2003 Award Winners

Which award(s) are you interested in? From reading Gary Garland's news pieces at baseballguru.com, most of the awards have already been made.

Jim Albright

How about the Golden Gloves?

That's the one set of awards I haven't seen as yet.

Jim Albright

Have the Rookie(s) of the Year been announced?

The 2003 Rookies of the year were:

Central League: Kisanuki Hiroshi (Giants)

Pacific League: Wada Tsuyoshi (Daiei)

Who won the 2003 Central and Pacific League MVP Awards, along with the 2003 Sawamura Award?

The awards I have seen reported by Gary Garland at baseballguru.com are:

CL MVP:  Kei Igawa

PL MVP:  Kenji Jojima

Sawamura:  Kei Igawa and Kazumi Saitoh

CL Best Nine:
P      Kei Igawa
C      Akihiro Yano
1B     George Arias
2B     Makoto Imaoka
3B     Ken Suzuki
SS     Tomohiro Nioka
OF     Alex Ramirez
OF     Norihiro Akahashi
OF     Kosuke Fukudome

PL Best Nine:
P     Kazumi Saitoh
C     Kenji Jojima
1B    Nobuhiko Matsunaka
2B    Tadahito Iguchi
3B    Michihiro Ogasawara
SS    Kazuo Matsui
OF    Tuffy Rhodes
OF    Yoshitomo Tani
OF    Kazuhiro Wada
DH    Alex Cabrera

Jim Albright

PL MVP: Johjima (Daiei)
CL MVP: Igawa (Hanshin)

Sawamura Award:
Saitoh (Daiei) and
Iguchi (Hanshin)

Golden Gloves haven't been announced yet.

All awards are currently listed at NPB's official site here (in Japanese only).

Sorry for not having time to enter them all.

Of course Igawa shared the Sawamura Award, not Iguchi.

Today's (November 7, 2003) Nikkan Sports reports on the 2003 Golden Glove Awards:

Central League:

P Uehara (Giants)
C Yano (Hanshin)
1B Arias (Hanshin)
2B Imaoka (Hanshin)
3B Tatsunami (Chunichi)
SS Miyamoto (Yakult)
OF Akahoshi (Hanshin)
OF Fukudome (Chunichi)
OF Takahashi (Giants)

Pacific League:

P Matsuzaka (Seibu)
C Johjima (Daiei)
1B Fukuura (Lotte)
2B Iguchi (Daiei)
3B Ogasawara (Nippon Ham)
SS Matsui (Seibu)
OF Muramatsu (Daiei)
OF Tani (Orix)
OF Ohmura (Kintetsu)
OF Shibahara (Daiei)

Yes, you read that right. There were four outfielders selected. It is noted that Ohmura and Shibahara recieved the same number of votes for the third outfielder, so are both given the award.

Does anybody know how many games Ogasawara played at third base? I thought he was primarily a first baseman, but he was selected Best Nine and Golden Glove at third base.

This was discussed around the All-Star time when Ogasawara was on the ballet at third. He played pretty much the entire season at third as far as I know (probably appearing at first a few times, but I don't have that data). I'm afraid that I've forgotten who took over at first. One of the Tanaka's comes to mind for at least a few games.

I'll be able to better answer that question when the BBM Record Book is released at the end of December. Send me a reminder then.

I believe Ogasawara-san played 115 games at third and 13 games at first. At least close to those numbers. Going through box scores can get confusing.