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(Top 7 originally ran in 2006)

Debate continues nearly every year about what the “Most Valuable Player” award in baseball means.

The best player in the league?T he best player on the best team?T he best player out of all of the playoff teams? A guy whose team just missed the playoffs, but couldn't have done anything about it? Does it mean the player who got a few key hits when its team was making a run for the playoffs?  It seems to change every year, but most years, the voters end up guessing correctly regardless.

Sometimes, however, they get it completely wrong, but in their defense, baseball is probably the hardest sport to pick an MVP in since pitchers and hitters can't control one another (unless they are voting on little league MVPs when the best players usually do both, but that's a different Top 7). When they do get it wrong, it's out of an infatuation with a certain player, player's story, or their inflated worth to their team, or sometimes just for a completely bizarre reason.

That leads us to this week's Top 7.

7. Sammy Sosa, 1998

Personally, I will argue this one with Cub fans until I die. Yes, Sosa's team won the Wild Card, and it was a huge story. But the Cardinals finished five games behind them, and it sure as hell wasn't McGwire's fault that Jeff Brantley was the Cardinals closer, their bullpen blew an extraordinary amount of games, and their starters were not very good either. I won't even bother with all of the stats that clearly favor McGwire just because this argument can never be won.

6. Andre Dawson, 1987

You may think that this is included because Dawson's Cubs were the last place team that year. Not the case - there isn't anything wrong with a player winning MVP if his team sucks, as long as he is easily the best player in the league that year, which Dawson was not. It was similar to last year's MVP "debate," when some thought that Andruw Jones was MVP of the league only because of his HR and RBI totals. In on-base plus slugging, Dawson was 10th in the league.

There were other guys who played for winning teams with better years, and other guys on non-winning teams with much better years, including Dale Murphy, Jack Clark, Will Clark, Darryl Strawberry, Tim Raines, Eric Davis, and Tony Gwynn.

5. Terry Pendleton, 1991

It's amazing to think back to 1991 - almost everyone in the country was rooting for the Braves to win their division and the NLCS because they were known as that horrible, horrible team that played on cable. Due to the turnaround and its coverage, someone on their team had to be recognized as MVP, and that was Pendleton. Bonds had more runs homers (25 to 22), RBI (116 to 86), and stolen bases (43 to 10), and his team even had four more wins if that's your thing. He also won the Gold Glove in left field. This was a classic "best story wins the MVP" year.

4. Ichiro, 2001

Everyone in the media had a man crush on Ichiro in the 2001 season, but this was ridiculous. Yes, Ichiro had a better AVG (.350 to .342), more runs (127 to 109), and way more stolen bases (56 to 2) than the guy that should have won, Jason Giambi. But Giambi annihilated Ichiro in doubles (47 to 34), home runs (38 to 8), RBI (120 to 69), OB% (.477 to .381), and SLG% (.477 to .388). The playoffs thing wasn't even an excuse - the A's made the Wild Card that year. It was simply that Ichiro was the better story, and Giambi had won the previous year's award.

3. Barry Larkin, 1995

Larkin did have a great year in '95 as the Reds made the playoffs, hitting .319 with 15 homers and 51 stolen bases in the strike-shortened year. It was just that there were other guys more worthy--this one was more of a lifetime achievement award and a pat-on-the-back for being a “good clubhouse guy” and friendly with the media. One is Mike Piazza, who hit .346 with 32 homers and 93 RBI and the Dodgers also made the playoffs. Barry Bonds that season had to suffer with some of the worst pitching in the league, or he probably would have won the MVP easily this year - he played in all 144 games, had the highest OPS in the league (barely edging Piazza), stole 31 bases, but still finished an astonishing 12th in MVP voting.

2. Miguel Tejada, 2002

This was the year that the A's had the 20 - game winning streak, and Tejada had game-winning hits in the 18th and 19th games of that streak. That is why he won the MVP - he had huge hits in games that had tons of attention. Never mind that Alex Rodriguez played the same position and destroyed Tejada in nearly every single category. This is the year that the “he played on a bad team” argument came into play, which became such a stupid argument the next year that it's mind-boggling. In 2003, A-Rod was MVP of the AL, still on a last-place team, and he had a worse year than he had in 2002.

