This Is How J. Roll

Obviously, I'm a happy man today - Jimmy Rollins winning the MVP brings back a little of the overall Philly-baseball good vibrations that disappeared for me after that miserable playoff series with the Rockies. I'm not going to get too deeply into the debate about whether Matt Holliday got robbed. He certainly had an MVP-caliber season, and it's tough not to be influenced by what a monster he was in the postseason, which of course does not figure in the voting at all. Aside from my overwhelming Philly bias, however, let me just say that I always enjoy the complete player being rewarded with the MVP votes, and on that score I also find the Rollins victory satisfying.

It puts J. Roll in some elite company of N.L. MVP-winning shortstops. Over in the A.L., what with the glut of power-hitting shortstops in the last 20 years, the ARod's and Tejadas and Ripkens and Younts, it's been less of an anomaly, but in the N.L. the MVP shortstop has remained an unlikely proposition. The last one was 12 years ago, Barry Larkin, in a vote where it seemed that the absence of a dominant slugger in a credible ballpark (the Rockies had the runner-up slugger that year as well, Dante Bichette) allowed an all-around leader of a scrappy playoff team to steal the trophy.

Now for an amazing fact - prior to Larkin, you have to go back 33 years to find another shortstop winning the N.L. MVP, one of the most anomalous MVP awards in baseball history. In 1962, the Dodgers' speedster at short, Maury Wills, stole 104 bases, 72 more than the N.L. base-stealing runner-up that year, his L.A. teammate Willie Davis. It's one of those statistics that just boggles the mind, and it was enough to win him the award (narrowly) over Willie Mays, who put up .304, 141 and 49 numbers that season. You think Matt Holliday is bummed.

Two shortstops won three N.L. MVP's in a row from 1958-1960. Pirates' shortstop Dick Groat won an unlikely MVP in a close and controversial race over his teammate Don Hoak in 1960 (another teammate, Roberto Clemente, finished 8th and made some scathing remarks about the whole vote that almost got him run out Steel Town). And in '58 and '59, Mr. Let's Play Two himself, Ernie Banks, brought back-to-back MVP's to Wrigley.

Only one other shortstop remains who won the MVP in the National League, and he's not exactly a household name. In fact, he has to be one of the worst players ever to win the award, which is not to say that he couldn't play, but hell - when they call you the Most Valuable Player after a .267, 63 and 6 season, you just know there's a war on. And so there was in 1944, when the St. Louis Cardinals' SS Marty Marion won the vote over such luminaries as Bill Nicholson, who had a .287, 122 and 33 campaign, and Marion's teammate Stan the Man Musial, who hit .347. Which sort of makes you wonder... exactly how many people did Marty have to blow to get all those MVP votes? Evidently he was a great fielder. But, you know, so was Mark Belanger.