Granderson Takes Home Marvin Miller Award

Tim Britton reports that before today's dominating win over the Rangers, Curtis Granderson was awarded the 2009 Marvin Miller Man of the Year award from the MLBPA. Mark Teixeira, who is a member of the MLBPA's executive board presented Granderson with the award. Here's more from Britton:

The award is named after the former executive director of the players' union and honors performance on and off the field. Granderson was selected by a secret ballot of all Major League players.

"It's amazing that not only my recent teammates in Detroit knew what was going on, but other players around the league also knew," Granderson said. "That's a big thing, because they're not around me all the time. Somehow, someway they caught wind of some of the things I was doing and thought me worthwhile to vote for."

Aside from slugging a career-high 30 home runs in 2009, Granderson released a children's book and continued working with his Grand Kids Foundation, which promotes baseball and education in inner cities.

Granderson beat out Torii Hunter and Albert Pujols, who have each won the award in the past.

It's great to have good players on the team, but when they're good people it makes them that much easier to root for. .... Congrats Curtis!