* Murray Zuk (Souris, Man.), San Diego Padres scout was the 2013 winner of the Canadian Baseball Network’s Jim Ridley memorial award last week... 2014 Top Canadians eligible for draft 2013 Canadians in the Minors  2013 Canadians in College  Letters of Intent 2012-13 Canadians at Canadian schools 

By Peter Bean 

The Canadian Baseball Network awarded the 20th annual Jim Ridley Award for Canadian Scout of the Year last week. CBN started awarding the scout of the year award in 1994 and in 2009 the award was named after Ridley. This year's winner was Murray Zuk of the San Diego Padres. Read  Bob Elliott’s account of Zuk’s career here.

Around the majors...

Chris Robinson was sent back down to Tuscon after a 2 day stint with the Padres; he did not get to make an appearance. Bob Elliott tweeted that in the 2 days Robinson was with the big club he made a salary of $8,077.92 (two days of service time, plus one day of travel). Alexis Brudnicki wrote about Robinson’s experience and spoke to his friends and family in this article posted at the beginning of the week. 

On the Canadian Baseball Network Podcast we spoke to Jerry Howarth and Bob Elliott about their friend and colleague Tom Cheek for part one of our tribute. Part two features Buck Martinez and Mike Wilner and will be released this week. You can listen to part 1 here:

Also you can find our entire Tom Cheek coverage for his 2013 induction into both the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame and Cooperstown at this handy link. You’ll also find the video of Shirley Cheek’s induction speech in this section. Thanks to the MLB Network for providing this footage for our archives.

Toronto Blue Jays coverage was led by April Whitzman in her April Means Baseball Blog where she wrote about the resurgence  of Brett Lawrie in the month of August and how he’s been playing like the player the Blue Jays had always hoped he would be.

Kevin Glew also provided a book review of Four Decades of Jays Baseball by Jeff Blair.

We would like to welcome our newest contributor to the family: Jay Blue. Jay spoke with Tim Raines for his Blog Blue Jays from Away which CBN will now be carrying. Read the Raines interview here.

In the minors...

The Canadian Baseball Network Player of the Week in the Minors for last week was Tom Robson of the Vancouver Canadians, part of the Toronto Blue Jays minor league system.

George Farelli filed his weekly update on Canadians in the Minors; 111 Canadian players are now (or have been) active in the minor leagues during the 2013 season on an affiliated minor league rosters, 40 independent league players and eight more are with foreign teams.

CBN Blogger Max Tissenbaum wrote about life on the disabled list in his latest blog.

Around the World...

The Canadian Junior National Team has been in Australia preparing for the World Cup playing exhibition games against the Australians. Adam Morissette has been covering the tournament daily. Other tournaments currently underway include:  15U Bantam Boys, Senior Men’s Nationals, 16U Bantam Girls Invitational, 13U Peewee Western, and the World Baseball Challenege in Prince George BC where Canada finished winless in the tournament. Our coverage for all these events can be found in the Sandlots. 

One very important milestone for the Junior National team happened last week when the roster for the IBAF 18U World Cup was selected.  The roster and all tournament info can be found here. 

Around the web...

Matt Stairs made some comments to CBC news about how more should be done to clean up the game of baseball.

Bernd Franke of the Welland Tribune attended and reported ion the recent MLB bureau camp held at Welland Stadium.

Ryan Dempster was suspended five games for throwing at A-Rod. 

The Tampa Bay Rays signed RHP Jared Mortensen out of the Can-Am League. 

Coming soon....

Part two of the CBN Podcast Special for Tom Cheek will be released later this week.