Country | United States |
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Presented by | Major League Baseball Players Association |
History | |
First award | 1997 |
Most recent | Marcus Semien, Texas Rangers |
External image | |
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Marvin Miller, the namesake of the award |
The Marvin Miller Man of the Year Award is given annually to a Major League Baseball (MLB) player "whose on-field performance and contributions to his community inspire others to higher levels of achievement." [1] [2] The award was created by the Major League Baseball Players' Association (MLBPA) and was presented to the inaugural winner – Mark McGwire – in 1997 as the "Man of the Year Award". [3] Three years later, [3] it was renamed in honor of Marvin Miller, the first executive director of the MLBPA. [4] The award forms part of the Players Choice Awards. [1] [5]
In order to determine the winner, each MLB team nominates one of their players, who is selected by their teammates to appear on the ballot. [1] An online vote is conducted among baseball fans in order to reduce the number of candidates to six. MLB players then choose the award winner from among the six finalists. [6] [7] In addition to the award, recipients have $50,000 donated on their behalf to charities of their choice by the MLB Players Trust. [8] [9] [10] John Smoltz, Jim Thome, Michael Young, Curtis Granderson, and Marcus Semien are the only players to win the Marvin Miller Man of the Year Award on multiple occasions. [11] [12] Five winners – Paul Molitor, Jim Thome, Smoltz, Chipper Jones and Mariano Rivera – are members of the National Baseball Hall of Fame. [13]
Winners of the Marvin Miller Man of the Year Award have undertaken a variety of different causes. Many winners, including McGwire, [14] Thome, [15] Smoltz, [16] Mike Sweeney, [5] Torii Hunter, [17] Young, [18] Curtis Granderson [8] and Brandon Inge, [19] worked with children in need. McGwire established a foundation to assist children who were physically or sexually abused, [14] while Inge visited disabled children at the Mott Children's Hospital and donated part of his salary to raise money for a pediatric cancer infusion center. [19] Other winners devoted their work to aiding individuals who had a specific illness, such as Albert Pujols, whose daughter suffers from Down syndrome, and who devoted the Pujols Family Foundation to helping those with the disease, [20] and Jones, who has been raising money for cystic fibrosis since 1996, after meeting an 11-year-old fan who suffered from the disease and who died several weeks after meeting Jones through the Make-A-Wish Foundation. [10]
Year | Links to the article about the corresponding Major League Baseball year |
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Player (X) | Name of the player and number of times they had won the award at that point (if more than one) |
Team | The player's team at the time he won the award |
Position | The player's position at the time he won the award |
† | Member of the Baseball Hall of Fame |
‡ | Player is active |
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