There's nothing better than sitting in the sunshine and watching a good baseball game. As it turns out, you can win an award for it.

The Metro Sports Report has been selected to receive a District Media Award from the Iowa High School Baseball Coaches Association for 2012, the IHSBCA announced last week.

Scott Byers of the Sheldon Sports Leader is the winner in the West District, Dan Holm of the Ankeny Register & Press Citizen is the winner in the Central District, and the Metro Sports Report has been saluted as the winner in the East District.

The IHSBCA listed yours truly as the winner in the East District, but our coverage of prep baseball has been a team effort that includes a half-dozen people, including one of the best baseball writers in the state in MSR co-owner Mike Koolbeck. I happily accept the award on behalf of our entire company.

Mike and I share the same philosophy about covering prep baseball. It's quite simple, really.

We want to cover as many games as possible, report the games fairly and accurately, try to write interesting stories, show the coaches and players that we care about them and their sport, explain the rules when necessary, and have some fun.

And there's one more thing: Boxscores. We feel strong that you simply cannot cover a baseball game without including the boxscores at the end of the story.

Readers with an educated eye can learn a lot from a boxscore, perhaps just as much as from the story itself. You can learn the starting lineups, see the pitching changes, know which players move around on the field, see who got the hits and scored the runs and drove them in.

You can also see that the right fielder went 1-for-3, which may be important to his grandparents who live in Arizona and like to know how he's doing.

Personally, I came of age as a baseball fan in the 1960's in New York, devouring the NYC papers for stories and boxscores and waiting with great anticipation for the next edition of The Sporting News to arrive with the boxscores from all the Major League teams. This was a few years before the Internet came along, by the way.

When Mickey Mantle went 2-for-3 with a two-run homer, I'd update his season stats that night and check the newspapers the next day to make sure they got it right. This was before I knew Mickey was a womanizer who liked to relax with a few adult beverages after games, but times were different then.

In any case, lugging my lawn chair and scorebook to a high school baseball game is second nature to me now and has been for a long time. I like to sit right behind home plate, either just to the right or just to the left, to see how the pitchers work the batters and see the whole field.

I like to focus on the game, keeping track of every pitch and every play, because what happens in the first inning could affect what happens with the game on the line in the seventh. Quite frankly, I don't understand reporters who prefer to sit in the pressbox and chatter about the Cubs or Iowa football or something else while there's a game unfolding right before their eyes.

To each his own, I guess.

On behalf of the Metro Sports Report, I'd like to express great thanks to the Metro coaches, players, parents and fans who make covering the games so enjoyable. I'd like to extend a special thank-you to the coaches who send in their boxscores in a timely manner when we're not there. We can learn a lot from those boxscores and feel a little empty when we don't get them.

I suspect one of the local coaches nominated the Metro Sports Report for the IHSBCA Media Award, and perhaps a few others seconded the nomination and voted in our favor.

Many, many thanks.