By Jack Healey
Mookie Betts won the American League MVP and Christian Yelitch won the National League MVP as I expected for both. All the awards came out the way I expected except for the American League Rookie of the Year which I mentioned early in the week.
The Mets’ Jacob DeGrom won the National League Cy Young Award and deservedly so, but talk of him possibly being the NL MVP was ridiculous! Come on! Yes on the Cy Young, but no on the MVP!
I’m not a big fan of pitchers getting the MVP anyway, but since they do get the MVP occasionally I have to go along with it when it’s deserved like Pedro Martinez in 1999. Oh! Wait a minute! He didn’t win the MVP in 1999, but he should have because George King of the New York Post decided to leave Pedro completely off his ballot because he didn’t believe that pitchers should get the MVP. That’s his right except that he once gave David Wells an MVP vote. Can you spell HYPOCRITE? In case you don’t remember Ivan Rodriguez of the Texas Rangers won the AL MVP in 1999.
Among the college football games tomorrow is the 135th Harvard-Yale game and “The Game” will be played at Fenway Park, the first off campus site for the game since 1894 when it was played in Springfield, Mass.
Tomorrow’s game is the 50th anniversary of the 1968 game when Harvard “beat” Yale 29-29. Yale was leading with 42 seconds left when Harvard miraculously came back to tie the game on a 2 point conversion pass to Pete Varney, who later was a catcher with the Chicago White Sox. Actor Tommy Lee Jones was an offensive lineman for Harvard. He was Al Gore’s roommate. Calvin Hill played for Yale and later would play in the NFL with Dallas and Washington. His son is Grant hill who was a star basketball player at Duke and in the NBA. Actress Meryl Streep was a student at Vasser at the time and dated Yale running back Bob Levin whose fumble started the Harvard comeback.
I went to most of the Harvard-Yale games back in those days, but I didn’t go to that one because Harvard Stadium was packed and I couldn’t get a ticket. I listened to the game on the radio and can still remember Ken Coleman’s call. Yes the same Ken Coleman who was the voice of the Red Sox and got his start in radio at WSYB in Rutland broadcasting Rutland Royals games in the late 40’s.
Hard to believe that game was 50 years ago!