Rick Hummel, who is known as "The Commissioner" throughout the sport he has covered in St. Louis for 33 years, was elected the 2006 winner of the J.G. Taylor Spink Award in balloting by the Baseball Writers’ Association of America. He will receive the award that is presented annually to a sportswriter "for meritorious contributions to baseball writing" during the 2007 National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum induction ceremony July 29 at the Clark Sports Center in Cooperstown, N.Y.

Hummel received 233 votes from the 417 ballots cast by BBWAA members with 10 or more consecutive years’ service in becoming the 57^th winner of the award since its inception in 1962 and named for the first recipient. Spink was another St. Louis legend who was the driving force of The Sporting News, known during his lifetime as the "Baseball Bible."

The late Morris "Mo" Siegel, who kept baseball a staple for Washington, D.C., readers long after the nation’s capital lost two franchises to other communities, received 112 votes. The Sacramento Bee’s Nick Peters, a traveling beat writer for three decades covering the San Francisco Giants, got 66. Six blank ballots were among those submitted.

The candidates were selected by a three-member, BBWAA-appointed committee and announced at the All-Star Game meeting July 11 at Pittsburgh. Voting was conducted in November through a mail ballot, a process that began in 2002.

Hummel covered his first major-league game in 1973 and was the Cardinals’ beat writer for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch for 24 years, from 1978 through 2001. Since then, he has been the Post Dispatch’s national baseball columnist. This was his 35th year with the paper. Hummel was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in 1980 and named Missouri Sportswriter of the Year four times by the National Sportswriters and Sportscasters Association in Salisbury, N.C.

Rick is a past recipient of the Jack Buck Award at the annual Multiple Sclerosis Dinner in St. Louis and the Bob Broeg-Jack Buck Award at the Missouri Athletic Club Dinner. Hummel was national president of the BBWAA in 1994, served on the Spink Award Committee for 10 years and is a member of the BBWAA’s Historical Overview and Screening Committees, which help devise the Veterans Committee ballot for the Hall of Fame.

Hummel has covered 28 All-Star Games and 29 World Series, most recently the Cardinals’ five-game victory over the Detroit Tigers. "The Commish" got his nickname early in his career for organizing the Post Dispatch newsroom’s softball and bowling leagues. But that honorary title in recent years has come to reflect his encyclopedic knowledge of baseball, its rules, players and history.

"I have learned a lot from Whitey Herzog, Joe Torre and Tony La Russa about how to watch the game and maybe how to write about it a little," Hummel has said. "You couldn’t pick three better than that."

Previous Spink Award Recipients:
2005 Tracy Ringolsby; 2004 Peter Gammons; 2003 Murray Chass; 2002 Hal McCoy; 2001 Joe Falls; 2000 Ross Newhan; 1999 Hal Lebovitz; 1998 Bob Stevens; 1997 Sam Lacy; 1996 Charley Feeney; 1995 Joseph Durso; 1994 No award; 1993 Wendell Smith; 1992 Leonard Koppett, Bus Saidt; 1991 Ritter Collett; 1990 Phil Collier; 1989 Jerome Holtzman; 1988 Bob Hunter, Ray Kelly; 1987 Jim Murray; 1986 Jack Lang; 1985 Earl Lawson; 1984 Joe McGuff; 1983 Ken Smith; 1982 Si Burick; 1981 Bob Addie, Allen Lewis; 1980 Joe Reichler, Milton Richman; 1979 Bob Broeg, Tommy Holmes; 1978 Tim Murnane, Dick Young; 1977 Gordon Cobbledick, Edgar Munzel; 1976 Harold Kaese, Red Smith; 1975 Tom Meany, Shirley Povich; 1974 John Carmichael, James Isaminger; 1973 Warren Brown, John Drebinger, John F. Kieran; 1972 Dan Daniel, Fred Lieb, J. Roy Stockton; 1971 Frank Graham; 1970 Heywood C. Broun; 1969 Sid Mercer; 1968 H.G. Salsinger; 1967 Damon Runyon; 1966 Grantland Rice; 1965 Charles Dryden; 1964 Hugh Fullerton; 1963 Ring Lardner; 1962 J.G. Taylor Spink.