Denny Matthews

Summary: Congratulations to K.C. Royals' longtime announcer Denny Matthews for being voted into baseball's Hall of Fame. Unfortunately, as one alert reader discovered (2/22), the Major League Baseball link (and even the link on the Royals' Web site) highlighting Matthews' call on George Brett's historic 3,000th hit isn't Matthews' voice.

On the Chris Stigall morning talk show (2/23) on KCMO-710 news reporter Paige Powers played the clip of Brett's 3,000th hit and proclaimed "How could any fan ever forget Denny Matthews' call..."

It's great that Denny Matthews won the HOF award today. Too bad MLB linked the wrong audio to George Brett's 3,000th hit. It is not the audio of Denny. I believe it's the television feed.

Link is here: http://kansascity.royals.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20070222&content_id=1811567&vkey=news_kc&fext=.jsp&c_id=kc

Second link under the byline.

If you went to the Baseball Hall of Fame’s Web site ( www.baseballhalloffame.com) on Thursday, it gave you an opportunity to click on a replay of Denny Matthews calling George Brett’s 3,000th hit in Anaheim.

Just a couple problems: First, it wasn’t even Matthews on the audio, and furthermore, it was Fred White who actually called Brett’s 3000th hit on the Royals’ radio network back in 1992.

Posted on Thu, Feb. 22, 2007

Broadcaster Matthews wins honor from Baseball Hall of Fame

By JEFFREY FLANAGAN
The Kansas City Star

When Denny Matthews began his career as a Royals broadcaster 38 years ago, he had rather modest expectations.

“All I really wanted to do was make it through the whole year without getting fired,” Matthews said.

Matthews, 64, has come a long way since then. On Thursday he learned he will be going into the Baseball Hall of Fame as the winner of the Ford C. Frick Award. It was Matthews’ second year as a finalist.

“It was great to be on the list,” Matthews said, “and now it’s great to be off the list. I won’t have to worry any more about whether this is the year I make it.

“It’s obviously a great, great honor. It’s really the highest honor you can give a baseball broadcaster, and I think this is geared more toward baseball than communications. I have a lot of people to thank, starting with David Glass.”

Glass began openly campaigning to the Hall of Fame’s selection committee several years ago on Matthews’ behalf.

Matthews will be honored on July 29 at the Clark Sports Center in Cooperstown, N.Y.

A 20-member electorate, comprised of the 14 living Frick Award recipients and six historians/columnists, selected Matthews from a group of 10 finalists, which included three broadcasters chosen by an online vote of fans — Ken Harrelson (Chicago White Sox), Bill King (Oakland Athletics) and Joe Nuxhall (Cincinnati Reds). The other nominees were former players Dizzy Dean and Tony Kubek, radio legend Graham McNamee and play-by-play voices Tom Cheek (Toronto Blue Jays), Franz Laux (St. Louis Browns) and Dave Niehaus (Seattle Mariners).