Daily Archives: November 7, 2012

November 7, 2012

Phillips wins Wilson defensive player of the year award

Brandon Phillips holding 2 gold-colored baseball gloves

Brandon Phillips poses with the gloves at the heart of the lawsuit.

Brandon Phillips lost out on the Rawlings Gold Glove at second base this year, but he was the recipient of the first ever Wilson Defensive Player of the Year Award, which was given in an awards ceremony on Sunday. It apparently was televised on MLB TV.

On a completely unrelated topic, remember when Phillips had Wilson make him a glove with gold webbing earlier this year? And then Rawlings took legal action against Wilson for infringing on their “gold glove” intellectual property.

Huh.

Surely there isn’t any correlation there. Rawlings Gold Glove winners are selected by a secret ballot, while the Wilson winner is chosen by statistical analysis. With that kind of transparency, there’s no way either company could manipulate the results. And I’m sure it’s just a coincidence that Wilson chose this year to start giving out defensive awards. They’ve probably been planning it for months, which would explain why I never heard a thing about it until 2 days after it was given.

Not that I’m complaining. Congratulations to Brandon Phillips! He really deserved both awards.