There Is No Joy In...

Little joy is to be found in Boston these days. The whole city feels itself spiritually sacked, burned, and plowed under with salt after last Friday's announcement that the Baseball Writers Association had chosen Mickey Mantle the American League's Most Valuable Player instead of the only rational choice, Ted Williams.

The saga of Williams' sixteenth season is already legend. At 39, he was the oldest man ever to win the batting crown, hitting a fantastic .388, compared to Mantle's .365. Williams also poled thirty-eight homers, four more than Mantle. In the most significant single numerical gauge of a hitter's worth, the slugging percentage, Mantle accumulated a mark of .665. This was much less than Williams' .731, the highest record recorded in either league since Williams' 1941 season.

The Most Valuable Player Award is often and rightly awarded to a player on the pennant winning team. However, the Yankees had such a huge lead that they could have won the pennant without Mantle; the Red Sox could certainly not have finished anywhere near third without the services of Thumping Theodore.

Mantle had it right when he commented after hearing of the award, "I thought Ted would make it easily. I didn't expect it at all." Roy Sievers, who finished a close third in the balloting, laid it on the line even harder, "Ted should have won it. He certainly deserved the award."

This is not the first time the baseball writers have had their revenge on Williams. In 1941, in the season he hit a cool .406, he lost to Joe Gordon by 26 points. In 1947, he lost by one point to DiMaggio, because one Boston sports-writer refused to give him even a tenth place vote. In the recent election, Williams received one ninth and another tenth place vote.

This dislike is somewhat understandable; the San Diego Strong Boy has never gone out of his way to be helpful to sportswriters; he is not an "I am as you desire me" individual. He has shown a proper disdain for the over-washed American public, spitting at fans and jumping over the barricades to assault his attackers.

Perhaps not a majority, or even a significant minority of Harvardmen came to this school to watch Williams play baseball, but there are a few. Their general reaction is similar to that of Johnny Pesky: "I feel awful."

This brown taste is not sympathy for Williams; he probably could not care less, nor is it the tragic despair of feeling injustice unpunished. It is a plaint against irrationality, and against the things that make it possible to choose Mantle the most valuable player.

For Mantle is a Yankee, and the Yankees are the "power elite" of the baseball world. They are the biggest; they have more money, better organization and more pennants. The Yankees win and the American dream of success influences even sports writers. A Yankee has won the Most Valuable Player Award each of the last four years and twelve times since 1931.

Yet we Williams men will survive; survive the attacks of other-directed America, as long as we can watch the last of the magnificent individualists stride to the plate, give the raspberry to the fans, and begin the swing which ends on the other side of the right-field wall