Rant #1,995: Simply the Best

This story kind of came and went so quickly, and with all the turmoil around us, I never really had a chance to say anything about it.

At the end of September, Rod Manfred, the commissioner of Major League Baseball, announced that the Most Valuable Player Award for the World Series would from this point forward be named for one of the game's greatest players, Willie Mays.

Mays, who played form 1951 to 1973 for mainly the New York/San Francisco Giants, was simply one of the greatest players ever to put on the spikes.

He hit more than 600 home runs, and had a personality to match his skills. Everything he did seemed effortless, and he could do it all: a five-tool player before that description was even invented.

On the list of great baseball players, Mays has to be in the top 10, if not the top five.

He played in four World Series: 1951, 1954, 1962 and 1973, the last one while he was rounding out his career with the New York Mets.

Mays will forever be remembered for the catch to end all catches, his snaring of Vic Wertz's shot during the 1954 World Series against the Cleveland Indians.

His teams won just one World Series, in 1954, and this is where I am going to ask this question: Does Mays actually deserve to have this award named after him?

In his four Series appearances spanning more than 70 at bats, he hit .239 with six RBIs.

Again, his teams won just a single World Series.

How about Yogi Berra?

He has enough World Series rings to fill up two hands, between his playing and coaching days. He actually played in 14 World Series, and in 259 at bats, he hit .274 with 12 homers and 39 RBIs.

More than 50 years after he played his final game, he still holds numerous World Series records that will probably never be broken, including the number of championship rings that he has.

How about Mickey Mantle?

Mantle also has enough championship rings to fill up nearly two hands, and he still has a World Series record that, again, no one will ever touch: he hit 18 homers during all the World Series games that he played in. He also knocked in 40 runs and hit .257 during his 12 World Series.

So I ask you again: Does Mays actually deserve to have this award named after him?

Well, yes and no, to be quite honest with you.

Yes, because he was one of the game's all-time greats, and naming the MVP award after him will keep his name current for future generations.

No, because quite frankly, other than THAT CATCH--and that catch was amazing--he was not much of a World Series performer.

I would not like to think that naming the MVP award after Mays was a Politically Correct move, since baseball is still trying to solve the puzzle about why black athletes have generally shunned the game in recent years, with continually falling demographics showing that blacks are becoming a vanishing breed on MLB team rosters, and a move like this is being used to interest future generations of kids of color to embrace the game.

I would like to think that baseball is simply honoring one of its all-time greats with an award that will keep his name alive for all people for many generations to come.

Heck, in 1999, MLB created the Hank Aaron Award, given to players selected as the top hitter in each league. It was created in that particular year because it commemorated the 25th anniversary of Aaron hitting his 715th home run, surpassing Babe Ruth's mark of 714 homers, which Aaron did in 1974.

Baseball honored one of its all-time greats with that award, and now they are doing it again with the Mays Award.

That is what I would like to think, but the PC stuff is still there, and yes, it has to be looked into.

Should a World Series trophy be named after someone who excelled in the actual games, as Berra and Mantle did, or should it be named after a guy who never excelled in these games but certainly did during the regular season and All-Star games? More importantly, should the naming of the trophy be tied in with marketing efforts to get young black kids interested in the game?

Mays was in a record 24 All-Star games, and quite frankly, baseball would have done him even more justice by naming that MVP trophy after him, not the World Series trophy.

But which trophy is more high profile? Certainly the World Series trophy is.

So you can go around and around, upside down, and you will get good reasons for and against the naming of the World Series trophy after the Say Hey Kid.

I know it is a minor point in the grand scheme of things, but I did not read one sportswriter take this subject on, so you are probably reading about it here first.

It does not upset me that Mays' name is on the award, but I just thought there were other players that perhaps deserved the honor even more than he did.

Of course, of the three, Mays is the only one still alive, at 86 years of age, and that probably had a lot to do with it, too.

Just my two cents.

(P.S.: The World Series MVP Award is often mixed up with the Babe Ruth Award, a not-sanctioned-by-MLB award that covers the entire postseason (playoffs and World Series) and is awarded by the New York chapter of the baseball writers association (I think it is BBWAA). It is given out weeks after the World Series is over, and was once tied into the late, great Sports Magazine, but it is not as prestigious as the award now named after Willie Mays.)