MVP/OY

How do you join one of the most exclusive clubs in major league history?

First, become an “important” player, so important you receive the Most Valuable Player Award. Then, after usually retiring, you become an effective manager, so effective you’re named Manager of the Year.

Just how exclusive is this club?

Only five men have received both awards: Frank Robinson, Don Baylor, Joe Torre, Don Mattingly and Kirk Gibson.

The MVP Award was established in 1956; the manager of the Year Award in 1983.

Robinson became the first player to win the MVP Award in both leagues. With the pennant-winning Cincinnati Reds in 1961, Robinson batted .323 with 32 home runs and 124 RBI and led the league in slugging percentage at .611. He also stole 22 bases in 25 attempts. His terrific season helped the Reds win their first pennant since 1940. He received 15 out of 16 first-place votes for MVP. The only other player to receive a top vote was teammate Joey Jay, who led the National League with 21 wins against 10 losses.

He earned his second MVP by winning the triple crown for the World Series Champion Baltimore Orioles, who swept the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1966. He batted .316 with 49 home runs and 122 RBI. He won the award unanimously, taking 20 out of 20 first place votes. Robinson’s most famous first was being MLB’s first black manager when the Cleveland Indians named him to the position.

Playing third base for the St. Louis Cardinals in 1971, Joe Torre batted .363, 20 points higher than second place finisher Ralph Garr. In addition to his batting title, Torre led the league with 230 hits and 137 RBI.

Jack Lang in the Sporting News wrote, “Starting out on opening day, the Redbird third baseman launched a 22-game hitting streak and then continued with some of the most consistent hitting seen in the old league in many a year.”

He reported that during the season there were only three times Torre went hitless for two consecutive games, and all three occurred before May 19.

Lang pointed out that while playing in 160 games that season, Torre failed to get a hit in only 23 of them. Beginning in April, Torre’s monthly batting averages were .366, .355, .393, .324, .368 and .368. The Cardinals won 90 games that year, good for second place in the NL East, seven games behind the Pittsburgh Pirates.

Torre received 21 of the 24 first place votes for MVP and totaled 318 points. Pittsburgh’s Willie Stargell, who had a monster season of his own (.295 batting average, 48 home runs and 125 RBI) received the remaining three first-place votes and finished second in the voting with 228 points.

When Don Baylor won the MVP Award with the California Angles in 1979, he was the first player in franchise history to win it. Baylor batted .296 with a career-best 36 home runs and led the league with 139 RBI and 120 runs scored; he even stole 22 bases. The Angels won the American League West that season but lost the AL Championship Series three games to one to the Baltimore Orioles (the team that selected Baylor in the second round of the 1967 draft).

In MVP balloting, Baylor received 20 of 28 first place votes; Ken Singleton, George Brett and Mike Flannagan combined for the eight other first place votes. Baylor had a total of 347 points, to Singleton’s 241 and Brett’s 226.

Don Mattingly was 23 and had played only a season and a half when he began the 1985 season. He won the MVP Award leading the American League with 145 RBI and 48 doubles, batted .323 and hit 35 home runs. He received 23 of the 28 first place MVP votes (George Brett garnered the other five first place votes and finished second to Mattingly for the award; Mattingly had 374 votes to Brett’s 274).

Kirk Gibson’s biggest moment in 1988 was not being named MVP. It was in the first game of the World Series that year. He came to the plate in the ninth inning with the Dodgers trailing the Oakland A’s by a run; he was dealing with several injuries, and awkwardly stepped to the plate. Facing future Hall of Fame reliever Dennis Eckersley, Gibson slugged a two-run home run to give the Dodgers the win as he somehow dragged his body around the bases. The Dodgers went on to win the World Series in five games.

The next big moment for Gibson was being the recipient of the Most Valuable Player that season. Gibson received 13 out of 24 first-place votes for a total of 272 points. Darryl Strawberry was second, receiving four first-place votes and earning 236 points. In his first season with the Dodgers, Gibson batted .290 with 25 home runs and 76 RBI.

Frank Robinson has another first in baseball: he became the first player to win an MVP Award and the Manager of the Year Award in 1989, when he guided the Baltimore Orioles from a disastrous 1988 season to finishing a close second in the American League East in 1989.

The 1988 Orioles started the year with Cal Ripken, Sr. as manager, starting his sixth season at the helm. After losing the first six games, he was fired and the team hired Robinson, one of its greatest players from its past. But under Robinson the Orioles lost another 15 consecutive games, beginning the season 0-21, the worst start in major league history. The Orioles won their first game on April 29, defeating the Chicago White Sox at Comiskey Park 9-0. The club finished at 54-107.

