CLEVELAND — It's a voice everyone knows and loves.
For the past 33 years, one thing has remained consistent with baseball in Cleveland: Guardians radio announcer Tom Hamilton.
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“To do it in a city like Cleveland is extra special because people care,” said Hamilton.
For over three decades, he has called some of the most iconic moments in Cleveland sports history.
“Yeah, not many people are as fortunate as I have been to love what they do for a living,” says Hamilton.
But his love for broadcasting didn’t start on the ball field, but instead in the fields of his family’s dairy farm in rural Wisconsin.
“It started as a little guy living on a dairy farm in Wisconsin,” he said. “I’d be listening to Milwaukee Braves games on a little transistor radio. To think about going to places like New York and Cleveland and Chicago and Boston that almost seemed like the Wizard of Oz."
Fast forward to today, Hamilton continues to live out that childhood dream every day in the booth.
“I am so lucky to everyday get up in the morning every day, and I can’t wait to go to work.”
The kid from Wisconsin has found a home in Cleveland and a forever home in Cleveland sports history.
On Tuesday, the broadcaster was inducted into the Greater Cleveland Sports Hall of Fame and is also nominated for the Ford C. Frick Award, a prestigious honor awarded by the Baseball Hall of Fame that goes to the top broadcaster in baseball.
“This is kind of surreal to even be mentioned with some of those people. It’s an honor. It’s humbling.”
While the honors are nice, for Hamilton, the most incredible honor he can imagine is making the final call of the season as World Series Champions. Not for himself, though, but for the deserving fans of Northeast Ohio.
“It’s not about me making the call,” said Hamilton. “I would love to see a World Series Championship and parade for Northeast Ohio. For the fans that have lived through the ups and downs. I am employed by the Cleveland Indians, but I am also employed by the fans.”
EDITOR'S NOTE: The video above previously aired on 3News on Sept. 23, 2019.