http://www.BaseballHall.org http:
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Dec. 10, 2019
NICK CAFARDO WINS J.G. TAYLOR SPINK AWARD
— Prolific Boston writer will be posthumously honored July 24-27
during Hall of Fame Weekend in Cooperstown —
Nick Cafardo, who informed and entertained New England’s passionate baseball fan base for more than 35 years up to the last day of his life, was elected the 2020 winner of the J.G. Taylor Spink Award in balloting by the Baseball Writers’ Association of America. His career will be honored with the award that is presented annually to a sportswriter “for meritorious contributions to baseball writing” during the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum’s Induction Weekend July 24-27, 2020 in Cooperstown, N.Y.
Cafardo received 243 votes from the 427 ballots cast by BBWAA members with 10 or more consecutive years’ service in becoming the 71st winner of the award since its inception in 1962 and named for the first recipient. Spink was a driving force of the Sporting News, known during his lifetime as the “Baseball Bible.”
Jim Reeves, an award-winning columnist and baseball writer in a 40-year career with the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, received 108 votes. Patrick Reusse, who has spent the better part of 45 years writing about baseball in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, got 76.
A Weymouth Mass., native and Suffolk University graduate, Cafardo worked at the Brockton Enterprise and the Quincy Patriot-Ledger before joining the Boston Globe as baseball columnist in 1989. Nick inherited the Sunday notes column, founded by 2004 Spink Award recipient Peter Gammons in the early 1970s, and did not miss a single week over the final 15 years of his career. Cafardo made virtually every Red Sox trip and covered more than 30 World Series, All-Star Games and Winter Meetings.
Cafardo covered Red Sox World Series victories in 2004, 2007, 2013 and 2018. When the Red Sox and Dodgers played 18 innings in Game 3 of the 2018 Series at Dodger Stadium, Nick turned to colleagues with the score tied at the start of the 18th and remarked, “Isn’t this great?” Then he made deadline (Eovaldi Heroic in Defeat) in a game that ended at 3:30 a.m. Boston time. Cafardo wrote four baseball books and won the Massachusetts Sportswriter of the Year Award in 2014 and the Boston Baseball Writers’ Dave O’Hara Award in 2017.
Cafardo’s final baseball article, a column about World Series MVP Steve Pearce, appeared in the Globe Feb. 21, 2019. Cafardo was scheduled to be off that day but went to the ballpark anyway and died outside the Red Sox’ spring training clubhouse. He was 62. He is the first posthumous winner of the award since his Boston Globe colleague, Larry Whiteside, in 2008.
Previous Spink Award Recipients
2019 Jayson Stark; 2018 Sheldon Ocker; 2017 Claire Smith; 2016 Dan Shaughnessy; 2015 Tom Gage; 2014 Roger Angell; 2013 Paul Hagen; 2012 Bob Elliott; 2011 Bill Conlin; 2010 Bill Madden; 2009 Nick Peters; 2008 Larry Whiteside; 2006 Rick Hummel; 2005 Tracy Ringolsby; 2004 Peter Gammons; 2003 Murray Chass; 2002 Hal McCoy; 2001 Joe Falls; 2000 Ross Newhan; 1999 Hal Lebovitz; 1998 Bob Stevens; 1997 Sam Lacy; 1996 Charley Feeney; 1995 Joseph Durso; 1993 Wendell Smith; 1992 Leonard Koppett, Bus Saidt; 1991 Ritter Collett; 1990 Phil Collier; 1989 Jerome Holtzman; 1988 Bob Hunter, Ray Kelly; 1987 Jim Murray; 1986 Jack Lang; 1985 Earl Lawson; 1984 Joe McGuff; 1983 Ken Smith; 1982 Si Burick; 1981 Bob Addie, Allen Lewis; 1980 Joe Reichler, Milton Richman; 1979 Bob Broeg, Tommy Holmes; 1978 Tim Murnane, Dick Young; 1977 Gordon Cobbledick, Edgar Munzel; 1976 Harold Kaese, Red Smith; 1975 Tom Meany, Shirley Povich; 1974 John Carmichael, James Isaminger; 1973 Warren Brown, John Drebinger, John F. Kieran; 1972 Dan Daniel, Fred Lieb, J. Roy Stockton; 1971 Frank Graham; 1970 Heywood C. Broun; 1969 Sid Mercer; 1968 H.G. Salsinger; 1967 Damon Runyon; 1966 Grantland Rice; 1965 Charles Dryden; 1964 Hugh Fullerton; 1963 Ring Lardner; 1962 J.G. Taylor Spink.
The view from left field 