BBWAA Career Excellence Award
J. G. Taylor Spink, the award's first recipient and former namesake | |
| Sport | Baseball |
|---|---|
| Awarded for | "Meritorious contributions to baseball writing" |
| Location | National Baseball Hall of Fame Cooperstown, New York |
| Presented by | Baseball Writers' Association of America (BBWAA) |
| History | |
| First award | 1962 |
| First winner | J. G. Taylor Spink |
| Most recent | Thomas Boswell (2025) |
| Website | Official website |
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The BBWAA Career Excellence Award, formerly the J. G. Taylor Spink Award, is the highest award given by the Baseball Writers' Association of America (BBWAA). It is given "for meritorious contributions to baseball writing" and voted on annually by the BBWAA. Winners are typically announced in December, with the award presented at the Baseball Hall of Fame in July.
Recipients of the award are not members of the Hall of Fame—they are not "inducted" or "enshrined", they are not "Hall of Fame sportswriters", and there is no "writers' wing" of the Hall of Fame—they are officially "honorees." The award is given at a separate ceremony from the induction ceremony on Hall of Fame weekend. As with recipients of the Ford C. Frick Award for baseball broadcasting, the honorees are permanently recognized in a "Scribes & Mikemen" exhibit in the Hall's library.
The award was instituted in 1962 and named after J. G. Taylor Spink, publisher of The Sporting News from 1914 to 1962, and the award's first recipient. In February 2021, the BBWAA voted to remove his name from the award "due to Spink’s troubled history in supporting segregated baseball."