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Major League Baseball Rookie of the Year Award

award given annually to the best rookie in each league of Major League Baseball

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 4, 2026
Entity authorityQ594227 ↗
Source-derived summary

In Major League Baseball, the Rookie of the Year Award is given annually to two outstanding rookie players, one each for the American League (AL) and National League (NL), as voted on by the Baseball Writers' Association of America (BBWAA). The award was established in 1940 by the Chicago chapter of the BBWAA, which selected an annual winner from 1940 through 1946. The award became national in 1947; Jackie Robinson, the Brooklyn Dodgers' second baseman, won the inaugural award. One award was presented for all of MLB in 1947 and 1948; since 1949, the honor has been given to one player each in the NL and AL. Originally, the award was known as the J. Louis Comiskey Memorial Award, named after the Chicago White Sox owner of the 1930s. The award was renamed the Jackie Robinson Award in July 1987, 40 years after Robinson broke the baseball color line.

Twenty-one players have been elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame—Robinson, seven AL players, and eleven others from the NL. The award has been shared twice: once by Butch Metzger and Pat Zachry of the NL in 1976; and once by John Castino and Alfredo Griffin of the AL in 1979. Members of the Brooklyn and Los Angeles Dodgers have won the most awards of any franchise (with 18). Fred Lynn and Ichiro Suzuki are the only two players who have been named Rookie of the Year and Most Valuable Player in the same year, and Fernando Valenzuela is the only player to have won Rookie of the Year and the Cy Young Award in the same year. Sam Jethroe is the oldest player to have won the award, at age 32, 33 days older than 2000 winner Kazuhiro Sasaki (also 32). Nick Kurtz of the Athletics and Drake Baldwin of the Atlanta Braves are the most recent winners.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “Major League Baseball Rookie of the Year Award” as award given annually to the best rookie in each league of Major League Baseball. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Major, League and Baseball.

Editorial reviewA concise reference frame for defining the subject, testing terminology and identifying the institution closest to the evidence. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1940, 1946, 1947, 1948—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1947. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with Major, League and Baseball providing the first useful test.
Editorial analysis

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A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Major League Baseball Rookie of the Year Award”, the useful work is to connect “award given annually to the best rookie in each league of Major League Baseball” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 4, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q594227. The Library of Congress control number is sh94004604. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1940, 1946, 1947 and 1948.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Major League Baseball Rookie of the Year Award” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.