The Bellingen Brewers convened on Saturday at the venue of their major sponsor, the Bellingen Brewery, for their end-of-season presentations.
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Leading the way was Paul Holding, who was presented with his Coffs Harbour Baseball Association B Grade Most Valuable Player award.
The Brewers presentations are a bit different and light-hearted, with every player receiving an award of some kind linked to a past or present major league player.
Amongst the more unusual on the day:
Kris McGrane received the Pistol Pete Reiser Award, which goes to the player who missed the most time to injury during the year. During his major league career, Reiser was carried off the field on a stretcher 11 times.
Jeff Wilson received the Pete Grey Award. Jeff was knocked out for the second half of the season by a work-related arm injury that required surgery. Grey was a one-armed outfielder who played in the major leagues in 1945, when call-ups to military service had decimated the professional ranks.
Callum Rayner received the Most Improved Player Award, which pictured the 2019 National League MVP, Cody Bellinger (yes, really).
In addition to his Association MVP award, Holding, who returned to playing this season after a 20-year hiatus, received the Long Time Between Drinks Award, which pictured former major league pitcher Paul Schreiber. Schreiber holds the record for the longest time between major league pitching appearances (22 years, 3 days, from 2 September 1923 to 4 September 1945).
Jade Campbell was acknowledged as the club's number one supporter and for her outstanding photography throughout the season.
The Brewers have big aspirations for the 2020 season. In addition to recruiting new players to their current A and B grade squads, they would like to form C grade, junior baseball and t-ball teams. (C grade was added to the Coffs competition in 2019 to provide an entry point for young and novice players to the senior ranks.)
There has been discussion with Bellingen High School about the club providing qualified coaching assistance for a baseball team. Approaches are planned to local primary schools to provide similar assistance for t-ball.