The secretary of the BBWAA makes the phone call to notify players when they are named MVP or Cy Young Award winner or have been elected to the Hall of Fame. Since 1966 that has been Jack Lang’s pleasure, first as secretary-treasurer of the writers’ organization and, since 1988, as executive secretary.
Lang made his debut on the baseball beat in 1946 covering the Dodgers for the Long Island Press. When the Dodgers left town, he switched to the Yankees. Out of that came his first book, The Fighting Southpaw (1962), with Whitey Ford. That year the Mets were born and Lang covered them for the Press until that paper closed in 1977, then for the New York Daily News until he left in 1987 to join SportsTicker as a contributing editor and columnist. He received the J.G. Taylor Spink Award in 1986. Lang also wrote Baseball Basics for Teenagers (1981) and The New York Mets: 25 Years of Baseball Magic (1986).
