Handing out hardware

Sunday, October 2, 2005 | Feedback | Print Entry

There are 2,430 games on the baseball schedule every year and they are played not for the accumulation of statistics, but to determine champions. They are played to see who wins, and who loses.

When the major awards are given, then, I've always thought that winning should be a factor. That's not to say that Bobby Jenks should be the American League Cy Young over Johan Santana, or that Abraham Nunez is a slam-dunk MVP pick over Derrek Lee, merely because they played on first-place teams. But the winning and losing is part of the equation, and this year, when you could make a great case for two or three candidates for each of the major awards, that bit of weight would be decisive for me (I don't have a vote; two beat writers assigned to cover each team do have votes).  
 

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  • Buster Olney Buster Olney

    Buster Olney is a senior writer at ESPN The Magazine. He began covering baseball in 1989, as the Nashville Banner's beat reporter assigned to the Triple-A Nashville Sounds. Later, he covered the San Diego Padres (1993-94), the Baltimore Orioles ('95-96), the New York Mets ('97) and the Yankees ('98-2001). Olney joined ESPN The Magazine in 2003, after six years at The New York Times, and he's the author of the Times' best-seller "The Last Night of the Yankee Dynasty," a book about the Paul O'Neill-Tino Martinez Yankees dynasty of 1996-01.

    He grew up in central Vermont collecting baseball cards and listening to Red Sox, Expos, Phillies and Pirates radio broadcasts, and was a rabid fan of the Los Angeles Dodgers. He graduated from Vanderbilt University the same year as hoops legend Will Perdue, and ranks among the all-time leading scorers in pickup basketball at Memorial Gym. He claims to have witnessed the Commodores' winning football season in 1982 (although anthropologists have not yet confirmed this).

    Olney also contributes to ESPN.com, ESPN Radio, ESPNEWS, "SportsCenter" and "Baseball Tonight."

    Follow Buster on Twitter: @Buster_ESPN

    Ask Buster a question: Buster's Mailbag

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