All SPB IV Managers, The 1975 season Awards voting has now been tabulated, and it is my privilege to announce the winners of these Annual League Awards. Thanks to all who voted. Sorry for the problems encountered with the Bravenet voting site. I know it was a hassle to have to go back and revote. Rest assured these problems will be addressed by next season.

Now to the fun part, in order to make voting more appealing and hopefully to build a little excitement for this, I have decided to send along highlights of this years voting.

First off, the MVP Award, will head the way. In the AL, in the most contested and close MVP race in quite a while, secondbaseman Rod Carew, a true hitting machine on the Toledo Mud Hens, captured the award by garnering 48 points to edge out the Magpies Ken Singleton, hard hitting leftfielder who gathered 44 points, and slugging Lumberjacks thirdsacker Mike Schmidt, who finished 3rd with 42 points, In the N.L. race, rightfielder Reggie Jackson, of the Dorsey Lemmings won the award handily while slugging his way to the top of the pile.

The Cy Young Awards for the top starting pitchers of each league were won by the Brooklyn Bucaneers Don Sutton in the AL, who captured 73 points, and in the NL, the Lemmings Bob Forsch won this award with 71 points as top starter of the year.

For the Fireman of the Year voting, in the AL Rich "Goose" Gossage, of the Mud Hens had a monster year garnering 93 points to capture his trophy. In the NL, Bob Apodaca of the Baroda Seranos topped out with 86 points.

The rookie awards for batters in the AL race, were won with the Rossvile Ramblers hustling secondbaseman Jerry Remy easily outdistanced his competitors racking up 95 points in the vote. The NL had a much closer vote with speedy outfielder Dave Collins of the Champion Hawaii 5-0's taking the award over outfielder John Hale of the Ghosts by a margin of 75-70.

The pitchers rookie of the year honors were captured by Mud Hens starter Pete Falcone, who racked up 93 points in the AL, while Dennis Eckersley, of the Lemmings, and another hard thrower, captured the NL honors with 85 points.

Congratulations goes out to the managers of each of these teams on helping to lead the way for these players to garner their league Awards as the top players of SPB's 1975 season!

And speaking of managers, further congratulations are due to the following top managers of SPB: In the AL, the winner was Toledo Mud Hen manager Rich Applegate, who was last years (1974) W.S winner, with 87 points. Finishing in second place is Peter Reoch of the Brooklyn Bucaneers, also our esteemed league statistician, and in the third slot was Edmonton Magpies leader, Chris Williams, who is always a contender

Over in the OTHER league, the NL, Jim Bendik of the Dorsey Lemmings,who won more games than any other manager in 1975 took the honors while piling up 75 points. Finishing runner up in the NL was the late Tom Falduto, who managed the Oakland Oaks through 4 of their 6 months, before his "way to early" passing. Tom is missed by all his friends in SPB, and I'm glad to see he finished high in the MOY ratings. Greg Stillwagon led the Oaks for their final 3rd of the year, but Greg wants it to be known that this team was all Tom's, and the honor is bestowed upon one of our original SPB managers , Tom Falduto. In third slot for the best manager of the NL is the manager of our 1975 World Series Champion Hawaii 5-0's, Terry Baxter. Congrats again Terry on your stunning sweep of the W.S.

This wraps up my highlights of the Awards voting for SPB 1975. I thought it would be nice to start a new SPB thing with these writeups. I hope you enjoyed this past season in SPB IV as much as I did. Even though my team barely edged the .500 mark, it was fun. For the full view of how the entire voting breakdown went for the 1975 Awards, be sure to check it out in the Voting Booth, and look for the total results featuring every player and manager who recieved a vote. This should be up shortly from our webmaster, the RELIABLE John Turnbull.