Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D.

11-21-90 . . . Rickey Henderson of the Oakland Athletics has won the American League’s Most Valuable Player (MVP) award, nipping Cecil Fielder of the Detroit Tigers. I thought it would come out like this, but kept hoping that Fielder would win. The other award winners this fall were Bob Welch and Doug Drabek (Cy Young award), Sandy Alomar Jr and Dave Justice (Rookie of the Year award), Jeff Torborg and Jim Leyland (Manager of the Year award), and Barry Bonds (MVP award). It’s hard to win an MVP award when your team has a losing record; the voters almost always go with players on successful teams, perhaps on the assumption that the player caused the success. But if that’s the criterion, Fielder should have won. Without him, the Tigers would have finished in the cellar. They showed a drastic improvement between 1989 and 1990, in large part because of his play.