MORNEAU GLORY FOR CANUCK SLUGGER

Now that Canada's own Justin Morneau has won American League most valuable player honours after his stellar season for the Minnesota Twins, it means you can take him off the shortlist for the Lou Marsh Award, which goes to the country's athlete of the year.

Believe it or not, and this should tell you a lot about the Canadian character, winning a major individual award in major-league baseball is the kiss of the death so far as winning the Lou Marsh goes. None of the previous Hoser hardballers who won major awards -- the Cy Young or MVP -- won the Lou Marsh that same year, and all three were snubbed in favour of someone who participates in something that's barely a sport.

It's like winning acclaim from American sportswriters violates some coolness test. (Never mind that Morneau wasn't even the MVP of his own team, let alone the entire American League's. One baseball writer even calls it downright criminal that he and Ryan Howard won due to sportswriters' infantile obsession with runs batted in.)

In 2003, Eric Gagné won the National Cy Young Award with the L.A. Dodgers. Athlete of the year honours went to a golfer, Mike Weir.

Six years earlier, 1997, Larry Walker was National League MVP, but a race-car driver, Jacques Villenueve, was top athlete. Really? From here, it looked like the car was doing most of the work. (The next year, Walker won the award)

And that has nothing on 1971, when Ferguson Jenkins won the NL Cy Young Award, and the award went to Hervé Filion, a harness racing driver. Seriously. A harness racing driver was supposedly a better athlete than a future Hall of Fame baseball player.*

Ominously for Morneau, this was a Winter Olympics year, meaning there are all sorts of athletes in pseudo-sports who won gold medals: Duff Gibson in skeleton, Jennifer Heil in moguls skiing and, oh, don't forget Brad Gushue in curling. So he'll repeat this dubious bit of history.

Actually, in all seriousness, if Cindy Klassen doesn't receive the Lou Marsh Award after what she did in winning five medals in Turin, they ought to abolish the award.

DIGRESSIONS

(*Jenkins later won the Lou Marsh in 1974, but only after he was jobbed out of the American League Cy Young balloting. The sportswriters instead gave it to Catfish Hunter. Jenkins was better, but it was also his first year after changing leagues, and Hunter played on a pennant winner, and oh yeah, Hunter was white and the sportswriters back then were a bunch of prejudiced A-holes. Totally different from today. Otherwise, Jenkins would have been the first guy to win in both leagues and would have gone into Cooperstown on the first ballot, not the third. OK, maybe the second.)

Related:
Lou Marsh Trophy (Wikipedia)

That's all for now. Send your thoughts to neatesager@yahoo.ca.