The Steel Driving Award.

Jacoby Ellsbury may have chosen to not attend the Legacy Awards at the Negro League Baseball Museum tonight to collect his James "Cool Papa" Bell Award but there will be a representative of the Red Sox there. Mike Cameron will be receiving the John Henry "Pop" Lloyd Award for baseball and community leadership. Congratulations to him.

Awards.

It's probably not worth mentioning as he's been passed up for the award twice already (and Brandon Roy, the athlete who won both of those years, is again up for the award) but Jacoby Ellsbury has been nominated for the Harry Glickman Professional Athlete of the Year Award at the Oregon Sports Awards. I suppose I could cross my fingers for him.

MVP.

Choosing an MVP for the 2009 Boston Red Sox was probably a fairly easy decision for the Boston chapter of the Baseball Writers Association of America. This wasn't a club that had an easy go of it from April to October; there were plenty of injuries to and disappointing starts for players who were being counted on for big things. I suppose a case could have been made for Jason Bay but he seemed to lead the team-wide slump in early August. And so they selected Kevin Youkilis for the Thomas A. Yawkey Memorial Award. Congratulations to him.

Tip of the Cap.

Jason Bay was awarded the Tip O'Neill Award by the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame. The award is given to the best Canadian playing the game of baseball. It's Bay's third go-round, as he won in 2004 and 2005. So congratulations to him.

A Major Turn Around.

After a terrible April and May in 2009, Jon Lester got himself straightened out and never looked back once the calendar turned to June/May 31. Except for the night he took a liner off the quadriceps in NY he never allowed more than four runs an outing from then on. He also started striking batters out like it was going out of style. And so for the second year in a row, Jon Lester has been selected as the Red Sox Pitcher of the Year by the Boston chapter of the Baseball Writers Association of America.

The Award Goes To...

There is a certain segment of the population that realized a few days ago that the acquisition of Mike Cameron would potentially free up Theo to move Ellsbury to San Diego in order to get his paws on Adrian Gonzalez. They're vocal about their belief that Ellsbury has serious defensive deficiencies and on top of that he doesn't get on base enough to make up for that. He doesn't walk enough and he doesn't seem to be able to bunt. His only positive attribute is his speed and speed may be fleeting.

Now, I'm not the biggest Jacoby Ellsbury fan but I do think that that's a very dour take on him as a player. I agree that he could get on base more but I also think that if he would take fewer pitches he'd have a better chance of doing that. He seems to be looking for a walk and falling behind because of it. I do think that if he could bunt for a base hit, then he'd be golden. I also think that his defensive issues are over blown. He goes side-to-side beautifully but seems to have depth perception issues. I'm inclined to think that experience or maybe a new glasses prescription might help that out.

But I would guess that the Ellsbury-detractors are the in the minority as Ellsbury won the Defensive Player of the Year for the This Year in Baseball Awards. So congratulations to him. May he prove me wrong.

Come Back Bay.

Jason Bay is an extremely streaky hitter and when he goes cold, he goes cold but when he's hitting, there's no one better. Witness: Jason Bay received his first silver slugger award today. I really do think that they need to bring him back. Congratulations to Jason.

Cool Jacoby Ells.

With his seventy stolen bases this year Jacoby Ellsbury will once again be the recipient of the Cool Papa Bell Award presented by the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City. The award (given to the league leaders in stolen bases) is no surprise but even the winners of the subjective awards were well chosen; Elvis Andrus is a good choice for a rookie award, Mike Scioscia is a decent choice for a manager award, and Jack Zduriencik is a deserving executive.

The only one I questioned was Joe Morgan receiving an award for career excellence in the face of adversity. Joe Morgan does an award-worthy job? If you want to talk about his career as a baseball player, that's fine. But if you're going to talk about career excellence, then you can't ignore his ESPN gig and his general ineptitude at that job. But then I thought about it some more and realized that despite some pretty severe adversity (being a complete moron and not actually watching the game that he's supposed to be commenting on) he manages to keep himself employed. And that does take some sort of excellence.

Congratulations Daisuke!

I'll confess that I lost interest after the first round of the WBC. But Japan won it all last night in an apparent nail-biter. Daisuke Matsuzaka was, once again, named the MVP. It's not the most interesting award he's ever received but if he can follow it up with an MLB MVP or even a Cy Young, that would be great.

Short Jokes: Not Just for New Yorkers Anymore.

When Dustin Pedroia was interviewed by ESPN a couple of weeks ago about his video game debut (incidentally, there's a semi-interesting video here showing the filming process) he was asked about the taunting he received because of his stature. He answered by citing an example of a Yankee-fan hyperbolist who informed him that "the grass was taller than he was."

