Dr. Doom here (via Doug), back for more MVP re-voting!

If your jam was 1970s baseball… well, I’m sorry that we were only there one year.  It’s not that the ’70s didn’t have their share of interesting MVP races.  They certainly did!  What they didn’t necessarily have was the years I was looking for:  the ones with multiple good candidates, any of whom could be called the MVP.

Thankfully, if you’re a fan of ’70s baseball, you’re probably also a fan of ’80s baseball.  And if you are, boy oh boy are you in for a good few posts.  This is the first of SEVEN posts in which we’ll be examining 1980s baseball.

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Hey HHS folks! Dr. Doom here. I love Captain America – an odd thing for the REAL (fictional) Dr. Doom to say, perhaps, but true nonetheless. In fact, as I type this, I’m wearing a Captain America t-shirt. And you, Steve Garvey, are no Captain America. But Captain America or not, Mr. Garvey is at the center of this next post.

Well, that’s my opinion anyway. Whether you share it or not, it’s time to dig in on the 1974 NL MVP race!

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1967 was an odd year for MVPs.  There was a unanimous choice that year, which certainly happens, but I think most baseball fans, if they’re not familiar with irregularities in MVP voting, would assume that Carl Yastrzemski would have earned that distinction with his AL Triple Crown season (alas, some writer chose the Twins’ Cesar Tovar, of all people, leaving Yaz one vote shy of a clean sweep). Instead, the unanimous selection came in the NL in the person of Orlando Cepeda, which some will cite as one of the more egregious examples of the “RBI leader + Pennant winner = MVP” trope.  To others, though, this is an example of leadership being provided by an outstanding player in a new and difficult circumstance, justifying his MVP selection and creating a narrative worthy of the award.  So let’s step back to 1967 in the NL.

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Howdy, everyone! It’s our first AL post – though, admittedly, we’re still stuck in the early-60s.

1963 was oddly typical (that may be an oxymoron, but I’m going to let it stand). The Yankees won the AL for the 13th time in 15 years (they’d win the next year, too), so that was no change. A Yankee was named MVP for the 10th time in that 15 year span – so again, nothing new, particularly since Yankees catchers won more MVPs in this stretch than their teammates at other positions. Pythagoras had the Yankees and White Sox two games apart, but the Yanks actually won it by 10 in the win column, with each team missing its expected wins by four, but in opposite directions.

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