Los Angeles Angels Of Anaheim Mike Scioscia Wins American League Manager Of The Year
34 Would Be Proud
Mike Scioscia of the Los Angeles Angels of Anhiem had to endure the most emotionally season of his 10 seasons as leader of the Angels and that culminated in him selected as the 2009 American League Manager of the Year by the Baseball Writers’ Association of America.
It was Scioscia’s second Manager of the Year award. He was named by the BBWAA in 2002, when the Angels claimed their first World Series title under his direction after entering the postseason as a Wild Card. Scioscia, who is the first manager in Major League history to pilot six postseason teams in his first 10 seasons, received 15 of a possible 28 first-place votes for 106 points.
The Twins’ Ron Gardenhire finished second with six first-place votes and 72 points. Joe Girardi of the Yankees (four first-place votes) was third, followed by the Mariners’ Don Wakamatsu (two), the Rangers’ Ron Washington (one) and the Tigers’ Jim Leyland.
Coping with the death of young pitcher Nick Adenhart in a car wreck on April 9, Scioscia and the Angels emerged from early struggles — they were 29-29 on June 11 — to take flight en route to a third consecutive AL West title, their fifth in six seasons.
In the AL Division Series, the Angels swept their October nemesis, Boston, in three games before falling in six games in the AL Championship Series to the Yankees, who went on to subdue the Phillies in the World Series.
With 97 wins, the Angels continued a run of excellence under Scioscia, whose teams have won 900 regular-season games in 10 seasons. His 567 victories over the past six seasons represent a Major League best — one more than Joe Torre has achieved with the Yankees and Dodgers and two more than Terry Francona with the Red Sox.
Twins Win Reminds Us All What Is Great About Baseball
Go-Go-Gomez
Did you witness last night’s 12 inning heart attack inducing game 163 between the Twins and the Tigers? If you missed it, are you really a sports fan? After playing through 162 games of July heat, April showers, Seattle to New York, New York to Florida, Florida to Detroit, double headers, day games, night games, it was the ultimate win or go home game.
So if you missed the tiebreaker game, are you really a sports fan or do you false advertise?
If you where a witness, you didn’t see a crime, you saw that Metrodome magic. It took 163 games to finally decided an American League Central Champion. This was the second year in a row that the Twins have had to force the tiebreaker 163 game to decide the division, playing and losing to the Chicago White Sox 1-0 in 2008, and they weren’t going down without a fight this time. The Minnesota Twins, who were seven games back in early September, battled until the very end, going 17-4 down the stretch to take down the Tigers 6-5 in the tie-breaker game.
The game was filled with back and forth drama, until finally in the 12th, Alexi Casilla got a base hit that allowed Carlos “Go-Go” Gomez to slide across home with the game winning run. This ensures that the Metrodome will still be hosting baseball past the ‘Final Game’.
“That is as good a baseball game as I’ve ever been involved as far as courage from both teams,” Twins manager Ron Gardenhire. “We came through at the end. But after 10 innings I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, I’ve never seen anything like this.’ It was just back and forth, neither team giving up.”
“This game is going to live forever,” Gardenhire said. “People are going to talk about it forever. I know it was just Game 163, but people are going to talk about this game. There was a lot of stuff that happened in it.”
Joe Mauer finished last night as the American League batting champion, this marks the 3rd time in his career to achieve the accomplishment (unheard of from the catcher position), first in on base percentage, slugging. As previously stated Mauer is your AL MVP.
Well played champs. Well played.
