The History of the MVP and Cy Young Awards

Every year Major League Baseball rewards players for their excellence, and two awards top the list -the MVP and Cy Young awards (for this year’s voting see http://bbwaa.com). Everyone knows about the awards, and continually debates whether or not the appropriate players were chosen for the awards. However, I’d posit that the vast majority of people know little about the history of the awards. Today, I’ll help to rectify that oversite (the information is gathered from Total Baseball, 7th edition, pp.192-194 for the MVP portion of the paper, and pp.205-206 for the Cy Young segment).

MVP HISTORY

Originally the MVP award was presented by Hugh Chalmers, president of the Chalmers Motor Company, to the player with the highest batting average in major league baseball (this occurred in 1910). However, after the Ty Cobb/Nap Lajoie fiasco of 1910 in which the St Louis Browns allowed Lajoie to go 8-for-8 in a double header with seven of the hits coming on bunts because they detested Cobb so much, it was determined that in 1911 the MVP award, and the car that went with it, would go to the one player in each league who was the “…most important and useful player to his club.” This was the way the award was presented until 1914 when World War I began (the war obviously caused people to turn their attention towards other avenues). In addition to the battle across the Atlantic, Chalmers had signed only a five year deal with baseball to present the award and the accompanying car which ran out after the 1914 season, so the award basically just disappeared.

In 1922, the American League established a new set of rules and procedures and decided to reinstate the award after neither league awarded a trophy from 1915 to 1921 (the National League eventually followed suit, though it waited until 1924 to reinstate its award). However, a few quirks in the rules of the time deserve mention.

First, the original rules prohibited teammates from both receiving votes in the same season. Second, players who also managed ball clubs were disqualified from being chosen. Third, in the most blatantly stupid idea of the history of the award, once a player won the award he was ruled ineligible forever meaning that players like Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig were only eligible to win the award once (in Ruth’s historic 1927 season when he hit his record 60 HR, as well as batting .356, with 160 RBI and 158 runs scored, he was ineligible because he had won the award in 1923). So disenchanted were those in the know with the whole process involved with the award, that on May 6, 1929, the AL award ceased to exist with the 1928 winner being the last given (the NL again followed suit, but only after awarding a winner for the 1929 season).

In 1930, The Sporting News – yes the same one you still read today – presented its own “unofficial” winners. Following this turn of events, the BBWAA (Baseball Writers Association of America) determined at its meeting on Dec. 11, 1930, to appoint two separate committees, one for each league, to select the MVP winner each year. This meant that the modern day MVP award officially began in 1931, and though the awards voting process has changed through the years in subtle ways, (such as including more writers in the voting and changing the way the points awarded are tabulated) the award has basically been carried on since that point with little change.

Unanimous MVP Winners:

Ty Cobb (1911)

Babe Ruth (1923)

Hank Greenberg (1935)

Carl Hubbell (1936)

Al Rosen (1953)

Mickey Mantle (1956)

Frank Robinson (1966)

Orlando Cepeda (1967)

Denny McLain (1968)

Reggie Jackson (1973)

Mike Schmidt (1980)

Jose Canseco (1988)

Frank Thomas (1993)

Jeff Bagwell (1994)

Ken Caminiti (1996)

Ken Griffey Jr. (1997)

Barry Bonds (2002)

Albert Pujols (2009)

There have been 18 unanimous MVP award winners  in the history of the award.

CY YOUNG HISTORY

In 1956 Ford Frick, the Commissioner of baseball, determined that pitchers were not receiving their due in MVP voting, so he proposed creating a new award that would be given solely to pitchers. Cy Young, the winningest pitcher of all-time, had died less than a year earlier so it only seemed natural to name the pitchers’ MVP award after him (the vote to place his name on the trophy only passed by a 14 to 12 margin though). Who voted? One writer from each city with a team was selected for the honor of casting a vote. More difficult was the decision pertaining to how many Cy Young Awards would be awarded yearly. Frick was greatly opposed to the idea of multiple winners so from 1956-1966 there was but one joint Cy Young award for both leagues. In 1967, after Frick died, William Eckert took over as the Commissioner and ceded to the wishes of the writers and fans an authorized the commission of two awards, one for each league. There have been minor changes to the voting process since the date of its inception (mainly adding more writers to the voting body), but it is in essence the same award that has been given since the split, to one per league, in 1967.

Unanimous Cy Young Winners:

Sandy Koufax (1963, 65-66)

Bob Gibson (1968)

Denny McLain (1968)***

Steve Carlton (1972)

Ron Guidry (1978)

Rick Sutcliffe (1984)

Dwight Gooden (1985)

Roger Clemens (1986, 98)

Orel Hershiser (1988)

Greg Maddux (1994-95)

Pedro Martinez (1999-2000)

Randy Johnson (2002)

Johan Santana (2004, 2006)

Jake Peavy (2007)

Roy Halladay (2010)

Justin Verlander (2011)

***McLain is the only player ever to unanimously win both the MVP and Cy Young awards.

There have been 22 unanimous Cy Young winners handed out over the years.

