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Darryl Kile Award
The Darryl Kile Award is presented annually to the St. Louis Cardinals and Houston Astros player who best exemplifies Kile's traits of "a good teammate, a great friend, a fine father and a humble man." The winner is determined by each local chapter of the Baseball Writers and the award is presented during the Baseball Writers' Dinner gala.
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"We get lots of chances to go out there and talk to healthy kids, but there are kids out there with just as much love for our sport, whether it is hockey or baseball, who just don't get the opportunities to enjoy it. When I started following what Kelly (Chase of the St. Louis Blues Hockey Team) was doing, I thought that was a great opportunity to give back to the game in a special way, and to give back to the community in a special way." - Mike Matheny on MLB.com (Matthew Leach, 09/21/2004) |
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In 2003 Mike Matheny became the first Cardinals recipient of a Darry Kile Award and 2005 award winner Cal Eldred said of Matheny in 2004, "They could actually name an award after him, to be honest with you. He spends a lot of energy doing his job, and a lot of energy doing the things that the award is about."
Pitcher Darryl Kile passed away on June 22, 2002, in his Chicago hotel room at the age of thirty-three. Kile, known as a fierce competitor who never missed a start in the Major Leagues, left behind his wife, Flynn, and three children: twin son Kannon and daughter Sierra, and son Ryker. Kile's cause of death was listed as coronary atherosclerosis, narrowing of the arteries supplying the heart muscle. A crowd of approximately five-thousand gathered at Busch Stadium on June 26, 2002, to say goodbye to Kile in a memorial service which included these moving comments:
"In the clubhouse and on this field, DK has impacted so many people in a powerful way. And that's why so many are gathered here this afternoon." - Ricky Horton
"We're thankful for how he touched each of our lives. Some saw a baseball player. Others of us were fortunate enough to call him friend." - Mike Matheny
"I had a teammate, a golf partner, very soon a friend, a roommate and finally a brother. That was the natural progression with Darryl: teammate to brother. I don't know if it was his good nature, sensitivity, dependability or caring. I'm sure it was all those things that made our relationship so strong." - Pete Harnisch
"He would make sure he gave something back. And if he gave something first, he didn't want anything back. I was an only child, so growing up I figured I'd never have a brother or sister. How so wrong I was." - Doug Drabek
"Everybody that knew Darryl knew that on earth he was a heavenly being, the way he treated people. He was truly an angel. And now he's finally being crowned with the glory and honor that he deserved all along." - Dave Veres
Did you know that when Darryl Kile threw his no-hitter on September 8, 1993, it was the ninth for the Houston Astros and the closest one in team history to a perfect game as only one batter reached base � a fourth inning walk by Jeff McKnight (who scored that inning on a Jeff Bagwell error)?
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