I Will Now Bore You with BASEBALL
Joe Gordon, who played for the Yankees in the ‘40s, just got elected to the Hall of Fame by the veterans committee. The Baseball Hall of Fame is not like the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame. Baseball runs a tight ship. If you get in, you generally deserve it. It’s a good model. Only rarely does it go wrong. Like now.
Writers keep referring to Joe Gordon’s “MVP season of 1942.” And yet, the fact that Joe Gordon won the MVP in 1942 remains one of baseball’s bigger travesties, the sports version of Kevin Costner beating Martin Scorsese for Best Director in 1991. Ted Williams won the TRIPLE CROWN - best average, homers and RBIs - in 1942. He remains the only player to win the Triple Crown and NOT win the MVP, a feat he actually accomplished twice! (It's been more than 40 years since someone won the Triple Crown, by the way).
Why? For some reason, baseball writers - most of them based in NYC - hated Ted Williams and loved Joe DiMaggio. Time has proved them wrong - Williams was a plainspoken war hero with an actual code of conduct and ethics, while DiMaggio was a nasty, self-centered, mob-owned dullard. The writers ALWAYS favored the Yankees, even to these absurd heights.
But on to 1942…
Joe Gordon hit .322. with 18 homers and knocked in 103 runs. Not bad.
Ted Williams hit .356 with 36 homers and 137 RBIs. Phenomenal.
Advantage: Williams, by 34 points, 18 homers and 34 RBI. These are not small margins. They are substantial.
The list goes on. Williams has more hits (+13), walks (+66), doubles (+5), even triples (+1). Williams struck out only 51 times, compared to 95 for Gordon; and Williams’ slugging percentage is an amazing 157 points higher (.648 to .491)! And if you look at on-base percentage, the difference is really stark -- Gordon has a decent-enough .409, while Williams has an amazing .499...that's .100 points higher. That means every time Williams went to the plate, odds were 50-50 that he'd get on base. Crazy.
What I would do, were I the Veterans Committee, would be to retroactively strip Joe Gordon of his MVP award and give it to the guy who deserved it…Ted Williams. I'd do the same thing for Scorsese's 1991 Oscar, too.
The numbers do not lie:
Year G AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI SB CS BB SO BA OBP SLG
JOE GORDON
1942 147 538 88 173 29 4 18 103 12 6 79 95 .322 .409 .491
TED WILLIAMS
1942 150 522 141 186 34 5 36 137 3 2 145 51 .356 .499 .648
Writers keep referring to Joe Gordon’s “MVP season of 1942.” And yet, the fact that Joe Gordon won the MVP in 1942 remains one of baseball’s bigger travesties, the sports version of Kevin Costner beating Martin Scorsese for Best Director in 1991. Ted Williams won the TRIPLE CROWN - best average, homers and RBIs - in 1942. He remains the only player to win the Triple Crown and NOT win the MVP, a feat he actually accomplished twice! (It's been more than 40 years since someone won the Triple Crown, by the way).
Why? For some reason, baseball writers - most of them based in NYC - hated Ted Williams and loved Joe DiMaggio. Time has proved them wrong - Williams was a plainspoken war hero with an actual code of conduct and ethics, while DiMaggio was a nasty, self-centered, mob-owned dullard. The writers ALWAYS favored the Yankees, even to these absurd heights.
But on to 1942…
Joe Gordon hit .322. with 18 homers and knocked in 103 runs. Not bad.
Ted Williams hit .356 with 36 homers and 137 RBIs. Phenomenal.
Advantage: Williams, by 34 points, 18 homers and 34 RBI. These are not small margins. They are substantial.
The list goes on. Williams has more hits (+13), walks (+66), doubles (+5), even triples (+1). Williams struck out only 51 times, compared to 95 for Gordon; and Williams’ slugging percentage is an amazing 157 points higher (.648 to .491)! And if you look at on-base percentage, the difference is really stark -- Gordon has a decent-enough .409, while Williams has an amazing .499...that's .100 points higher. That means every time Williams went to the plate, odds were 50-50 that he'd get on base. Crazy.
What I would do, were I the Veterans Committee, would be to retroactively strip Joe Gordon of his MVP award and give it to the guy who deserved it…Ted Williams. I'd do the same thing for Scorsese's 1991 Oscar, too.
The numbers do not lie:
Year G AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI SB CS BB SO BA OBP SLG
JOE GORDON
1942 147 538 88 173 29 4 18 103 12 6 79 95 .322 .409 .491
TED WILLIAMS
1942 150 522 141 186 34 5 36 137 3 2 145 51 .356 .499 .648