The 2008 Casey Award Goes to We Are the Ship by Kadir Nelson

Spitball Magazine is pleased to announce that the winner of the 2008 Casey Award for Best Baseball Book of the Year is We Are the Ship: The Story of Negro League Baseball, written and illustrated by Kadir Nelson and published by Jump at the Sun/Hyperion, a division of Disney Book Group. In receiving two first-place votes and one second-place vote from the three-Judge panel, the book was accorded the most-nearly unanimous win in the 26-year history of this award. We Are the Ship was also the first "children's" book to even be nominated as a finalist.

Judge Greg Rhodes called the book "Expressive. Majestic. Inspiring" and said that it is "everything a great book should be." Judge Wayne Tucker described it as "a book to enjoy over and over again" ... "a beautiful work all parents should share with little baseball fans to the edification of both."

The 26th annual Casey Awards Banquet is scheduled for Sunday March 8 at 4:00 pm in Cincinnati, and is open to the public. Congratulations to Kadir Nelson and to all the authors Nominated as Finalists this year, and thanks to our judges Greg Rhodes, Rollie Jacobsen, and Wayne Tucker.