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The Baseball Writers' Association of America has a career excellence award that is given to a writer who has covered Major League Baseball for at least four decades.
The highest honor given by the BBWAA is the meritorious contributions to baseball writing award. The Hall of Fame will recognize Kurkjian this summer.
The Texas Rangers were covered by Kurkjian for the Dallas Morning News from 1981 to 1985. He was a mainstay at Sports Illustrated in 1989. Baseball fans across the country read his weekly byline. His love, knowledge and writing skills for the game of baseball were an admirable quality among peers and players alike.
He joined the sports network after he left SI, writing columns and appearing on Baseball Tonight. He's written three books on baseball, with the last coming out in 2016
Baseball is the only language that my family spoke. My dad was a really good player, my brothers were great college players, this is all we talked about in my house. Walter Johnson High School was named after the greatest pitcher of all time.
After graduating from the University of Maryland in 1978, he worked for the Washington Star and the Baltimore News American before becoming the Rangers' beat writer in 1981.
