and seasons, Hammy’s earnest enthusiasm is infectious. His ability to quickly summon the context and meaning of a moment with a few perfectly placed words is his calling card, as is a home run call up there with the best in baseball history:

“A swing and a drive to deep right. A-waaaaay back! Gone!”

Hamilton is never unprepared. If a boxing match breaks out, as it did when White Sox shortstop Tim Anderson challenged José Ramírez to a duel that ended poorly for him, Hamilton can seamlessly shift from baseball nuts and bolts to prizefight play-by-play:

“Down goes Anderson!”

These are the moments that get widely shared and strung together now that the YouTubers make their own Hammy mixtapes.

But one could argue that Hamilton’s greatest skill is his ability to make even the worst games and seasons so listenable. He has a beautiful -- and sometimes irascible -- wit. And his honesty is refreshing in a business where that can be hard to come by.

“You try to impart some personality so that it's not robotic,” he said. “You know, that's why it's always about having a great partner. I've had great partners from the time I started with Herbie [Herb Score] until now, working with Rosey [Jim Rosenhaus] and every guy in-between. And those are the guys that make it work. You're two guys at a bar, having a beer, talking about a baseball game.”

For 35 years, Hamilton has let us into that conversation, and his voice has, quite literally, always risen to the occasion.

It’s a voice that still belongs to the “corner of Carnegie and Ontario.” But now it will also be one with a forever home in Cooperstown.