The Pecan Park Eagle

Klem Award for Umpires winner Shag Crawford takes a close look on a safe call at home.

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“Umps” Crawford to be Honored

Houston (Sp) – Shag Crawford, who calls balls and strike for a living, and Leon Everitt, a young man who throws balls and strikes, will both be honored at the Houston Baseball writers annual dinner at the Shamrock-Hilton (Hotel) on Jan. 23 (1968).

SHAG CRAWFORD
1968 WINNER
BILL KLEM AWARD

Crawford, who has served as a National League umpire for 11 years, will receive the Bill Klem Award for meritorious service to baseball.

LEON EVERITT
1968 WINNER
JIMMY DELMAR AWARD
(Everitt later pitched one MLB season for the original 1969 San Diego Padres.)

Everitt, a 20-year old right hand pitcher in the Los Angeles Dodgers organization, will receive the Jimmy Delmar Award as “the Texas-born minor league player of the year.” Everitt, who was born in Marshall, won 15 and lost 13 with a 3.45 ERA for Albuquerque in the Texas League and is regarded as one of the most promising youngsters in baseball.

Crawford will be best remembered for his “shoving” incident this past season with San Francisco Giants manager Herman Franks.

He started umpiring in the minors in 1950 and has been in the senior circuit since 1956. He now lives in Philadelphia.

ORLANDO CEPEDA
1968 WINNER
TRIS SPEAKER AWARD

JIM LONBORG
1968 WINNER
DICKIE KERR AWARD

RUSTY STAUB
1968 WINNER
JIM UMBRICHT AWARD
2ND STRAIGHT YEAR

These two join Orlando Cepeda (Tris Speaker Award), Jim Lonborg (Dickie Kerr Award), and Rusty Staub (Jim Umbricht Award for the second consecutive year) as the honorees (for their performances during the 1967 season.

Proceeds from the 1968 dinner will be donated to the American Cancer Society in memory of Jim Umbricht and to the Leukemia Society in memory of Walter Bond. The Baytown Sun has tickets.

~ Special Pre-Dinner Report, Baytown Sun, January 11, 1968, Page 16.

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Post-Digital Records Online Research Notes.

The pre and post dinner reporting on the 1968 Houston Baseball Dinner, the 8th in history, was pretty loose and spotty. We had o infer above the awards received by Cepeda and Lonborg were the same-named Speaker and Kerr awards from previous seasons. No mention was made as to whatever happened to the Hornsby or Dyer awards from previous seasons.

There was a brief report from another brief article that praised Wilmer “Vinegar Bend Mizell” for being the most entertaining speaker of the evening, but there was no mention of the basis for his talk. He could have been a keynote speaker or presenter, but if he were a recipient, there was no mention elsewhere that we could find that identified him as such. The article did mention that his recorded remarks were being replayed for the general public on radio station KTRH by sports director Dan Lovett. – This report lend hope to the idea that here is a recorded transcription history, at least in part, that exists out there in someone’s possession, if it has not been thrown out with the “trash” long ago.

More research will be needed in each of these dinner histories we manage to briefly cover in The Pecan Park Eagle.