1989 started off better for Baltimore: they won their first two games against the Boston Red Sox. The year before the Orioles had one win in April. In 1989, they finished the month 12-12. There was some turnover in the roster. Randy Milligan replaced Eddie Murray at first base and hit .268; new center fielder Phil Devereaux hit .266 and stole 22 bases. In his first full season, Bob Milacki went 14-12; Gregg Olson became the closer and saved 27 games with an ERA of 1.69. The team won 33 more games than in 1988, finishing 1989 with a record of 87-75.

Writing in the Baltimore Evening Sun after the season, Ken Rosenthal stated, “Oh, he (Robinson) would accept the Manager of the Year Award without hesitation. But don’t count on him getting overly excited.”

Robinson won the award and Don Zimmer, who managed the Cubs that season, finished second. “It’s an honor, but the players are the ones who did the job. The organization got me the players and the coaches taught them,” Robinson said in The Sporting News. He added, “I just oversaw the process.”

The expansion Colorado Rockies named Baylor as manager for its inaugural 1993 season. As expected, the Rockies had losing seasons their first two years, but in 1995, Baylor led the team to a winning record, 77-67, and second place in the National League West earning a berth in the postseason. He was named Manager of the Year.

In a New York Daily News story, Rockies pitching pitching coach Larry Bearnarth observed, “He doesn’t lose his cool very often. On the other hand, he can be intolerant sometimes of people who don’t give their best. He is very direct and he never varies from that, so players are never surprised. If he has something to say, he just says it like he’s still a player, like players used to do to each other.”

In the race for the NL Manager of the Year Award, Baylor obtained 10 first place votes, while Davey Johnson, who helmed the Cincinnati Reds, received eight. His Reds won the NL Central, but Baylor had more points on other ballots for second, third, fourth place, etc. Baylor totaled 122 points while Johnson had 89 points.

Midway through the 2010 season, Kirk Gibson was named manager of the Arizona Diamondbacks. Before his hiring, the Diamondbacks in the past year and a half had a record of 101-170. In 2011, Gibson helmed the team to a 94-68 finish, good for first place in the NL West, but the team went on to lose the NLDS to the Milwaukee Brewers in five games.

Gibson received 28 out of 32 first place votes in the Manager of the Year balloting. He totaled 152 points. Milwaukee’s Ron Roenicke finished second with 92 points.

In 2020, Mattingly led the Miami Marlins to their first winning season and their first appearance in the postseason since 2003. In the Covid-shortened 2020 season Miami had a 31-29 record, finishing second in the NL East. The previous year the Marlins lost 107 games, and the year before that they lost 98 games.

Miami won their wild-card series against the Cubs in 2020, two games to none, but lost their next series in three games to the Atlanta Braves.

Mattingly took 20 out of 30 first-place votes and had a total of 124 points, well ahead of San Diego Padres manager Jayce Tingler, who had 74 points.

Mattingly had to deal with a Covid outbreak that year. The team had 18 players and two coaches test positive for Covid after its season-opening series against Philadelphia. Players were quarantined in two separate Philadelphia hotels, one for infected players and one for those who had tested negative for the virus.

“Those days in Philly were rough,” Mattingly said on the MLB Network. “Every day, I’d get a call from (team president for baseball operations Mike Hill), and it’d be, ‘Skipper, four guys today’ and then, ‘Skipper, five guys today.’”

In 1977, Joe Torre was named player/manager for the New York Mets. He later managed in Atlanta and St. Louis and had losing seasons for much of his time as a manager. He went into broadcasting for eight years, then Art Richman, a special assistant to Yankees owner George Steinbrenner, called Torre and asked if he’d be interested in managing again.

Job security was not an inducement – Steinbrenner had gone through more than 20 managers in 23 years, some having more than one shot at managing the team. Torre accepted, even though his brother Frank, a former teammate with the Milwaukee Braves, said why would he want to do it? Torre told him (and others) the Yankees were a good team, and he had a dubious streak he wanted to end: no player and/or manager had participated in so many games (more than 4,000) without ever reaching the World Series. At 56, Torre realized this was his last chance to get to the series.

At the press conference announcing his hiring, Torre faced a hostile press corps, who wondered why a man who had been fired three times was appointed to manage one of the game’s most storied franchises.

The next day, his brother asked him if he’d seen the back page of the New York Post. Torre said he hadn’t and went to check it out; on the page in huge letters was the headline: “CLUELESS JOE.”

Torre replaced Buck Showalter, who in 1995 had taken the Yankees to the postseason for the first time in years, but lost a playoff series to the Seattle Mariners after leading two games to one. When Showalter balked at Steinbrenner’s demand he change his coaching staff, he was fired. Torre was facing several challenges: replacing a successful manager, bringing a losing record as a skipper, dealing with a roster of players he didn’t know, and the big one – dealing with The Boss.

