Top 10 Worst Baseball MVP Choices

Yesterday, surprising no one, Major League Baseball's Most Valuable Player awards went to Aaron Judge of the Yankees in the American League, and to Shohei Ohtani of the Los Angeles Dodgers in the National League.

I am of the firm belief that the MVP should only go to a player who helps his team get into the postseason. If you helped your team get into the Playoffs, by definition, you have more value, and are more valuable, than a player who didn't help his team get into the Playoffs. Never mind Judge, or Cal Raleigh of the Seattle Mariners, or Vladimir Guerrero Jr. of the Toronto Blue Jays: The 25th man on each of those teams was more valuable than any player on any of the teams that didn't make it.

Top 10 Worst Baseball MVP Choices

Remember: While the voting is announced after the postseason, the MVP voting is based on regular-season performance only. I think that's wrong, but that's how they do it. As Joe Girardi would say, "It's not what you want." But as Aaron Boone would say, "It is what it is."

The current award began in the 1931 season, so no previous versions will be taken into account -- or held to account. And while some of these choices now look bad due to revelations of cheating, that was not known at the time, so I can't include those choices.

Honorable Mention: 1949 American League: Ted Williams, Boston Red Sox. This will be considered blasphemy in New England. They're wrong. First, let's look at the MVPs won by Yankees that "should" have been given to the Splendid Splinter.

Joe DiMaggio of the Yankees was awarded the American League MVP for 1941. Red Sox fans, now 3 generations removed, remain angry about this. They say Ted's .406 average was a greater achievement than DiMaggio's 56-game hitting streak the same season. They forget that the award is Most Valuable Player, not Most Outstanding Player. Ted's great season did not get the Red Sox the Pennant, finishing 2nd, 17 games behind the Yankees. Joe's great season put the Yankees on a run that led to them winning the World Series.

There would be another MVP controversy in 1942. Ted batted .356, hit 36 home runs, and had 137 RBIs. Each of these led the League, giving him the Triple Crown. But the Sox finished 2nd to the Yankees, a not-very-close 9 games back, and the MVP went to Joe Gordon, who did bat .302 with 103 RBIs, though only 18 home runs, and played 2nd base superbly. How do you deny a Triple Crown winner the MVP? Again: Most Valuable Player, not Most Outstanding Player.

In 1946, the Red Sox ran away with the Pennant. This time, there was no denying Ted: He batted .342, hit 38 home runs, and had 123 RBIs (oddly, none of these led the AL), and he was an easy choice for MVP.

Then came the World Series. The opposition was the St. Louis Cardinals. Led by the NL's answer to Ted, Stan Musial, the Cards were in their 4th World Series in 6 years, having won in 1942 and 1944, and lost in 1943. But Ted was nursing an elbow injury, and only batted .200, 5-for-25. Stan didn't hit well, either, and neither would end up the big story of the Series. The Cards won in 7 games.

Ted won the Triple Crown again in 1947, as he batted. .343, hit 32 home runs and had 114 RBIs. But, again, the Sox didn't win the Pennant. In 1947, DiMaggio won the MVP by 1 point in the voting over Ted -- because 1 writer, whose name has never been revealed, left Ted off his ballot completely. If he had even listed Ted 10th, Ted would have won it. But he wouldn't have deserved it: The Sox finished 3rd, 14 games behind the Yankees (and 2 behind the Tigers).

 

In 1949, the Sox and Yanks battled for the Pennant all the way to the final weekend. The Sox led the Yanks by 1 game with 2 to go, against each other, at Yankee Stadium. All the Sox had to do was win 1 of the 2. The Yankees won them both, 5-4 and 5-3. Ted went 1-for-3 with a walk in the Saturday game, and 0-for-2 with 2 walks in the Sunday game.

In spite of the Sox not winning the 1949 Pennant, the Yanks didn't have any single player who stood out above the others -- DiMaggio being hurt much of the year, keeping his power stats down -- so Ted got his 2nd MVP. But he had also begun to get a reputation as coming up small in big games. This ignores the fact that, in those 3 end-of-season games in '48 and '49, he did reach base 5 times. But, in those days, you rarely heard the cliché , "A walk is as good as a hit."

