BBWAA Nominates Writer for Highest Honor Who Just Wrote Bizarre John Wetteland Piece
By Michael Luciano
One of the three nominees for the 2020 Spink Award, the most prestigious award in all of baseball writing, is Jim Reeves, who covered the Texas Rangers for the better part of 40 years.
The timing for this nomination couldn't have been worse, however. One of the last things Reeves published was entitled "The John Wetteland I Knew", a lengthy collection of anecdotes about former Rangers closer John Wetteland, who was accused of sexually abusing a child several times since 2004, when the victim was just four years old.
Jim Reeves is one of three nominees for this year’s @officialBBWAA Spink Award, just two months after he wrote a paean to John Wetteland after the former pitcher was charged with repeatedly sexually assaulting a child: https://t.co/nejBhOTEi0
— keithlaw (@keithlaw) July 9, 2019
The piece centers it's argument around the hypothetical "only he knows the facts, so everyone is judging him unfairly" argument, with stories here and there form his playing days about what a stand-up guy he is.
While this is a pending legal matter and Wetteland is innocent until proven guilty, glorifying the accused is still a questionable and kind of sick hill to die on. And this is the week the BBWAA decides to lavish him with praise while writers opine about his career?
How does this get past any kind of editor ?
— SouthFLChef (@kocha34) July 9, 2019
One piece does not negate 40 years of work, but the BBWAA has to have more sense than to nominate him for an award after pulling something like this.