MBA Names Joe Castiglione 2024 Broadcaster of the Year

RADIO ONLINE | Monday, October 7, 2024 | 4:05pm CT

Joe Castiglione

The Massachusetts Broadcasters Association (MBA) will honor WEEI Boston Red Sox radio play-by-play announcer Joe Castiglione with its Broadcaster of the Year Award at the association's annual Sound Bites conference on November 21 at the Sheraton Framingham in Framingham, MA. Castiglione, who announced his retirement prior to the conclusion of the 2024 Red Sox season spent 42 seasons in the Red Sox booth, making him the longest tenured radio broadcaster in Red Sox history.

A native of Hamden, Connecticut, he began his career calling Colgate University football and baseball games while earning a bachelors degree in Liberal Arts from the university. He would later graduate from Syracuse University's prestigious Newhouse School with a master's degree in Radio and Television.

Prior to becoming the Red Sox play-by-play voice, Castiglione worked in Youngstown, Ohio as a sports reporter and football announcer with his first major role in sports broadcasting happening in Cleveland in 1979 where he called both Indians and Cleveland Cavalier games.

Castiglione's Red Sox legacy started in 1983 when he was paired with another Red Sox legend in Ken Coleman. In his over 40 years with the Red Sox, Castiglione is maybe most famous for his call at the end of the 2004 World Series which ended an 86-year World Series drought for the Sox, exclaiming "for the first time in 86 years, the Red Sox have won baseball's world championship. Can you believe it?" The phrase would become a signature call.

Castiglione was inducted into the Red Sox Hall of Fame in 2014, the Massachusetts Broadcasters Hall of Fame in 2015, and was named the Baseball Hall of Fame's Ford C. Frick Award winner, presented annually by the Hall of Fame for excellence in broadcasting, in 2024.

Castiglione will be the eleventh recipient of the MBA Broadcaster of the Year Award.