Outside Oberlin

Bidding farewell to the baseball season that was

Baseball's postseason awards were announced this week to downright fury in Boston and much barroom and water cooler debate everywhere else. Pedro Martinez won the AL's Cy Young award unanimously for being the best pitcher in the league. After the kind of year he had, I would have been tempted to give him the NL award for good measure. Pedro was fantastic throughout the regular season (23-4 with a 2.07 ERA), then carried the Red Sox through the first round of the playoffs - on a strained back no less. Pedro looked like Maddux in his heyday, except better, using pinpoint precision and a near complete understanding of each hitter he faced to dominate every team in the American League.

Which brings us to MVP honors, awared to the Ranger's Ivan Rodriguez. Even if you're one of those purists who believe pitchers shouldn't be eligible for the MVP since they already have an award, and since they play less than a quarter of the games position players do, this year was one of those years where that argument becomes shaky at best.

Jeter wasn't going to win it since he plays for the Yankees, a team in every sense of the word. Like last year, the Yanks had no superstars, and each player was pretty much vital to the success of the whole. Pudge, Roberto Alomar and Manny Ramirez might have been standouts, but it's not like their teams had to actually work to get a playoff berth. With Pedro, he not only had a stellar year on a team that bucked some serious odds, but he was a very noticeable player on that team. When you talk about the Yanks or the Tribe, a half dozen players easily jump to mind. With the Sox, most people outside of Beantown would be hard pressed to name any other standouts beyond Pedro and Nomar Garciappara. Not to say there weren't other players having career years contributing to the team's success, but who can you name?

Add in the Ramon factor - his brother became the clubhouse leader after joining Boston to play alongside Pedro - and Pedro was helping the team through intangibles on top of all his statistics.

The award is supposed to go to the player who did the most to help his team. Didn't Pedro deserve to win? I'm not getting further into this one. All I'll say is that Pedro was completely left off of two ballots so the 'pitchers shouldn't win the MVP' argument was clearly a part. But that argument better go out the window with next year's addition of the Hank Aaron award for best hitter.

Jumping now to the NL, did Chipper Jones really deserve the NL MVP with only a half season of MVP caliber play? Maybe not, but who else was there? Bagwell faded at season's end, and was unable to lead a team with three Cy Young vote getters (Hampton, Lima, Wagner) to even a fifth game against Atlanta. Frankly, I'm surprised Greg Vaughn didn't pull a few more votes. On the other hand, it's nice to see that voters did give Edgardo Alfonzo the respect he deserved.

The Cy Young was much more of a dogfight in the Senior Circuit with the race mainly between Randy Johnson (17-9 with a 2.48 ERA and 364 strikeouts) and Mike Hampton (22-4, 2.90). The standard points that were expounded all season still apply: The Big Unit had a four game stretch where he went 0-3 despite an ERA of less than one. Meanwhile, Hampton had more run support, more consistent run support and a far more reliable infield. Johnson also had the strikeouts going for him, finishing with 364, plus a league-high 12 complete games. The two had pretty much the same effect on their team's playoff performance, further clouding the issue. This award becomes more of a toss-up with every discussion, but at least we know whoever won it, deserved it.

But let me remark upon a few recent baseball developments before we lay the sport to rest for a few months:

The New York Mets re-signed catcher Todd Pratt, but at least they didn't go crazy with the cash. The career backup, whose only claim to fame was a game-winning homer in the series against Arizona, will make only $1.1 million over the next two seasons.

Elsewhere, the Cincinnati Reds added Deion Sanders to their 40-man roster, despite the fact that he hasn't committed to returning to baseball yet and would probably cost an arm and a leg (not to mention an injured toe) to retain. The move prevents other teams from drafting him while Prime Time decides what he's doing and the Reds try to figure ways to add him without losing the chemistry that took the so far last season.

And a quick nod to the two Managers of the Year - not because they didn't do a heckuva job, but because I can't really think of how to quantify what they did with more than a couple of sentences. Both Jimy Williams (AL) and Jack McKeon (NL) did a lot with less than, say, Joe Torre or Bobby Cox had. McKeon was in charge of a high end version of a bunch of no-names. More spectacular was that McKeon's bunch turned out a better road winning percentage than home.

Meanwhile, Williams managed to build a successful rotation while shuffling through 12 different starters, and surpassing what everyone says was an unsurpassable obstacle in the loss of Mo Vaughn. While Mo's departure wasn't really as harmful as everyone made it out to be, Williams deserves praise for finding and supporting the others who stepped up to take his place. Kudos to both coaches on showing that team chemistry and intelligent leadership are what really matters in a winning team, and I hope I never use the word 'kudos' again.

Finally, a note from elsewhere before I lay this ramble to rest: In that far off world that is Division-I football, a 6'-3", 270-pound University of Kansas defensive end got stuck after attempting to crawl through the drive-thru window of a Taco Bell. The enraged player, clearly in the running for Academic All-American honors, chased three workers and a manager into a back room as he tried to enter the 14"x45" window after the employees left the chalupa out of his order.

If that's not reason enough to kill that damn Chihuahua, I don't know what is.