Awards

J.G. Taylor Spink Award

By Patrick Mondout

The J.G. Taylor Spink Award was created in lieu of allowing baseball writers into the National Baseball Hall of Fame. It is the highest award the Baseball Writers Association of America (BBWAA) gives its members and is widely viewed as essentially inducting such writers into the Hall.

The Baseball Writers Association of America (BBWAA) at its World Series meeting in San Francisco in October of 1962 unanimously approved the new award with this resolution:

"Saluting J.G. Taylor Spink's contributions to baseball and to baseball writing, the BBWAA herewith establishes in his name an award to be made for meritorious service to the national sport and to our profession. The BBWAA requests of the Hall of Fame directors space at Cooperstown to honor recipients of the Spink award. Further, the BBWAA proudly announces that Spink himself shall be the first to be given the award by which his name and deeds will hereafter be recognized."

Spink was the publisher of The Sporting News from 1914 to 1962, and took over from his father Charles Spink at age 26. 

The Spink Award recipient is awarded the certificate during the Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony each year and the plaque upon which his or her name appears is in the "Scribes & Mikemen" exhibit in the Library of the Baseball Hall of Fame. Winners are not officially members of the Hall (see my rant about this here), thus there is no "writer's wing" of the Hall of Fame (yet).

Well-known Spink Award winners include Peter Gammons, Fred Lieb, Shirley Povich, Jerome Holtzman, Ring Lardner, and Sam Lacy.

Note that winners are announced at the end of one year and are usually present at the Hall of Fame induction ceremonies the next summer. Thus Gammons won the award in 2004, but was at the 2005 ceremonies.

Winners of the J.G. Taylor Spink Award