Baseball awards are always given out at the end of the year, after the World Series has been played: most valuable player, Cy Young, rookie of the year, manager of the year, executive of the year. In the past few years, I have even named a winner of the Sigh Young award.

I am creating another award, but I’m not going to wait until after the World Series to give it out. There’s no need to. I am not promising that the honor will be awarded in subsequent seasons because the winners of this award have set the bar so high any subsequent candidates will be hard pressed to deserve it.

If you’re waiting for the punch line, sorry, I don’t have one. There is nothing funny about this award. The winners of the award are only to be admired. This is the Humanitarian Award, and the winners are the top two executives of the Arizona Diamondbacks – the managing general partner Ken Kendrick and the president and chief executive officer Derrick Hall.

Kendrick and Hall have performed an act of humanity rarely seen in …

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Maybe I don’t have the right take on the numbers, but if you ran a company whose employees got one out of every two decisions wrong, wouldn’t you think about getting a new set of employees?

For two seasons now, Major League Baseball has used replays to determine if umpires’ calls are correct. Managers can challenge calls – one a game unless the challenge is upheld and then they get another one – and the plays are reviewed in multiple replays in a studio in Manhattan.

Major league umpires, on a rotating basis, view the replays and inform the umpires working the game if the calls were right or wrong. A game umpire then signals safe or out or whatever the result is, and the game resumes.

The review practice has seemingly gained widespread acceptance, even among …

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I was just 7 years old and a budding baseball fan in the summer of 2002, but even at that young age, I couldn’t resist imitating more experienced analysts and playing armchair general manager.

The first object of my assistance was the Expos, who sat on the edge of playoff contention, a handful of games back of both the division and wild-card leads. I wrote a letter to the team’s general manager, Omar Minaya, advocating that he trade for Cleveland starter Chuck Finley to bolster the Montreal rotation. Why Finley? In retrospect, I’m not particularly sure—the veteran lefthander was 39 years old in 2002 and had amassed a 5.54 ERA the year before. But nonetheless, my shrewd GM mind tabbed Finley as the Expos’ missing piece, the necessary addition to propel them to their first playoff appearance in two decades.

It was much to my delight when Minaya actually consummated a trade for …

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