Marvin Miller Man of the Year Award
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Country | United States |
|---|---|
| Presented by | Major League Baseball Players Association |
| History | |
| First award | 1997 |
| Most recent | Brent Suter, Cincinnati Reds |
| External image | |
|---|---|
 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 has 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 |
|---|---|
| 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 |