He met the challenges: while Showalter was successful, he was a micromanager; Torre gave his players and coaches leeway; while he had a losing record in the past, he quickly won the respect of his players by focusing on trust– Torre trusted his players, who then learned to trust him. He brushed off Steinbrenner’s attempts to bully or intimidate him. While The Boss liked to pound opposing teams into the ground, Torre was happy with a one-run victory. His team played solid, fundamental baseball, and the players bought into his philosophy of putting the team first. Steinbrenner never seemed to be happy, and constantly questioned Torre’s moves, but the manager kept pointing out the team was winning. Hard to argue against that.

The Yankees won the AL East that season with a record of 92-70. They won the divisional round against the Texas Rangers in four games, then defeated Baltimore for the pennant. Joe Torre had finally made it to the World Series.

According to Torre’s book, The Yankee Years (co-written by Tom Verducci) after the team lost the first two games of the World Series against Atlanta, Steinbrenner went to Torre and told him he didn’t want to be swept. Calmly, Torre said the Yankees would win the next four games. And they did.

Torre lost the Manager of the Year Award to Texas skipper Johnny Oates by one point, 163-162. Two years later, he led the Yankees to 114 victories, and won the AL Manager of the Year Award, with 23 of 28 first place votes and 128 points. Boston’s Jimy Williams finished second with 59 points. Under his tenure, the Yankees won five World Series titles and two pennants.

There had been a feeling that managers who had success in the majors as players would not be good managers.

“The argument was that star players were so focused on their special abilities that they never really analyzed the sport,” said John Rossi, a baseball scholar and author of four books on the sport.

“Who were considered the great managers: Bobby Cox, Leo Durocher, Casey Stengel Sparky Anderson The only one that fits – being a good player and a good manager is Joe Torre, and he flipped before he took over the Yanks. Frank Robinson was a decent manager, but not a Hall of Fame quality one.” (Torre is the only one of the five dual award winners to have a winning record as a manager.)

There was a belief that because good and great players succeeded on their talent, they lacked experience in nuances of the game. Plus, some great players when they become managers expect players to perform as well as they did.

One player who did not have that last approach was Mattingly. Drafted by the New York Yankees in the 19th round of the 1979 draft, he was not a high pick because he was considered too short, too slow and lacked power.

One of Mattingly’s minor league managers, Bob Schaeffer, said in a biography of Mattingly: “A star is a guy who has talent and intelligence. Donnie had both. He didn’t have the talent when he first started. He had the tools to work with, but he made himself a good player. And I think guys who make themselves players like that appreciate the game more. I think they work harder and respect the game a lot more.”

When Torre was managing the Yankees, Mattingly was a special instructor in spring training. He was impressed with how hard he worked with players and gave them all attention, even if they were not a top prospect.

In the preface for Donnie Baseball by Mike Shalin, Torre wrote, “To me, his communication skills are very strong. His believability and integrity are very strong. When he talks, he’s saying something. There’s nothing empty about him. He earns everything he gets. He’s going to be outstanding as a manager. Now, is he going to trip and fall once in a while? Sure. But knowing who he is as a person, it’s not going to be an issue.” (Mattingly’s first foray into managing was with the Dodgers, and the team had a winning record four out of five years.)

Apparently because of his work ethic and how he proved the talent evaluators wrong, Mattingly did not adopt the “If I did this so can you” attitude some great players had when managing.

Robinson is one of 24 members of the Hall of Fame inducted as a player who managed in the major leagues. Baylor was a fine player who had some great seasons but was not selected for the Hall of Fame.

Torre’s numbers are very good, but he was also never selected for the Hall of Fame.  He peaked at 22 percent of the vote in his final year on the ballot (1997) before being inducted as a manager in 2014.

Like Baylor, Gibson was a fine player who has two World Series rings in addition to his two awards, but is not a member of the Hall of Fame.

Mattingly might have made the Hall if his career was not cut short by a back injury. (The highest percentage of votes he received was about around 28 percent, which occurred in his first year on the ballot and steadily declined throughout his eligibility.)

Aside from Torre, who benefitted from his 12 years as Yankees manager, the other four men who have won both awards had losing records as managers, primarily because they managed expansion teams or teams that were rebuilding.

You don’t win Manager of the Year without doing something right even if your tenure shows a losing record.

Will there be a sixth person to win both the MVP and Manager of the Year Awards? The MVP always comes first in a player’s career, so every winner of that award who becomes a manager has a chance to win both.