Last night, Pedroia was in New York to pick up his MVP trophy at the BWAA dinner. As part of his acceptance speech he cracked:

"I'm the only one here that doesn't need to bend over to talk into this mic."

I'm left to assume that the inability to refrain from making short jokes is an unfortunate side effect of being in the city.

Could This Be His Year?

Last year Jacoby Ellsbury lost out on the Harry Glickman Professional Athlete of the Year Award at the Oregon Sports Awards to Brandon Roy of the Portland Trail Blazers. He gets a chance to rectify that on February 8 as he has, once again, been nominated for the award.

His competition this year?

Kevin Boss, NY Giants

Troy Polamalu, Pittsburgh Steelers

Brandon Roy, Portland Trail Blazers

Nick Symmonds, Track and Field

Good luck to Jacoby!

Homeboy Honored.

Words Unlimited, an organization of Rhode Island sports writers, casters, and publicists, will hold their Sports Awards Banquet at the airport Radisson in Warwick on February 15. Their story of the year? Rhode Islanders who made it to the 2008 World Series: Rocco Baldelli, Dan Wheeler, and Davy Lopes (Phillies' first base coach.) Congratulations to him. Also being honored is Pawtucket Red Sox manager Ron Johnson as Men's Sports Coach of the Year. Congratulations to him too.

Pride of Woodland.

On a map Woodland, California doesn't appear to be a very large place. But Wikipedia informs me that the estimated population is 53,690 (it also says the place used to be called By Hell, California--they probably should have stuck with this name) so it's probably best qualified as a small city. Nearby Sacramento is home to 407,018 people; with 2,136,604 people living in the Sacramento metropolitan area. And not too far to the southwest are San Francisco and Oakland, with populations of 799,183 and 401,489 respectively.

There are plenty of people living in that little pocket of Northern California. But of all the men who call that place home, the Sacramento Bee selected Dustin Pedroia as their Male Athlete of the Year. Sometimes local recognition, from people who actually know you, can mean more than national awards. Congratulations to him.

The Weather Outside is Frightful?

If it doesn't start snowing soon, I'm going to look like such a wimp. I don't know why I believed the weather people but I called out of work this morning because of *ahem* the weather. If you did the same, you might be interested to know that Lester's no-hitter will be aired for free at 3:00pm today at MLB.com. And, fittingly, it turns out that the game won This Year in Baseball's Performance of the Year Award.

Another One for the Shelf.

Once again congratulations go out to Dustin Pedroia. This time for being named the AL MVP.

*Update*

Looking at the photos from Pedroia's presser, I realized just how much I miss baseball and my second baseman.

This, however, is a truly awful photo:

A Moveable Feast.

A heads up: The date of the Lowell Spinners dinner has been changed to January 12, 2009.

They also mentioned that the recipient of this year's Dick Bernandino Alumni Award will be Jed Lowrie. Jed was a decent shortstop but this part of the announcement:

"Overall, Lowrie hit .258 with two home runs and 46 RBI, playing stellar defense and filling the void created by Julio Lugo."

seems a little harsh on poor Julio.

Anyway, congratulations to Jed.

Silver and Gold.

Dustin Pedroia collected the silver slugger award today. Congratulations to him.

Awards Night.

On January 10 in Kansas City, Jacoby Ellsbury will be presented with the James "Cool Papa" Bell Award by the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum. The award is given to the AL and NL stolen base leader. If nothing else, it probably has the best name for an award. Congratulations to him.

Can the Starsky Award be Far Behind?

On January 21 Jon Lester will be presented with the Hutch Award.



The award is presented to the "Major League Baseball player who best exemplifies the honor, courage and dedication of baseball great Fred Hutchinson, both on and off the field." Lester was selected by a committee made up of the past award winners from the following list:

Rocco Baldelli, Tampa Bay Rays
Lance Berkman, Houston Astros
Doug Davis, Arizona Diamondbacks
Ken Griffey Jr., Chicago White Sox
Raul Ibanez, Seattle Mariners
Cliff Lee, Cleveland Indians
Jon Lester, Boston Red Sox
Aaron Rowand, San Francisco Giants
Mark Teahen, Kansas City Royals
Vernon Wells, Toronto Blue Jays

So, congratulations to him.

Civic Duty.

The voting for the This Year in Baseball awards is open through December 5. Personally, I'm repeatedly voting for Evan Longoria throwing the ball into the stands. But, you know, I'm not bitter or anything.