It’s Time For a Quiz! Let’s Have Some Fun With Baseball Trivia: MVP Awards!

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“Consecutive MVP Award Winners” Photo Gallery
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Let’s Have Some Fun With Baseball Trivia: MVP Awards!

It’s been awhile since I had a baseball quiz, so I thought we could have some fun with an interesting bit of baseball trivia I recently came across involving MVP awards. See what you can do with it before checking out the answers at the bottom of the post. Here’s the quiz:

1. Since the MVP award was started in 1931, there have been twelve players who have won the award in consecutive years. How many of the twelve players can you name?

2. There is something very significant about the first nine of the twelve players to win consecutive MVP awards. Can you name what that its?

While you’re thinking this over, here’s a few other interesting tidbits I uncovered involving MVP’s:

• Since 1931, there have been 172 MP Award winners.
• The winners of the MVP actually receive the Kenesaw Mountain Landis Memorial Baseball Award, which became the official name of the MVP award in 1944,
• MVP Awards by position: Outfielders (67), First basemen (34), Pitchers (25), Second basemen (16), Third basemen (15), Shortstops (15).
• Frank Robinson is the only player to win the award in both the American and National Leagues.
• Nine players have won three times, and 19 have won twice.
• Hank Greenberg, Stan Musial, Alex Rodriguez, and Robin Yount have won at different positions.
• Barry Bonds has won the most often (seven) and the most consecutively (four: 2001–04).
• The Yankees have the most winning players with 22, followed by the Cardinals with 17 winners.
• The award has never been won by a member of the following teams: Arizona Diamondbacks, New York Mets, and Tampa Bay Rays.

Answers to the MVP quiz questions

The 12 players who have won consecutive MVP’s:

1. Jimmie Foxx (1B, 1932-’33), 2. Hal Newhauser (P, 1944-’45)), 3. Yogi Berra (C, 1954-‘55), 4. Mickey Mantle (CF, 1956-‘57), 5. Ernie Banks (SS, 1958-‘59), 6. Roger Maris (RF, 1960-‘61), 7. Joe Morgan (2B, 1975-‘76), 8. Mike Schmidt (3B, 1980-‘81), 9. Dale Murphy (LF, 1982-‘83), 10. Frank Thomas (DH-1B, 1993-94), 11. Barry Bonds (LF, 1992-’93, 2001-’04) 12. Albert Pujols (1B, 2008-’09).

The significance of the first nine players to win consecutive MVP’s: Take a good look at the list. There’s a consecutive MVP winner for every one of the nine positions on the field. Amazing!

Gary Livacari

Photo Credits: All from Google search; Beautiful Jimmie Foxx colorization by Don Stokes

Information: Excerpts edited from the MVP Wikipedia page.

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