Baseball's Greatest Travesty: The 1941 MVP Race

By Paul Kelly

Baseball's biggest travesty occurred not in 1919 (Black Sox scandal), or in 1989 (Pete Rose's gambling), nor did it occur in 2007 (Mitchell Report). The greatest travesty in baseball's scandalous history happened in 1941 with the theft of the 1941 MVP.

Joe DiMaggio of the New York Yankees won baseball's MVP in 1941, capturing 15 first place votes and totaling 291 points. Granted, DiMaggio put up an impressive string of numbers .357 BA, 1.083 OPS, 30 HR and 125 RBI while establishing a MLB record 56-game hitting streak, but those numbers pale in comparison to the man who came in second place, a man who was arguably one of baseball's best players. A man who that season became the last person to bat .400 in a Major League season, had the highest single season OPS in Major League history for anyone not named Barry or Babe, and set the record for the highest OBP in one season while posting a record of 64-consecutive games on-base safely streak that remained a record until he broke it again in 1964. Who was that man?

Ted Williams.

Ted Williams was robbed of the 1941 MVP by the New York media. In just his third season, Williams compiled what is most likely baseball's greatest season ever. Over 456 at bats he hit .406 with 37 HRs and 120 RBIs, posting a .553 OBP, .735 SLG, 1.287 OPS and a jaw dropping 147 walks with only 27 strikeouts. He led the league in runs scored, home runs, walks, batting average, on base percentage, and slugging percentage. His grand total of bases, walks, and hit-by-a-pitch was 485. If he had been walked every time he had stepped up to the plate, he would have had a total of 606 total bases.

Ted Williams had a VORP (value over replacement player) of 130.5, one of the highest in baseball history, and was worth 13.8 wins above the replacement player (in comparison to DiMaggio’s 9.4). So tell me this. Who was the most valuable player in 1941?

The voters obviously felt that it was Joe DiMaggio, citing his 56-game hitting streak as justification over one of baseball’s greatest seasons in which Ted Williams hit .406. DiMaggio was benefiting not just from the New York media but from a school of thought that emphasized hits as the basis for determining success, a school born out of the dead-ball era, when walks were truly undervalued and batting average was an accurate tool by which to measure a player’s value. Despite the fact that 1941 was part of the live-ball era, that dead-ball era school of thought was still prominent in people’s minds.

During DiMaggio’s 56-game streak, he hit .408 with a .461 on-base percentage. That means that Ted Williams essentially did all season long what Joe DiMaggio managed to do during the most celebrated 56 games in baseball history. 56 games versus 143 games, what’s more impressive? On the subject of streaks, Williams’ numbers from July 19 to September 23 during his 64-game on base streak were .420 with a .595 on base percentage.

Let’s stretch the streak logic out of the box. Williams had a season-low batting average of .302 on May 2. He ended with an average below .400 only 29 times that season, 20 of which were prior to his game against the Yankees on May 25 in which he pushed his average above .400 to .404. Out of 143 games, he had an average below .400 only 29 times, 20 of those coming prior to May 25.

So from May 25 on, Ted Williams’ average dropped below .400 only nine times. Essentially, Ted Williams had a 143-game hitting streak. Another key note of importance is that during this time period sacrifice flies were counted negatively against your average, thus Williams ended up with a .406 average instead of the .411 average he would have garnered under today’s rules.

Everybody knows about Ted Williams’ legendary plate discipline. In 1941, he had 145 walks to 27 strikeouts in 1941, a ridiculous 5.37 BB:K ratio. In baseball history, nobody with that many walks has ever struck out that few times. Check off another record for the Kid, the Splendid Splinter. Actually, in the ‘live-ball era’, only 19 times has anybody walked over 125 times while striking out less than 50 times. The closest line was Ferris Fain in 1950 (133 walks to 26 strikeouts).

Due to that BB:K ratio, Ted Williams’ .553 OBP was a baseball record for 61 years until it was broken by Barry Bonds in 2002 and 2004. Since Ted Williams retired in 1960, nobody but Bonds has ever reached base in more than half of their plate appearances. In fact, Ted Williams himself is the only American League player to test his .553 on base percentage record, nearly twenty years later (1957) with an impressive .526 clip.

William’s historic season ended in an amazing climax. It was the last day of baseball for the Boston Red Sox in 1941, on September 28—a doubleheader against the Philadelphia Phillies. Ted Williams was sitting on a batting average of .3996, which would have been rounded up to .400—giving Ted William’s the chance to mathematically be the first (and last) player since 1930 to hit .400. Ted Williams in an act of selfless team-first mentality refused to sit, instead playing and thus risking his .400 average. Over those two games, Ted Williams went 6-8, raising his average to .406 and becoming the eighth player ever to hit .400 in a season.

Just under a month later, on November 27th, Joe DiMaggio was awarded the Most Valuable Player award, an award that was stolen from and really belonged to not just 1941’s best hitter, but baseball’s greatest hitter ever.

Alas, it wasn’t the last time Ted Williams had a MVP award stolen from him by a Yankees player. Exactly one year later, Ted Williams was the MLB Tripler Crown winner, yet was robbed of the MVP for a second straight year. The MVP was Joe Gordon, who had the dubious honor of his own ‘triple crown’: Joe Gordon led the American League in strikeouts (95), double plays hit into (22), and errors at his position (28).

Then again, in 1947, Joe DiMaggio was named MVP ahead of Ted Williams (again) by one point despite the fact Ted Williams won baseball’s Triple Crown for a second time in just three years (he left baseball to fight during WWII from 1943-1946).

In a blatant showing of anti-Red Sox voting, one New York writer completely left Ted Williams off his ballot. A 10th place vote would have guaranteed Williams a tie for MVP, while a 9th place vote would have given Williams the MVP.

The season of 1941 was a great year for baseball’s record books, but Joe DiMaggio’s MVP theft left yet another black mark on the already-tarnished history of baseball.