After beginning his sportscasting career by calling college football and basketball for the Iowa Hawkeyes, as well as minor league baseball for the Davenport Tigers and pro basketball for the Tri-Cities Blackhawks (now the Atlanta Hawks) of the NBA, he got his first MLB announcing job in 1953, with the St. Louis Browns of the American League.

Instead, he joined the St. Louis Cardinals, where he worked alongside Harry Caray and Jack Buck during the 1954 season.

[5] Hamilton next moved to the Chicago Cubs, working alongside Jack Brickhouse and Vince Lloyd.

After three years, he was let go when Cubs owner P. K. Wrigley wanted to make room for Lou Boudreau as a broadcaster.

When the Milwaukee Braves relocated to Atlanta for the 1966 season, Hamilton got the call to become the team's play-by-play announcer.

Hamilton's voice was already somewhat known in Atlanta; local station WGST had been part of the White Sox radio network in the early 1960s.

Here's the pitch by Downing ... swinging ... there's a drive into left-center field ... that ball is gonna beeee ... OUTTA HERE!

[5] Shortly thereafter, the team was sold to Ted Turner, who made the Braves a national phenomenon via then-cable "superstation" WTCG (later to become WTBS, now TBS) with Hamilton's replacements Skip Caray and Pete Van Wieren, and with Johnson continuing in the booth.

[7] In the end, the situation in Pittsburgh became untenable for both Hamilton and the fans, and he eventually left to be replaced by his color man Lanny Frattare, with whom he hadn't gotten along, and whose announcing style was more similar to Prince's.

Unhappy in Pittsburgh, Hamilton jumped at a chance to return to Chicago in 1980 to join the Cubs' broadcast team alongside Brickhouse, Lloyd and Boudreau.

That plan changed when Harry Caray, discontented with new White Sox ownership, was brought in shortly after the Tribune Company bought the Cubs.

[3] He spent two years as the number-two announcer behind longtime Astros voice Gene Elston (another native Iowan).

After Elston was criticized for his lackluster call of the 1986 NL West clinching no-hitter by Mike Scott, he was let go, and Hamilton became the Astros main announcer from 1987 through 2012.

Mike Scott has just thrown his first career no-hitter, and the Astros are the National League champions of the West!On July 29, 2005, Hamilton, now in his late 70s, announced that starting with the 2006 season, he would no longer accompany the club on the road, announcing only home games,[11][12] although he traveled with the club when Busch Stadium, Nationals Park, Citi Field, and Marlins Park opened respectively.

In addition to his early work with the Iowa Hawkeyes and Tri-Cities Blackhawks, Hamilton also, at various points in his career, called NBA basketball for the Chicago Zephyrs, Chicago Bulls and Houston Rockets; college basketball for Northwestern, Georgia Tech, Kentucky, and DePaul, as well as various Southwest Conference games for the Home Sports Entertainment channel in the '80s; and college football for Northwestern, Ohio State and Georgia Tech.

"[5] He told Smith that Elston encouraged him to save his voice for thrilling moments, such as Aaron's 715th home run.

He was taken to Houston Methodist Hospital in the Texas Medical Center, where doctors discovered that one of his coronary arteries was 99 percent blocked.

[16] For the rest of the season and through their playoff run, the Astros added a patch with Hamilton's initials on their uniforms.