Binational broadcast pioneer Gustavo Lopez Moreno is among the 10 finalists for the 2027 Ford C. Frick Award, presented annually for excellence in baseball broadcasting by the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum.
Lopez Moreno served as the Padres’ first Spanish-language voice from the inaugural 1969 season through 1991 on broadcasts that reached across the border into Tijuana and throughout Mexico.
Lopez Moreno was working in sales at a radio station when the Padres joined the National League in 1969. The team hadn’t considered a Spanish-language broadcast, Lopez Moreno said, when he took the initiative to sell original general manager Eddie Leishman on broadcasting Padres games in Spanish across the border.
The venture started as a Sunday home broadcast and grew from there.
“It had a wonderful impact on my life, all through my life,” Lopez Moreno, 88, said by phone through an interpreter from his home in Chula Vista. “There’s an older generation that used to listen to games that still recognize me. It changed my life completely.”
Lopez Moreno is the only Mexican-born broadcaster on this year’s ballot. He was first nominated in 2008.
The lead voice on CBS Hispanic Radio Network, Lopez Moreno worked nine league championship series, multiple All-Star Games and 17 World Series as his voice traveled to 100 stations across the U.S. and in Latin America.
The other Padres broadcasters honored with Frick Awards over the years are Jerry Coleman (2005) and Dick Enberg (2015).
The other finalists for the 2027 Frick Award are Buddy Blattner, Ken Coleman, Dizzy Dean, Earl Gillespie, Merle Harmon, Ned Martin, Monte Moore, Bill O’Donnell and Jack Quinlan.
The winners are expected to be announced Dec. 9 in San Diego, the location of this year’s winter meetings.
The Contemporary Baseball Era Committee will announce the fates of Bruce Bochy and Sandy Alderson on Dec. 6, also in San Diego. The electees from the 2027 Baseball Writers’ Association of America player ballot will be unveiled Jan. 19, 2027.