Baseball Blows It Again
Caldwell, Christopher
Sports Baseball Blows It Again By Christopher Caldwell In the season just concluded, Albert Belle was the most dangerous hitter on the most dangerous hitting ballclub in decades, the Cleveland...
...Simpson, who . . . Even if it weren't a silly stipulation, Belle deserves the award on character grounds alone, because he happens to be a man of genuine character...
...Yet when the Baseball Writers of America announced the American League Most Valuable Player award on November 16, Belle was passed over in favor of Mo Vaughn of the Boston Red Sox, who knocked in as many runs as Belle but hit 11 fewer homers and batted 17 points lower...
...Then there's the real reason Belle lost: There's a character clause in the award language, and Belle supposedly has a bad character...
...As an arrogant, talented fellow in his early twenties, Belle submitted to the designed-to-be-humiliating ordeal of detox with a manliness and patience beyond his years...
...Or Orlando Cepeda (1967), he of the 160-pound marijuana bust in Puerto Rico in 1975...
...I recall Roger lipreadably taunting umpire Terry Cooney with a profanity unutterable on national television during the 1988 championship series, all because Cooney had missed a strike call...
...I recall Cesar Cede?o winning a rackful of Gold Gloves in the 1970s after disposing of his girlfriend by gunshot in the Dominican Republic...
...He led the American League with 50 home runs last year, and tied for the league lead with 126 runs batted in...
...Teammates say he watches opposing pitchers like a hawk, keeps dossiers on them in meticulously ordered spiral notebooks, and punishes himself with hours of batting practice when he's in a slump...
...Moving to football, the NFL has given us such MVPs as O.J...
...Few dispute that Albert Belle lacks an appealing personality...
...Or Pete Rose, who won in 1973...
...And then lying about it after he'd been thrown out of the game...
...Even in this year's post-season, Belle's temper was on display...
...Let's take his boozing first...
...He wheeled around and fired a fastball into the fan's chest, knocking him down...
...and Denny McLain, who would shortly become better known for his gambling exploits and mafia connections...
...Sports Baseball Blows It Again By Christopher Caldwell In the season just concluded, Albert Belle was the most dangerous hitter on the most dangerous hitting ballclub in decades, the Cleveland Indians...
...Days later he was cursing out a reporter who had come to do a puff piece on him...
...Whatever the outward arrogance, this is a sign of inner modesty, self-knowledge, and a capacity for hard work that have traditionally fallen under the rubric of character...
...Belle is of the latter school...
...That's stupid, and doesn't bear going into...
...He's one of the handful of people I'd most like to meet...
...There are two ways to handle enormous God-given talent: First, ride it as far as it goes, which isn't far-the sad example of the Red Sox's never-quite-great Fred Lynn comes to mind...
...The exhibits: When Belle was warming up in the outfield shortly after being released from alcohol detox in 1991, he was taunted by a fan in the centerfield stands...
...How about the two doozies who won it in 1968...
...His community service in Boston has helped black and white Bostonians to look on the neighborhoods of Roxbury and Dorchester with a great deal less fear and a great deal more understanding...
...He's the only person in a century and a quarter of major league history to hit 50 homers and 50 doubles in a season-and he did it in just 144 games...
...I'm a Red Sox fan, and over the last four years Mo Vaughn has been personally responsible for dozens of my happiest summer days...
...But he didn't deserve the MVP Albert Belle did, and the fact that he didn't get it is a scandal...
...Belle hit 32 home runs after August 2; Babe Ruth didn't even do that when he hit 60 homers, nor did Roger Maris when he hit 61...
...Mo Vaughn, by contrast, spends nearly all his free hours with poor children in Boston's worst neighborhoods...
...But personality and character are not the same thing...
...There was Bob Gibson, a meaner man than Belle...
...This is hard work that many, many ballplayers before Belle didn't have the stomach for, and the thing it's a triumph of is character...
...In confusing the two, the baseball writers have turned the most important award in professional sports into a personality contest...
...In 1994, Belle was suspended for using a corked bat, against baseball rules...
...Second, train like a player of lesser gifts, however grueling that may be (the Ted Williams/Nolan Ryan method...
...There's the ostensible reason for giving Vaughn the award-he was more important to the Red Sox than Belle was to the Indians...
...But the MVP "character" issue is wholly bogus where Belle is concerned...
...When the Red Sox called for an examination of Belle's bat (for corking) after a clutch 11th inning home run, Belle climbed onto the top step of the dugout, flexed his muscle and swore menacingly across the diamond...
...Albert Belle wuz robbed...
...Is Roger Clemens (who took the MVP in 1986) a better fellow than Belle...
Vol. 1 • December 1995 • No. 12
