It sounds a bit silly, but the 1941 AL MVP vote could've served as a precedent here.
If it had, Seattle Mariners catcher Cal Raleigh would've won the MVP on Thursday night. But he didn't. New York Yankees slugger Aaron Judge did.
In 1941, there were two magical seasons.
Ted Williams batted.406. And Joe DiMaggio had a 56-game hitting streak.
Now potentially less certain in your mind: Which of them won MVP?
Williams had pretty much every conceivable statistic in his favor. DiMaggio had the story, though, the one that would be passed down for generations.
And it was Joltin' Joe that won the MVP.
There are surely some who still disagree with that. After all, it looks even more wild in retrospect, since no one has gotten to.400 since.
But there's something contained within those three letters of MVP that suggests something more than just raw value.
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Baseball is a game of stories, of nostalgia, of interconnectedness through the generations. And nothing captured the baseball world's imaginations like the fact that for 56 consecutive ballgames, DiMaggio had a hit.
That brings us to Raleigh vs. Judge.
Judge beat Raleigh in all the advanced hitting statistics. But Raleigh had the story.
The dude they call Big Dumper because he has a large backside broke three major records:
- Single-season catcher HRs (previously 48 by Salvador Perez)
- Single-season switch-hitter HRs (previously 54 by Mickey Mantle)
- Single-season Mariners HRs (previously 56 by Ken Griffey Jr.)
Raleigh hit 60 homers, tying Babe Ruth for third all-time in the American League.
He did it while crouching over and over again, almost every night, as one of the best defensive catchers in baseball.
In the end, it didn't matter. Raleigh lost.
His story will persist, though. Fewer people will remember who got this trophy than will remember just how special a year Cal Raleigh had.
It'll be the story of the Big Dumper that is passed down through generations, never to be forgotten.
MORE: Why Aaron Judge won AL MVP over Cal Raleigh