The Lou Gehrig Memorial Award

Are you familiar with the Lou Gehrig Memorial Award? I wasn't.

According to Baseball-Almanac.com:

The Lou Gehrig Memorial Award was established by Lou Gehrig's college fraternity, Phi Delta Theta at Columbia University. The award is presented annually to the Major League baseball player who both on and off the field best exemplifies the character of Lou Gehrig.

I think that's cool that a fraternity gets to pick the winner of a major award. When you look at the list of past winners going back to 1955 - it really is a who's-who of baseball nice guys. People like Warren Spahn, Robin Roberts, Brooks Robinson, Dale Murphy, Tony Gwynn, etc.

I wonder if the fraternity has ever thought about going back to Pete Rose and Mark McGwire and saying they'd like their award back?

Anyway, I stumbled upon this award because I woke up thinking about Jamie Moyer this morning (yes I'm strange like that). Actually my morning, just waking up, train of thought went something like this:

- what are the Red Sox going to do about their pitching? Is their anyone out there who could help them?
- I'd sure like to see the Red Sox get Tom Glavine. I think he has enough left in the tank to help out. Glavine's 38 but has 2 more years on his contract - is there another example of a crafty-lefty pitcher who had real productive years at age 38 to 40? What about Jamie Moyer?
- that Jamie Moyer doesn't get near the credit he deserves. I should check into his stats this morning.
- I really got to pee. I wonder if my wife made coffee? I should get up.

So I did check into Jamie Moyers' stats and found that among other things - he won the Lou Gehrig Memorial Award. And in the years he was 38-40, Moyer went 54-21 which was probably his best three year stretch of his career. That's good news for Glavine who is also 38 and 10-10 this year with a 4.10 ERA.

What worries me about Glavine is his home/road ERA splits. He's got a 3.70 ERA pitching at Shea (a pitchers park) but just a 4.61 ERA on the road. Not that Glavine would ever be traded to the Red Sox this season anyway. The Mets would love to be out from under his contract but trading him would be like waiving a white flag on the season and they are only 1.5 games back in the NL Wild Card race.

Some other nuggets from my morning research:

- Jamie Moyer is the Mariner's all-time leader in wins. If he retires a Mariner - they're bound to retire his number.
- Glavine was actually born in Concord, MA. I keep forgetting this because he's always referred to as "Billerica's Tom Glavine".
- Moyer is 74th on the all-time strike out list. This season he's past names like Pud Galvin and Frankie Viola.
- What a great name Pud is! Can you imagine naming your son "Pud" today? I think that would be like the Johnny Cash song "A Boy Named Sue".