For much of
baseball history, there was the National League and the American League. They
were completely separate entities with the winners of each league facing each
other in the World Series. Otherwise, teams from each league would never meet
during the regular season. There were separate league presidents, and
umpires were employed by either the AL or NL. Limited interleague games started
in the mid-90s with each team playing teams from the other league for a handful
of games, but the percentage of interleague games during the season was
still fairly small. Now, although there are still separate leagues, there are
no league presidents, umpires are employed by Major League Baseball, and every
team plays against each other each season. For the 2024 season, each team
played 46 interleague games. That's a substantial number. So why are there
still separate awards (MVP, CY Young, etc.) for each league? The hill I'm
willing to die on today is that there should be one baseball award winner.
Period.
Instead of Shohei Ohtani being the National League MVP and Aaron Judge
being the American League MVP, there should only be one like in every other
American sport. (The MVP debate this season would be unreal!) Look at the NBA
for the 2023-2024 season. Nikola Jokic won MVP while Shai Gilgeous-Alexander finished second
and Luka Doncic finished third in the voting. All three play in the Western
conference. If this was baseball, Giannis Antetokounmpo would have been the
Eastern Conference MVP which seems a little ridiculous.
In football,
Lamar Jackson easily won the NFL MVP last season. Would Dallas Cowboys fans
really celebrate Dak Prescott being the NFC MVP? The answer is probably not.
Let’s stop this two MVP and two Rookie of the Year award nonsense in baseball
and just have one award winner for the entire sport.
Please click here to see more of my extremely sporadic Hills I'm Willing To Die On series.
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2 comments:
My complaint is and has always been that National and American are synonyms. If you're going to have 2 separate leagues, name them actual different things. Stars/Stripes? Senators/Representatives? Blue/Red?
At this point, the leagues have been named this way for over 100 years, so you kind of have to keep it. Hockey had historic names like the Norris and Patrick divisions. Now, the names are boring. Metropolitan division is just ugh.
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