Craig Lefferts, 1993 Donruss #1

Late Monday night, Dan Duquette was announced as the recipient of The Sporting News' Executive of the Year Award. "Duke" tops Buck Showalter's decade-long wait between awards, as he was last honored as MLB's top executive in 1992, when he was a young upstart in charge of the Montreal Expos.  You may remember 1992 as the year that Camden Yards opened and Craig Lefferts was the big trade deadline acquisition for the Orioles. I'm not sure that anybody would've expected Dan to break through where his predecessor Andy MacPhail could not, bringing three straight years of competitive baseball to Baltimore, including a pair of trips to the postseason. He's been tinkering on the margins almost since the moment he arrived here, teaming with Buck Showalter to create the most fluid 40-man roster in baseball. Meanwhile, I myself owe Mr. Duquette an apology. Check out this breathtaking gripe that I typed up in February, highlighted by the following sentence:

"I want to be proven wrong, but I just don't think that a Grapefruit League roster that reads like a "Who's Who" of "Who's That?" is going to pass muster in the cutthroat American League East."

Sure, that was written before the O's landed Nelson Cruz for a low-risk, $8 million deal. But it still comes across as an unearned dig at a front-office guy who had just helped put together the first back-to-back winning clubs the city had seen since Pat Gillick's tenure. So, to Dan Duquette, Executive of the Year for 2014, I offer up an apology and a pledge to think before I second-guess. Thanks for bringing Steve Pearce, Nelson Cruz, Nate McLouth, Miguel Gonzalez, Wei-Yin Chen, Bud Norris, Kevin Gausman, and Andrew Miller to town. Thanks for locking up guys like Adam Jones and J. J. Hardy to extended deals. Thanks for tuning out loud no-nothings like me.