Mr. "Knows His Ultimate Zone Rating From His FRAR"

Amid the muck and slime emerged the first primitive beings, crawling out of the mire, basking in the life-giving rays, slowly evolving and adapting, toddling, knuckle-scraping, walking upright and finally reclining with a good book.

The ascent of Man? Sure, but also the ascent of modern baseball analysis. Although the state of baseball journalism remains fairly dismal, there are nonetheless heroes in the midst. A paean to those luminaries who have the guts to leap upstream is long overdue.

Here's to you, Mr. Understands the Value of On-Base Percentage and Isn't Intimidated By VORP.

Best Sportswriter -- Joe Posnanski, Kansas City Star, Sports Illustrated. Joe Poz was one of the first to recognize that Bill James had proposed baseball's relativity theory and that it would revolutionize the game. Joe writes with humor, warmth and a level of comprehension of baseball's inner life rarely found elsewhere. 

Here's Joe Poz on Joe Morgan: "...he became a symbol of the closed-minded ballplayer-turned-announcer who believed in the power of heart, the magic of grit, and that to win you need winners, and that to become a winner you need to learn how to win, and that to learn how to win you need to win, and that to win you need winners." 

You can read more of Joe's work here and here .

Best Sports Broadcaster -- Brian Kenny, ESPN. Here's what blows my mind about Brian Kenny. The guy is sharp as a laser. His interviews crackle and he pummels conventional wisdom with iron insights and joie de vive. His sons both attend Berkeley. And yet he did his higher learning at St. John's, which is a just four years of Yourtown Community College. BK mixes stat-comfort with a keen mind for the human side of sports.

Kenny also has the most cerebral guests, most notably Greg Easterbrook, author of Tuesday Morning QB, and an email-reading segment called Kenny's Log-Ins. His week-nightly radio show makes my nipples rise. Catch excerpts here.

Best Play-By-Play Broadcaster -- Jon Sciambi, ESPN. With apologies to Charlie Steiner, Gary Cohen, Dan Shulman and their Gentile counterparts, Sciambi stands out among the standouts. Like the above-mentioned , you'll never catch Boog mumbling some conventional tripe about momentum or clubhouse chemistry. Moreover, he actually works the new analysis into his broadcasts and explains to his listeners how and why it matters in a way that increases their understanding without dropping a load of statistics on them. Here's the test of a great PBP announcer: enjoyment of the broadcast is inversely proportional to the competitiveness of the game.

Best Color Commentator -- Dave Campbell, ESPN Radio. The guy with the lamest nickname (Soup) is absolutely terrific on those Sunday night broadcasts. You can really hear his exquisite talent come through when he covers the same two teams Sunday night that Fox covered on TV the previous afternoon. Twice the insight without the cliches and provably false shibboleths.

Best Sabermetrician/Writer -- Joe Sheehan, JoeSheehan.com and Sports Illustrated. Sheehan gets the nod over Keith Law and Rob Neyer primarily because you can find them without my help on the Worldwide Leader. Joe's the most provocative of the three, which is to say that he doesn't mind being an idiot in the service of an idea. He's also more of a writer than Neyer or Law, who have number-crunching chops that he lacks. Sheehan studies the nooks and examines the crannies of the game and brings mind-expanding analysis to it. Look, read them all and learn about the game.

It's not a desert out there. While there's still too much wind blowing through baseball journalism's ears, there are heads popping through the sand with neurons firing. I hope and expect that we'll be able to continue adding to this list in coming years.

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