New York Yankees left fielder Brett Gardner is the 2017 winner of the Heart and Hustle Award. The Major League Baseball Players Alumni Association (MLBPAA) made the announcement in New York. The award honors an active player who shows real passion for baseball and lives up to its values. It also stands apart from every other MLB honor, because former players do the voting.
Gardner was hardly a surprise pick. He had already won the Yankees’ team-level version of the award five times. And 2017 was the best year of his career at the plate: 157 hits, 21 home runs and a .428 slugging percentage, all career highs.
A record off the field
The numbers were only part of it, though. Gardner often visits kids at NewYork-Presbyterian Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital. Every year he and his wife, Jessica, also stop by the Medical University of South Carolina. He was a Roberto Clemente Award nominee in each of the last two seasons, and he is a regular at the Yankees’ HOPE Week.
The list goes on. Gardner backs the Ronald McDonald House and the Salvation Army. He is a charter member of the Taylor Hooton advisory board, which warns young athletes about performance-enhancing drugs. In 2016 he hosted a Thanksgiving lunch for 80 active-duty service members and their families. Then, on September 1, 2017, he wore two custom pairs of cleats in a game. Both were later auctioned for pediatric cancer research at Memorial Sloan Kettering.
Gardner said the honor meant a lot to him since it came from the alumni. In his view, the award is about how you play the game. He has always tried to play it hard and the right way, he added, and he plans to treasure it.
How the winner is chosen
The vote runs in two rounds. First, 30 alumni committees, one per club, each pick a team winner. Then fans, alumni and active players choose the overall winner from those 30 names.
Gardner joins a list that began with David Eckstein in 2005. Craig Biggio won twice, in 2006 and 2007. Later winners include Grady Sizemore, Albert Pujols, Roy Halladay, Torii Hunter, Mike Trout, Dustin Pedroia, Josh Harrison and Anthony Rizzo. Todd Frazier took the award in 2016.
The news came on November 14, 2017, at the 18th annual Legends for Youth Dinner in New York City. Bert Blyleven and Andre Dawson received Lifetime Achievement Awards the same night. Because the dinner is a fundraiser, it pays for the free Legends for Youth baseball clinics. Those clinics reach more than 16,000 children a year, from the U.S. to Australia, the Dominican Republic and Venezuela.
The MLBPAA was founded in 1982. Its goals are to promote the game, raise money for charity and protect baseball’s good name. The group is based in Colorado Springs and has about 7,800 members, while roughly 6,100 of them are alumni and current players.