By Ray Flowers

Thanksgiving Celebration

We all know what Thanksgiving is all about. It’s about family getting together an eating so much food that you have no choice but to pass out on the couch while watching football. However, do many of you know much about the history of the holiday? I’ll try to change that today.

The History Channel has a nice site devoted to the holiday, even including some videos that describe the holiday. For those of you who aren’t inclined to watch the videos, here are some facts that you should know.

1- Originally the holiday was on the last Thursday in November. In 1939 President Franklin Roosevelt set the date to the 4th Thursday of the month of November. It wasn’t until two years late that the Senate and House officially set the date as the 4th Thursday of the month.

2- Benjamin Franklin proposed that the turkey, and not the Bald Eagle, should be our national bird.

3- Domesticated turkey’s cannot fly. Honestly, they can barely run. However, wild turkey’s, and I’m not talking about the bourbon, can fly short distances and reach speeds up to 25 mph while running. The fastest humans can’t run that quickly.

4- Turkey does contain tryptophan, an amino acid that causes you to get sleepy. However, it’s not like turkey is the only food with tryptophan in it as chicken, pork, beef and cheese also contain it. The most likely reason people get tired after a Turkey Day meal is not the tryptophan, but the ingestion of large amounts of carbohydrates in all the food being consumed.

5- The first NFL game on Thanksgiving was in 1934 when the Lions played the Bears. The Thursday NFL game has taken place every year since other than 1939-44 when World War II was raging. By the way, the first recorded American football game on Thanksgiving was in 1876 when the American Intercollegiate Football Association had their first championship game.

6- 1621 would appear to be the first year that the celebration took place. It’s unclear whether or not the pilgrims used the term “Thanksgiving” to designate the celebration. 1621 was a doozie of a party as well – it lasted for three days. That first celebration did not include desserts of any kind as sugar was a precious commodity. Heck, turkey’s may not have even been on that first menu.

7- Each year the President of the Unites States pardons a turkey who, instead of being led off to slaughter, are sent to farms where they “retire.” For more on that process see Obama’s New Executive Action: Pardoning Turkeys.

By Ray Flowers

Nirvana

In the grand scheme of things a championship in sports means nothing, and the life of one person is also rendered insignificant when placed in the context of the world. But I gotta tell you, in this corner of the sphere that we all inhabit, there have been few things that can rival what has occurred over the last 24 hours.

I’ve never been married or ever welcomed a child into this world, so I don’t have that frame of reference to draw upon, but I can tell you this – in the pantheon of events that have shaped my life, this event ranks near the top of the list.

Willie May, Willie McCovey, Orlando Cepeda, Juan Marichal, Barry Bonds – some of the greatest players ever to done a uniform – were never able to bring a World Championship to San Francisco. In more recent years players such as Jeff Leonard, Will Clark, Kevin Mitchell, John Burkett, John Beck and Jeff Kent were also unable to bring the World Series trophy home to San Francisco.

On Monday night, November 1st, 2010, that all changed.

The names will likely be forgotten in a few years if you aren’t a Giants fan. Honestly, some of the players might not even be at the forefront of your mind right now (Sergio Romo, Travis Ishikawa, Javier Lopez, Jeremy Affeldt, Mike Fontenot, Nate Schierholtz), but isn’t that the wonder of baseball? The sport is more than one great player leading a team to victory through sheer will and determination. The grind of six months of a regular season an another month for the playoffs offers the chance for numerous players to make history or to step to the fore at a moments notice. Cody Ross? I mean seriously, unless you were a Marlins’ fan or a fantasy baseball addict, did you even know who he was prior to the postseason? Edgar Renteria? Wasn’t he washed up and heading off into retirement after the worst season of his career (.276-3-22)? My goodness, he didn’t even start the first five games of the playoffs for the Giants. But that was the beauty of the 2010 Giants. They may not have been a team filled with “names,” but they had timely hitting, excellent work behind the bench by Bruce Bochy, and some of the best pitching the game has seen in this century.

As for me, the day after is surreal. For every year of my life that I have consciously been aware of the game of baseball, I have lived and died with the Giants. I’ve lost sleep worrying about games, I’ve skipped out on dates with pretty ladies to watch games, and I’ve nearly given myself an ulcer with each gut wrenching failure I have endured along with the club. So when Brian Wilson threw that final strike last night, what was my response? Did I jump up and down? Did I scream at the top of my lungs? Did I get plowed to the point that I forgot my own name? The truth is I didn’t do any of those things. Instead, I looked over to my parents, both of whom who have been there right with me nearly every step of the way, and simply smiled and said “wow.”

It may not have been a celebration for the ages in the Flowers’ household, but I can tell you this – other than those major life events, like my parents wedding, my brother and I being born, my brother having two wonderful children of his own, it was one of the happiest moments of our lives.

Thank you San Francisco Giants. It was a long time in coming, but as I’ve written before, it was all worth it as I can now walk down the street, #1 finger held high in the air, with a huge smile on my face. We, and yes I’m including myself and all the Giants’ fans in the world, WE are World Champions.

By Ray Flowers