This week’s Pop Quiz question came from Jim Lipa of North Adams, Mass.:
In 2008, a musical group called The Baseball Project released a song entitled “The Yankee Flipper”? What former Yankee is the subject of the song?
It’s time for the annual Baseball Oscars, in which we take the categories from the film awards and apply them to the prior 365 days in the baseball world.
(Last night’s show? A nice recovery from last year’s Seth McFarlane debacle. Ellen DeGeneres’ opening monologue was a little too tame and lame, almost like overcompensation for McFarlane, but she gained steam as the night progressed with her selfie and pizza bits. And the music and speeches mostly were great. Especially the music.)
We present these in the order they were distributed and ignore the documentaries:
Best Supporting Actor: For the second straight year, it’s Anthony Bosch, who gave Major League Baseball the support it needed to bring down an astounding 14 players in the Biogenesis scandal. What an amazing character and story arc.
Costume Design: The Astros were predictably awful during their maiden American League voyage, but at least they looked great while sucking.
Makeup and Hair: The Red Sox’s beards win triply for this award: Their new look involved hair, albeit facial hair; they looked as though they were put together by Hollywood types, and their unified front presented the team’s strong clubhouse makeup, a factor in their World Series title.
Animated Short: My goodness, did Biogenesis client Jordany Valdespin get people animated during his short time with the Mets, most notably when he styled after a meaningless home run. Nevertheless, I can’t help but wonder whether the Mets should have made Valdespin’s Flushing stay even shorter.
Animated Feature: Mariano Rivera’s farewell tour felt a bit cartoonish at times, like when he wore a cowboy hat given to him by the Texas Rangers. But the very end left everyone animated in a most moving way. It was quite a show, wasn’t it?
Visual effects: The 2013 Yankees took a truly lousy team, one that didn’t even outscore its opponents, and somehow stayed alive in the playoff race until the season’s final week.
Live-action short: Derek Jeter didn’t make his 2013 debut until July 11, and then he couldn’t even make it through a full game, getting removed for pinch-hitter Brett Gardner in the eighth inning and returning to the disabled list with a right quad strain. That day symbolized the most frustrating season, by far, of Jeter’s career.
Foreign Language Film: Cuban native Yasiel Puig brought a unique, ultra-aggressive brand of baseball, leaving veteran observers at a loss for words and both captivating and aggravating his teammates and superiors, when he drew his promotion to the Dodgers last June.
Sound mixing: Tampa Bay’s Joe Maddon, arguably baseball’s best manager, tried to relax his players last season by hiring a DJ to mix some tunes into their pre-game preparation.
Sound editing: The Yankees worked extremely hard this past winter to make their seven-year, $175 million offer to Robinson Cano sound amazing. But the fact that they valued Jacoby Ellsbury only less than Cano at seven years and $153 million — despite virtually no one in baseball valuating that pair that closely — told the real story of how they felt about Cano.
Supporting actress: Torrie Wilson supported Alex Rodriguez so much during his ordeal of the past year that she even attended his rehabilitation games in Trenton.
Film editing: World Series Games 2, 3 and 4 all were defined by wacky plays – Craig Breslow’s throwing error, Will Middlebrooks’ obstruction and Koji Uehara’s pickoff of Kolten Wong. While the Red Sox’s remarkable turnaround and David Ortiz’s dominance became the primary stories, any World Series highlight film has to include a heaping portion of those follies.
Production design: While the Braves’ new stadium won’t open until 2017, this is a win just because Atlanta gets out of the unmemorable Turner Field, which is located in a lousy part of town.
Original score: Last Sept. 5-7 at Yankee Stadium, the Red Sox outscored the Yankees by counts of 9-8, 12-8 and 13-9. The Yankees hadn’t suffered that sort of three-day beating at home since 1912, when they were the Highlanders.
Song: OK, so “Sweet Caroline” is anything but new, yet it gained new meaning this year when Neil Diamond went to Fenway Park on his own dime to sing the tune at Fenway Park the day after the surviving Boston Marathon terrorist was apprehended.
Adapted screenplay: A Mets starting pitcher puts together a great season and captivates the club’s emotionally wounded fan base, only to wind up out of commission for a follow-up. Granted, the details are different between R.A. Dickey’s 2012 and Matt Harvey’s 2013, yet the sequels are similar. At least Harvey should be back next year, or possibly even (but probably not) toward the end of this season.
Original screenplay: Let’s put it this way: The last time the Pirates posted a winning record, in 1992, there was no wild card. So when they ended their 20-year drought of losing seasons and captured the top National League wild-card slot, that was indeed unprecedented in the franchise’s history.
Director: Red Sox general manager Ben Cherington struck gold with his seven major-league free-agent signings, as well as his trade for Toronto manager John Farrell.
Actress: Supermodel and budding actress Kate Upton, apparently on-again significant other of Tigers ace Justin Verlander and faux sibling of the Braves’ Upton brothers, seems to enjoy baseball.
Actor: Alex Rodriguez. Who else? We can only hope we haven’t seen the last of him, for we will never see another like him.
Picture: “This is the End.” In this very dark comedy, you’ve got Jonah Hill playing himself and mentioning his Oscar-nominated turn as Peter Brand (a pseudonym for current Mets exec Paul DePodesta) in “Moneyball,” as well as Danny McBride, who played the John Rocker-esque Kenny Powers in the HBO baseball comedy “Eastbound & Down.” Plus Craig Robinson portrayed ballplayer Reg Mackworthy in “Eastbound.” Throw in Rihanna, who dated the Dodgers’ Matt Kemp, and you have sufficient baseball connections for this entertaining flick.
Your Pop Quiz answer is Jack McDowell. If you have a tidbit that correlates baseball with popular culture, please send it to me at kdavidoff@nypost.com.