Press Club of Metropolitan St. Louis 2013 Media Person of the Year Honorees
Rick Hummel, authority on all things Cardinals, has written for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch since 1971. Hummel worked his way up from covering the Saint Louis University sports beat to becoming the baseball expert and weekly columnist we know today.
Born in Quincy, Illinois, Hummel attended the University of Missouri School of Journalism where he worked on the Sports Information department’s statistics crew for football games, returning home in the summers to write for the local paper, the Quincy Herald-Whig.
After graduating, Hummel served three years in the army writing part-time for the Colorado Springs Free Press-Sunwhile he was stationed in Colorado. After being discharged he was hired to write for the St. Louis Post-Dispatchcovering the St. Louis Stars and the Spirits of St. Louis (St. Louis’ professional soccer and basketball team) as well as the occasional Cards game.
Hummel’s big break came in 1978 when long-time Cardinals beat writer Neal Russo was unable to make a trip to Cincinnati to cover an away Cardinals game. Hummel went in Russo’s place and ended up covering Hall of Fame pitcher Tom Seaver’s historic only career no-hitter.
From there, Hummel continued to distinguish himself as the game-day beat reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatchuntil 2002 when he took on the role of the Post Dispatch’s weekly baseball columnist.
Known throughout St. Louis and the sport’s world as “the Commish” (short for “the Commisioner”), Hummel was elected President of the Baseball Writers Association in 1994, and has been named the “Missouri Sportswriter of the Year” three times by the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association.
In 2007, Hummel received the J. G. Taylor Sprink Award and was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. He was inducted into the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame in 2008.
Hummel has written three books. His latest, written with Tony LaRussa, One Last Strike: Fifty Years in Baseball, Ten and a Half Games Back, and One Final Championship Season, was published in 2012.
Bob Uecker: Born in Milwaukee, Wi., Robert “Bob” Uecker has followed Brewers baseball since the club’s days as a minor league franchise. In 1971, after a six-year playing career and just two years after the Brewers joined the major leagues, Uecker began doing play-by-play for the Brewers’ Radio Network.
As a player, he was first signed by the then Milwaukee Braves in 1956 (making his debut as a catcher in 1962) and ended his career with the Atlanta Braves in 1967.
His playing career included two years with the St. Louis Cardinals from 1964-65, during which time he was part of the Cardinals club that beat the New York Yankees in the 1964 World Series.
Uecker also has helped call countless baseball games for both ABC and NBC, including several League Championship Series and World Series, and hosted two syndicated television shows, “Bob Uecker’s Wacky World of Sports” and “Bob Uecker’s War of the Stars”.
In 2001 Uecker was inducted into the National Radio Hall of Fame, and in 2003, he received the Ford C. Frick Award from the Baseball Hall of Fame for his “major contributions to baseball.”
The National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association have named Uecker “Wisconsin Sportscaster of the Year” five times in 1977, 1979, 1981-82 and 1987, and he was inducted into the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association Hall of Fame in 2011.
2005 marked Uecker’s 50th year in professional baseball which was celebrated by having the number “50” placed on his behalf in the Brewers’ “Ring of Honor” next to their club’s other retired baseball numbers.
In August 2012, Uecker was again honored by the Brewers with the addition of his bronze likeness erected outside Miller Park, home of the Brewers.
Bob Duffy: Robert Duffy, associate editor of the St. Louis Beacon, began his career in the news business in 1955 when he took a job delivering the Arkansas Gazette in his hometown, Little Rock.
He joined the staff of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in 1973 and worked there, with one brief interruption, for 32 years. He served as a reporter, critic, columnist, editorial writer and editor during his tenure at the paper, and spent time in every department of the newsroom except sports. He was a juror for the Pulitzer Prizes for photography in 1978 and ’79.
In addition to the Post- Dispatch, articles by him have appeared in national magazines such as U.S. News and World Report, Smithsonian and Modernism, and he has contributed essays or chapters to several books on architectural and urban-design subjects.
Bob is a member of the faculties of University College and the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis, and is a 1967 graduate of the University’s College of Arts and Sciences.