Gene Elston 

Baseball Hall Of Fame Inductee and Ford C. Frick Award Recipient

Gene began his long tenure of baseball play-by-play in 1946 with Waterloo , Iowa , in the Three-I League and Des Moines in the Western League. Eight years later (1954) the Chicago Cubs brought him to the National League. He left the Cubs following the 1957 season and joined “Mutual’s Game of the Day”. Following three seasons with Mutual, Elston joined the expansion Houston Colt 45s/Astros and remained with that club for the next 25 seasons. After departing the Astros he spent the next 10 seasons covering Baseball’s CBS Radio Game of the Week and simultaneously worked with Tal Smith Enterprises in baseball arbitration, consulting and research.

Gene also worked other sports in the off season: Big Ten football with Iowa and Northwestern, the University of Houston and Southwest Conference radio and television football and basketball.  

In 2006 Gene was honored to receive the Ford C. Frick Award. This award is presented annually during the Hall of Fame Induction ceremony in Cooperstown, New York in recognition of "major contributions to baseball". His talents had previously been acknowledged by induction into the Texas Baseball Hall of Fame in 1993 and the Texas Radio Hall of Fame in 2002.

The WILD WORLD OF SPORTS is Elston’s third book - THAT’S THE WAY THE BALL BOUNCES back in the 1970s and more recently A STITCH IN TIME - A BASEBALL CHRONOLOGY, 1845-2002. In his minor league days he designed his own baseball scorecard and placed it on the market as a scorebook - designed especially for announcers. In the early 1980s he realized a revised format would reach not only announcers but also a new method of scoring for fans. Today the book is still recognized as the most popular scorebook in the nation.

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