Winners Have Become Losers

He’s out there somewhere.

Eyes darting, feet pacing, sometimes embarrassed, sometimes enraged.

He hides during pregame ceremonies because every pregame ceremony involves a plaque, and the only plaque is on his teeth.

But he comes alive during postgame interviews, because those aren’t just writers, they’re voters.

When he doesn’t play well, he tries to play with great sportsmanship, or hustle. When he doesn’t play at all, he visits local hospitals, hoping that somebody will notice him visiting shut-ins.

He is tired, he is desperate, he is very much alone.

He is The Player Who Has Never Won An Award.

He’s out there somewhere. We’re just not sure where.

He certainly doesn’t play hockey.

Art Ross. James Norris. Conn Smythe. Frank Selke. William Jennings. Lester Pearson. Jack Adams. Bill Masterton. Lester Patrick. King Clancy. Maurice Richard. Frank Calder.

One could fill two lineups with the names of the guys for whom hockey awards are named. The MVP of a game between those lineups would be given the . . . exactly who award?

He isn’t playing college football.

Chuck Bednarik. Fred Biletnikoff. Dick Butkus. Walter Camp. Lou Groza. Vince Lombardi. Johnny Unitas. Eddie Robinson. Jim Thorpe. Doak Walker.

To end your college football career without winning a trophy, you have to burrow through all those guys, a feat not even human auger Ron Dayne could achieve.

The Player Who Has Never Won An Award used to be easier to find.

Babe Ruth never won the MVP. Red Grange never won the Heisman. Poor Cy Young never won the Cy Young.

But that was before we decided that victory itself wasn’t enough.

That was before we decided the pursuit of excellence was tedious and not fulfilling enough if not accompanied by the pursuit of fame.

You can’t hang wins on the wall. You can’t put hard work on your resume.

It’s hard to get good TV face time during games, what with all those pesky teammates hanging around.

An award gives you a headline, a podium, a tangible reminder that you were here.

In a world with 200 channels and nothing on, we apparently need that.

“I love it today when I hear people talk about how an athlete competes only for the passion of the sport,” said Dr. Drew Yellen, a Northridge clinical sports psychologist.

“Everybody has to stop kidding themselves. We do things today because we like to be noticed.”

The sports world’s look-at-me meter has crept to its annual midsummer high this week with baseball’s Hall of Fame enshrinements, followed six days later by those of pro football.

Cooperstown is beautiful, Canton is a blast, but both places remain flawed examples of our insistence on not just applauding greatness, but packaging it.

Among this year’s baseball inductees was Tony Perez, who was on the ballot nine years before receiving the required 75% of the votes from eligible baseball writers.

Unless I’m missing something, Perez did not get one hit or drive in one run during those nine years. How is he deserving now, when he wasn’t deserving when he retired?

I vote for the Hall of Fame candidates, and if I don’t vote for a player in his first year of eligibility, I never vote for him. Either he’s good enough when he has retired, or he’s not.

As far as these things go, Cooperstown is still a work of art.

Canton, as we will see again Saturday, is a finger painting.

The NFL enshrinees are selected not by hundreds of veteran writers who watched them play, but by a small committee of media types representing each NFL city. They gather, discuss the candidates, and agree upon the winners.

Some of it is reputation. Some is salesmanship, with the representative working hard to induct the guy from his city.

This year, in the case of Howie Long, it was TV.

As well as he played, do you think Long would have been inducted so quickly if he wasn’t so visible every Sunday as a member of a nationally televised pregame show?

But whereas Long at least had some great years on the field, that cannot be said for another inductee, Steeler owner Dan Rooney.

Hello? Rooney is a wonderful man and one of football’s best owners, but should Joe Montana and Ronnie Lott be joined by someone who never played and whose position wasn’t won, but inherited?

By inducting owners into the regular Hall of Fame--and not in some wing like the ones occupied by writers and other club officials--football essentially is allowing people to buy their way in.

At least they are being honest about it.

How about hockey’s Bud Light Plus-Minus Award?

Or the NBA’s IBM Award? (Best player by some computer formula that can best be explained as, David Robinson has won it more often than Michael Jordan).

None of which compare to the Arena Football League’s All-Time Tinactin Athletic Trainer Excellence Award.

Is the winner the guy with the fewest players afflicted with an unmentionable fungus? If so, what exactly is the trophy?

“They are doing something as advertising that doesn’t come across as advertising,” Dr. Yellen said. “Those kinds of athletes bring attention to their product.”

Athletes who wouldn’t walk across the street free are glad to fly across the country to accept such awards because they not only build self-esteem, they build value.

“The awards become leverage,” Yellen said.

It’s not just sports, it’s everything, from the entertainment world to the business world to, more than anything, my world.

Nobody needs, and delivers, more backslaps than newspaper people. We give out awards the way preschool teachers give out hugs.

A 74-page magazine is required to document them. The publication is so complete, it should win an award.

But surely he’s out there, this Player Who Has Never Won An Award.

He wasn’t on my 9-year-old son’s baseball team. Everybody there won an award. Medals were passed out during a party at the coach’s house.

As one of the youngest players on the team, my son was cited for hustle and improvement. It was good. He smiled. It worked.

But at some point, we should grow out of it before we forget the few that really matter.

Quick, who won the most recent Heisman, National League MVP, and Wooden awards?

Answer all three correctly, and you win . . . you win the pleasure of completing a job well done.

Pity if that is no longer enough.

Bill Plaschke can be reached at his e-mail address: bill.plaschke@latimes.com.