Ted hit 43 home runs and had 159 RBIs. His .343 slightly trailed George Kell of the Tigers for the batting title, costing him a record 3rd Triple Crown by the slimmest of margins. But he got 13 of a possible 16 1st-place votes, and won the MVP.

Among the Yankees, Phil Rizzuto finished 2nd, reliever Joe Page 3rd, and Tommy Henrich 6th. But the Scooter just didn't have big stats, and as for Page, nobody was willing to give the MVP to a relief pitcher to that point. The next year, Jim Konstanty of the Philadelphia Phillies became the 1st, in the NL. No AL reliever would get the award until Rollie Fingers of the Milwaukee Brewers in 1981.

So Ted didn't help his team win the Pennant. Yogi Berra finished 15th in the voting, but, giving the Yankees their 1st good year from a catcher since 1943, he was probably the best choice. Since there was no obvious candidate, I'm making Ted's '49 win an Honorable Mention.

Other Honorable Mentions: 1947 National League, Bob Elliott of the Boston Braves over Jackie Robinson of the Brooklyn Dodgers; 1953 American League, Al Rosen of the Cleveland Indians over Yogi Berra of the New York Yankees; 1954 American League, Yogi over Larry Doby of the Indians.

Derek Jeter probably should have won it in 1999, 2006 and 2009. At least, on those occasions, the winner was from a Playoff team: Respectively, Iván Rodríguez of the Texas Rangers (now believed to have been a steroid cheat), and Justin Morneau and Joe Mauer of the Minnesota Twins.

10. 1958 American League: Jackie Jensen, Boston Red Sox. The Red Sox were 3rd, 13 games behind the Yankees. So this one made no sense at all: Jensen did lead the AL with 122 RBIs, but his 35 homers were surpassed by 4 players, including Mickey Mantle's AL-leading 42; and he only batted .286, 3rd on his own team behind Ted Williams with an AL-leading .328 and Pete Runnels with .322, and also behind Mantle at .304.

Did the voters simply not want to give Mantle a 3rd consecutive award? That wouldn't happen in either League until 2004, with Barry Bonds. But Mantle only finished 5th. Bob Turley finished 2nd, and became the 1st Yankee to win the Cy Young Award.

9. Tie. Four selections of three players for the Chicago Cubs in the National League. In 1952, Hank Sauer led the NL in home runs and RBIs. But his Cubs were exactly .500, 77-77, 19 1/2 games behind the Pennant-winning Dodgers. They finished 5th, making this the 1st MVP awarded to a player on a "second-division" theme. Joe Black finished 3rd, tops among Dodgers. But since Konstanty had just won it 2 years earlier, maybe the voters weren't ready to give it to another reliever.

Everybody loves Ernie Banks. Even Chicago White Sox and St. Louis Cardinals fans grudgingly respected him. But, as with Sauer, the Cubs were 2nd-division teams in Ernie's MVP seasons, 5th in both seasons.

In 1958, Hank Aaron of the Pennant-winning Milwaukee Braves did not surpass Banks in homers, 30 to an NL-leading 47; or RBIs, 95 to an NL-leading 129; but did surpass him in batting average, .326 to .313. But he didn't even finish 2nd: Willie Mays of the San Francisco Giants did.

In 1959, statistically, Banks was comparable to another Brave, Eddie Mathews: Mathews batted .306 to Banks' .304, Mathews' 46 homers edged Banks' 45 for the MLB lead, and Banks' 143 RBIs were well ahead of Mathews' 114. The Los Angeles Dodgers won the Pennant, but their highest finisher was Wally Moon, in 4th, and his stats weren't even close. Still, a 2nd-division player, no matter good, no matter how decent, and no matter how beloved, shouldn't win the MVP.

Likewise, Andre Dawson became beloved by Cub fans for signing with them as a free agent for the 1987 season, and delivering, at least on an individual basis. He wasn't on steroids, but this decision was like the Sauer and Banks MVP choices on steroids. Dawson hit 49 home runs and had 137 RBIs to lead the NL, but the Cubs finished 76-85, 18 1/2 games out of 1st in the NL East.

