Press Club of Metropolitan St. Louis’ 2014 Media Person of the Year
The Press Club of Metropolitan St. Louis hosted its 2014 Media Person of the Year scholarship dinner and gala, Tuesday, January 28, 2014, at the magnificent Edward Jones corporate headquarters.The sensational evening of fun and entertainment recognized media communication at its best.
John Rooney, St. Louis Cardinals radio broadcaster, emceed the event, assisted by the following friends/presenters’ toasts and roasts: Rocco Landesman, Broadway producer and immediate past chair of the National Endowment of the Arts (Robert “Bob” Duffy); Robert Quinlin “Bob” Costas, NBC sportscaster (Robert “Bob” Uecker); Kevin Horrigan, St. Louis Post-Dispatch columnist and editorial writer, and Derrick Goold, St. Louis Post-Dispatch baseball writer (Rick Hummel).
Rick Hummel, veteran St. Louis Post Dispatch sports columnist, received the honor as Media Person of the Year for his many contributions to sports journalism in our community. The Press Club also acknowledged Bob Uecker, iconic sports radio broadcaster and a former Cardinal, with a Lifetime Achievement Award for his many decades of bringing baseball to life through his spirited and insightful commentary. Bob Duffy, the Post-Dispatch’s longtime critic and cultural affairs editor over three decades until 2005 and a founder of the St. Louis Beacon, regarded nationally in non-profit, on-line journalism, also accepted a Lifetime Achievement Award for his long and illustrious St. Louis news career.
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-Sun while stationed in Colorado. After his discharge, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch hired him to cover the St. Louis Stars and the Spirits of St. Louis (St. Louis’ professional soccer and basketball teams) as well as the occasional Cards game.
Hummel’s big break came in 1978 when long-time Cardinals beat writer Neal Russo could not 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-Dispatch until 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.
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 first was 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 played on 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.
Robert “Bob” 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 became 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 affliliated with 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.
The Press Club of Metropolitan St. Louis initiated the Media Person of the Year Award in 1988 with Joseph Pulitzer, Jr. as its first recipient. Its purpose always has focused on recognizing distinguished men, women and organizations from the St. Louis media whose exemplary performances established standards of professional conduct and accomplishment. The event has gained the reputation for providing a memorable evening of entertainment with the honorees accepting toasts and roasts by prominent personalities and friends.
The Media Person of the Year Scholarship Gala comprises the Press Club’s major fund-raising event and has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for scholarships and internships for underserved and deserving students, for enterprise journalism grants funding investigative reporting projects in the metropolitan area and the on-going support of the Media Archives of the St. Louis Public Library.
The Press Club of Metropolitan St. Louis consists of a professional, social and charitable organization of people who make, cover and influence the news. Its members include reporters, editors, news directors, anchors, columnists, broadcasters, professionals in advertising, marketing, communications and public relations and others who may become sources of news. It irepresents a true “umbrella” organization for those in the profession.
The mission of the Press Club of Metropolitan St. Louis is serving as a primary resource for the journalism and communications industry. The Press Club advances understanding of mass communicators and their respective public and promotes awareness of significant issues facing the press.
