Jewish ballplayers have won top awards

BOSTON, Oct. 23 (JTA) — The scorecard for Jewish baseball award winners isn’t shabby for a group of players who represent slightly less than 1 percent of the roughly 17,000 men who have played the game at the major league level since the 1870s. Sandy Koufax is a three-time Cy Young winner and an MVP; Steve Stone received his Cy Young in 1980 for his 25 wins. Hank Greenberg was a two-time MVP and the first to receive the award in two different years at two different positions; Lou Boudreau won the MVP at age 31 as player-manager of the Cleveland Indians in 1948; and Indians slugging third baseman Al Rosen won it in 1953. Golden Glovers have been Shawn Green and Mike Lieberthal in 1999, and Brad Ausmus in 2001 and 2002. The “most recent” (OK, our only) Jewish Silver Slugger has been Jason Marquis, who captured National League batting honors for pitchers in 2005 with a .310 batting average. And in terms of end-of-season stats, Greenberg led the American League four times in RBIs and homers; Buddy Myer, with the Washington Senators, was the American League batting champ in 1935; Boudreau won the batting title in 1944; Rosen was the A.L. home run leader in 1950, and homer and RBI leader in 1953, just missing the Triple Crown; and Koufax won the pitching Triple Crown (wins, strikeouts, ERA) in each of his three Cy Young years.