So, if not the Hawk, then who? The Wizard? Ozzie Smith of the Pennant-winning St. Louis Cardinals finished 2nd, batting .303 with 75 RBIs and 43 stolen bases -- but no home runs. No nonpitcher has ever won the MVP with no homers. In contrast, the 3rd-place finisher, also a Cardinal, was Jack Clark, who hit 35 homers and had 106 RBIs. It should have been him, even if Dawson had him beat on character by a lot.

8. 1991 American League: Cal Ripken, Baltimore Orioles. The O's were 67-95, 24 games behind the AL East-winning Toronto Blue Jays. Giving Cal the MVP was a joke. But the 2nd-place finisher was no better: Cecil Fielder led the AL in RBIs and tied for the lead in homers, but the Detroit Tigers were 7 games out. Fishing 3rd was Frank Thomas, but the Chicago White Sox were 8 back in the AL West. José Canseco of the Oakland A's was 4th, and tied Fielder for the homer lead, but the A's were 11 back.

Finishing 5th was Joe Carter of the Blue Jays. He helped them win the Division, with 33 homers and 108 RBIs. His teammate Roberto Alomar finished 6th. Kirby Puckett of the World Series-winning Minnesota Twins finished 7th, but, aside from a .319 batting average, wasn't all that close. It should have been Carter.

7. 2023 American League: Shohei Ohtani, Los Angeles Angels. I don't care how great he was as a hitter and/or a pitcher: The Angels finished 73-89, 17 games out of 1st place, 16 games out of the last AL Playoff slot. Corey Seager of the World Champion Texas Rangers finished 2nd, and it should have been him.

6. Tie: 2014, 2016 and 2019 American League: Mike Trout, Los Angeles Angels. Trout's fans claim that he would be a 1st-ballot Hall-of-Famer even if he never plays another game. After all, he's won 3 MVPs, and every player with 3 MVPs -- and no serious steroid accusations -- is in the Hall.

So the question becomes, "Did Trout deserve those MVPs?" In 2014, the Angels won the AL Western Division. This remains Trout's only postseason appearance -- and he went 1-for-12 as the Angels got swept in 3 straight by the Kansas City Royals. But Victor Martinez of the Detroit Tigers, who also made the Playoffs, batted .048 higher than Trout, and was close to him in homers and RBIs. Oddly, though the Royals won the Pennant, their closest finisher was Alex Gordon, 12th.

In 2016, the Angels finished 74-88, 15 games out of the last AL Playoff berth. Mookie Betts of the AL East-winning Red Sox finished 2nd, and beat Trout in batting average, .318 to .315; homers, 31 to 29; and RBIs, 113 to 100. So what possible reason was there to pick Trout? Unless you believe the Red Sox were cheating, but no serious accusation has ever been leveled at Betts.

In 2019, the Angels finished 72-90, 24 games out of the last AL Playoff slot. Trout got the MVP, anyway. Who finished 2nd in the voting? Alex Bregman of the Pennant-winning Houston Astros, already known cheaters. Who finished 3rd? Marcus Semien of the Oakland A's, who made the Playoffs. So it should have been Martinez in '14, Betts in '16, and Semien in '19.

And, no, Trout is not yet a Hall-of-Famer. He's at least 2 good seasons short of having the stats.

5. 1969 National League: Willie McCovey, San Francisco Giants. No question, McCovey had a great season: .320, 45 homers, and 126 RBIs. The HR and RBI totals were surpassed only by Harmon Killebrew of the Minnesota Twins, who won the AL Western Division, in this 1st season of Divisional Play. But the Giants finished 3 games behind the Atlanta Braves in the NL Western Division.

Should a Brave have won the NL MVP? Hank Aaron finished 3rd, batting .300 with 44 homers and 97 RBIs. But, truly, in lower-case letters, the most valuable player in the National League was the ace pitcher of the World Champion New York Mets, Tom Seaver: 25-7, 2.21 ERA, 1.039 WHIP (not that WHIP had yet been created as a stat).