How did the rules change in one year? Is it A-Rod's fault that the Rangers had guys throwing underhanded on the mound? Does anyone in their right mind think that the A's would not have made the playoffs in 2002 with Rodriguez and not Tejada at shortstop? This one truly makes no sense because of what happened later.

1. Mo Vaughn, 1995

Albert Belle was the MVP. Both teams made the playoffs, with the Indians winning 14 more games. Belle led in runs (121 to 98), doubles (52 to 28), homers (50 to 39), average (19 points), on-base (13 points), slugging (115 points), and they were tied in RBI. There is not one single legitimate argument as to why Belle did not win over Vaughn except for the fact that Belle was completely insane.

This Fall award season we've seen a number of significant honors bestowed. President Barrack Obama received the Nobel Prize for Peace; Kansas City Royals hurler Zack Greinke received the American League Cy Young Award; and Arizona Diamondbacks reliever Clay Zavada received the "Robert Goulet Memorial Mustached American of the Year" from the American Mustache Institute.

After accepting his award in St. Louis at 'Stache Bash 2009 featuring John Oates, I sat down with Zavada to talk about his long road to the "Goulet" and what it all means.

All kinds of chatter is pouring out of Lawrence, KS this week as rumors are running rampant about the fate of Kansas football coach Mark Mangino.  The 2007 NCAA Coach of the Year is apparently on the hot seat as the school conducts an "internal review" which included a private meeting between the AD and the players. 

According to AD Lew Perkins, "it involves a personnel matter, and as a result is confidential. It would be inappropriate for me to provide further information right now."

While it may be inappropriate for Lew to comment, as a Mizzou fan who is contractually obligated to take full advantage of any opportunity to mock Kansas athletics, I pretty much have to comment.  And as a blog, we don't really have any responsibility to be accurate in our reporting (right, Buzz?), so today,  I present 10 completely baseless potential reasons that Mark Mangino may soon be unemployed.

1.) Players parents are upset that the coach regularly eats the entire team supply of orange slices at halftime

2.) Abnormally large amount of the athletic department budget being allocated for XXXXL KU apparel

3.) Made fun of Bill Self's toupee at alumni events one too many times

4.) He has been allocating significant time and resources to his obsessive plot to eliminate the Orange Bowl mascot for what he perceived as public mocking in 2007



5.) KU athletic department can no longer afford to transport the team via a C-17 Globemaster

6.) Is being punished for having the gall to briefly take some attention away from the basketball program over the past few years

7.) Made a smart ass remark to Mr. Perkins about how you really spell the name "Lou". 

8.) Fat jokes are fine, but when a player calls him "Coach Tons of Fun", that player is getting his ass kicked.

9.) According to the Jason Whitlock, it's because he's fat.  Seriously.

10.) Has not paid his tab at the Lawrence gentlemen's club known as "The Outhouse" for five years.
 
Truthfully, I have no clue why Mr. Mangino's job may be in jeopardy and considering he is the first coach in my lifetime to make Kansas even close to relevant in football, I'm not entirely sure if I should be happy or sad about it.  All I know is that if he goes, Mizzou fans will have to work a lot harder on their KU jokes.

November 18, 2009

When it was announced that Kansas City Royals' pitcher, Zack Greinke, would be taking home the American League Cy Young Award, we expected big things from headline writers across the country.  They certainly delivered.

-- CBSSports.com



-- ESPN.com



-- FOXSports.com



Simple, yet effective.  You see, awards are regal...and so is Kansas City's team name.  It just works, dammit.  Besides, "Greinke" doesn't really rhyme with anything except "stinky" and that doesn't work in this context.

On Saturday, our cyber homies over at DC Sports Bog and Mister Irrelevant shared a neat little trick that has enthralled us in the past.

In short, head over to Google…begin typing an athlete's name…and watch in amazement as the underlying nerdery produces a suggestive completion for your search terms.  Since Google is intelligently basing its suggestions on existing web content and other popular search strings, the results can be marginally entertaining - especially when adding an "is" after the athlete's name.

We decided to cross-reference the aforementioned nugget of technical insight with another one our favorites, Google Trends.  Below is a sampling of this month's top Google Trend sports subjects…and what Google.com suggests an "interesting" material.

Peyton Manning



Synopsis: Very wide array of search suggestions from Google, which is fairly standard for a polarizing character like an NFL quarterback.  The "indecipherable" search suggestion struck us as odd, but then we remembered this video.