KANSAS CITY, MO (December 8, 2020) – Dick Kaegel, who covered the Kansas City Royals for more than two decades for the Kansas City Star and MLB.com, has been named the 2021 winner of the J.G. Taylor Spink Award in balloting by the Baseball Writers’ Association of America (BBWAA). His career will be honored with the award which is presented annually to a sportswriter “for meritorious contributions to baseball writing” during the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum’s Induction Weekend, July 23-26 in Cooperstown, N.Y.
Kaegel received 183 votes of the 374 ballots, which included three blanks, cast by BBWAA members with 10 or more consecutive years’ service, becoming the 72nd winner of the award since its inception in 1962. His career spanned 53 years, covering the Royals and St. Louis Cardinals for the St. Louis Post Dispatch, Kansas City Star and MLB.com. Additionally, he served as editor-in-chief of the Sporting News from 1979-85, when circulation spiked. He spent one spring as a player in camp with the Baltimore Orioles and filed weekly reports about his experience. He also covered all 162 Royals games in 2011, just four years after undergoing liver transplant surgery.
He served several terms as chair of the Kansas City Chapter of the BBWAA and twice served on the Hall of Fame’s Golden Era Committee.
Kaegel will be honored along with the late Nick Cafardo, the 2020 recipient, at the July 24 ceremony at Doubleday Field. There was no awards presentation ceremony last summer due to restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The award is named after J.G. Taylor Spink, who was the first recipient in 1962. He was a driving force of the Sporting News, known during his lifetime as the “Baseball Bible.”