It's December. It's time. Time to cast your ballot for the recipient of the first Batter's Box Andujar Award. Remember, it's all about the greatest single word ever uttered to describe The Grand Game: YouNeverKnow!

The What Award?
Original Announcement & Rules
Preseason Nominations
Midseason Update

We've selected the 12 finalists. Now it's up to you to vote. The 2003 Andujar Winner will be announced -- natch -- on Dec. 26 ... Boxing Day.

The 12 finalists are listed below alphabetically ...

If you're not familiar with the ongoing discussion about the "first annual" award to be presented by Da Box, the Joaquin Andujar YouNeverKnow Award competition was announced here on Groundhog Day.

The purpose of the award is to recognize, within certain defined parameters, the best offseason free agent acquisition, where "best" also means "most surprising."

The leader heading into the final 18 holes of play this season? No surprise -- it's former Jay Esteban Loaiza. But the field is still wide open as we head down the homestretch. (That's both a golf and a horseracing metaphor so far ... can anyone work in some sort of bowling or billiards terminology?)

Let's review.

Well, we've had a month to nominate, vote, ruminate and compile ... and the list of 10 pre-season nominees for the prestigious first annual Batter's Box Andujar Award -- the ceremony soon to be recognized worldwide as the "YouNeverKnows" -- is now complete.

Here's the click-for-more teaser: A Jay finished second. The 10 nominees play for 10 different teams; six hitters, four pitchers. Eight different players received first-place votes, but nobody received more than one first-place vote. Oh, and you'll find a much-requested rules clarification.

It's Groundhog Day, and you know what that means ... it's time for 2003 pre-season nominations for the Annual Batter's Box Joaquin Andujar Award.

Okay, so it's not realistically possible to call anything "first annual," and since we've never done this before, it's pretty likely that you don't "know what that means." Besides, if we learned anything from Andujar, it was his credo that the best one-word description for baseball was "you never know."

So sit back, relax, enjoy -- and participate in -- this inaugural edition of an award nomination process that will someday be known more familiarly as the "YouNeverKnows."