MIAMI – Star Tribune columnist Patrick Reusse, who spent decades covering the Twins, has been nominated to join some of the players he covered in Cooperstown.
Reusse is one of three finalists for baseball writing's highest honor, the J.G. Taylor Spink Award, given annually since 1962 for "meritorious service to baseball writing." The honor comes with inclusion at each year's induction ceremony at the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y.
Winners are recognized in the "Scribes and Mikemen" exhibit in the Hall's library.
The award is voted on by the Baseball Writers Association of America, which announced the final ballot at its All-Star Game meeting Tuesday. A winner will be announced at baseball's winter meetings in Orlando this December.
Nominated with Reusse are Jim Reeves, longtime Rangers writer and columnist at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, and Sheldon Ocker, who covered the Indians for three decades at the Akron Beacon Journal.
"The real honor is being on the ballot with a pair of writers like Shelly and Reeves," said Reusse, who grew up in southwestern Minnesota and learned of his nomination while taking his grandkids to a movie Tuesday. "It'd be an honor to lose to either one of them. The only reason I'd vote for me is that I could give a speech in Cooperstown to tell how my old man [Richard Reusse] instilled a love of baseball in me back in Fulda in the '50s."
Previous winners of the Spink Award, named for the longtime columnist and editor of The Sporting News, include such sportswriting legends as Grantland Rice, Damon Runyon, Red Smith, Jim Murray and Peter Gammons.
This year's winner, Claire Smith of the New York Times, is the first female winner of the award.
