Well, the voting is over, and congratulations to the winners of the First Annual William Lee McCovey Awards for Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Excellence - a.k.a. the McCoveys!!!

Most Amusing Poster: kenshin1
Most Informative Poster: Steve S
Best Image (Gameday Thread): Stuttering John Tamargo for Dancing Mando
Best Image (non-Gameday Thread): Natto for Jaunty Shelled Armando
Outstanding Newcomer: North Side Chicago Expatriate Giants Fan
Spirit Award: Goofus

Congratulations to all involved, and thanks to everyone who voted - almost 650 votes in all.

I'll admit the awards didn't work out quite as I'd planned. As I said before, I hoped people would post in the threads giving examples of the amusing stuff people had posted and why you should vote for them, and I was prepared to take that into account along with the vote totals. I hoped these awards would be less about the voting and more a celebration of the community here. Truthfully, it didn't work out that way.

But that shouldn't take away from the winners. Steve S, Stuttering John Tamargo, and Natto all won in richly deserved landslides, and NSCEGF was a very worthy "Rookie of the Year." I'm very pleased kenshin won his award because he's been around since the very first days of this blog and it's hard not to like him. And Goofus winning an award gives us all hope :)

At the risk of sounding sappy, I think this is a really good bunch of really good fans, and if we had the team we deserved it'd be Jason Schmidt mowing down the Tigers' anaemic bats right now. It's been fun running these awards. Probably won't do it again next year though!