In determining an appropriate name for an award given annually to the champion of the Classic 12, we have chosen to look back to the origins of our enduring association and commemorate the name of the player most responsible for bringing this league into existence. On Sunday afternoon, October 12, 1986, one man forever changed the way the twelve of us would look at the game of baseball, so it is fitting that we immortalize him with this award.

With a count of 3 balls, 2 strikes and 2 outs in the top half of the 9th inning, Dave Henderson reached for a forkball that was low and off the plate and redirected it over the leftfield fence at Anaheim Stadium to snatch an imminent American League pennant from the hands of the California Angels. In this one fleeting moment, the outfielder teammates called "Hendu" reversed the momentum of a playoff series that eventually ended in a World Series berth for his Boston Red Sox club. In the weeks following this devastating loss, Angel fan Mike L. Morgensen sought solace in a book he had first encountered a year before -- a book about Rotisserie Baseball.

Whether the foundation of the Classic 12 was the natural extension of a favorite pastime or a desperate quest for control over an uncertain baseball universe, the league has grown and flourished in a way that would not have occured had the Angels gone to the World Series that autumn. So it is out of the pain that Angel fans associate with the 1986 ALCS that we now acknowledge the good that has come from the achievement of one Boston outfielder.

Henceforth, the Dave "Hendu" Henderson Cup shall be awarded to the champion emerging from the Classic 12 postseason playoff tournament that shall also bear his name.