To this day, no Met has ever been selected as an MVP. Yogi Berra, Willie Mays, Ken Boyer, Keith Hernandez, Kevin Mitchell, Rickey Henderson, Mo Vaughn, Jeff Kent and Justin Verlander have all won MVPs, and all have played for the Mets -- but none in the same season.

4. 1937 American League: Charlie Gehringer, Detroit Tigers. No question about it: He was a great player, one of the best 2nd basemen who ever lived. He was a great fielder, so reliable he was known as the Mechanical Man. He batted .371 to lead the League.

But he had 96 RBIs. His teammate, Hank Greenberg, had 184 RBIs, nearly breaking Lou Gehrig's AL record of 185 set in 1931. Greenberg literally had more than twice as many RBIs as his teammate who got the MVP. What's more, Joe DiMaggio, not yet 23 years old, led the Yankees to win the World Series, batting .346, leading the AL with 46 home runs (a Yankee record for righthanded hitters that lasted until 2005), and had 167 RBIs (no Yankee, indeed hardly anybody, has come close to that since). Greenberg deserved it more than Gehringer, but it should have been DiMaggio.

3. 1962 National League: Maury Wills, Los Angeles Dodgers. One of many examples of the L.A. media machine promoting a city athlete more than he deserved. The nation was seduced by the new record that Wills set with 104 stolen bases. But it was an insane pick: On his own team, Tommy Davis led the NL with a .346 batting average and 153 RBIs, with 27 homers; and Don Drysdale went 25-9. They finished 3rd and 5th, respectively.

Willie Mays finished 2nd, and helped the San Francisco Giants win the Pennant. He batted .304, had 141 RBIs, and led MLB with 49 home runs. He should have been the MVP. Frank Robinson finished 4th, and had a better season, statistically anyway, than he had the year before, when he led the Cincinnati Reds to the Pennant and rightly won the MVP.

2. 2003 American League: Alex Rodriguez, Texas Rangers. As I said to start, this has nothing to do with whatever we know, and whatever we suspect, about steroid use. This is about what was known at the time. The Rangers finished 71-91, 24 games out of the last AL Playoff berth. The highest-finishing player among those making the Playoffs was Jorge Posada of the Yankees, in 3rd.

1. 1978 American League: Jim Rice, Boston Red Sox. This one was just plain fucking stupid, unless you believe that the MVP should never go to a pitcher. Ron Guidry went 25-3 with a 1.74 ERA and 248 strikeouts, which stood as a Yankee team record for 45 years.

To make it more amazing, 14 of Guidry's 25 wins came in the next game after a Yankee loss. Even in one of the games he lost, to Mike Flanagan and the Orioles on August 4, he went the distance, allowing 2 runs, 1 earned, 5 hits, no walks, and struck out 10. In his 7 no-decisions, the Yankees won 5, and the 2 they lost were 2-1 and 5-4. With a little more support, he could have gone 30-2. "Most Valuable."

If the Red Sox had a left fielder who batted .260, hit 10 homers and had 50 RBIs, instead of Rice, with .315, 46 and 139, those power totals running away with the AL titles, they would have missed the Playoffs -- which they did with him, as the Bucky Dent Game is officially considered a regular-season game, not part of the MLB postseason. If the Yankees had an average pitcher going .500, 14-14, in Guidry's spot in the rotation, that 11-game difference would have dropped them from 100-63 and World Champions to 89-73 and 4th place in the AL East.

This was the easiest MVP choice of all time. And the voters blew it.

November 13, 1875: The 1st Harvard-Yale Game

November 13, 1875, 150 years ago: Harvard University and Yale University, America's oldest and 3rd-oldest colleges, and both pioneers of college football, play each other in the sport for the 1st time. The game is played at Hamilton Park, a horse-racing track in New Haven, Connecticut, and, with on touchdown, under the scoring system of the time, Harvard won, 4-0.

This was still early in the history of football, college or otherwise. Only 1 other game was played that day: Princeton (then still known as the College of New Jersey) beat Columbia, 6-2 at University Field in Princeton, New Jersey.

The first American intercollegiate sporting event took place on August 3, 1852, after Yale invited Harvard to a race of crews. Harvard won "The Boat Race" on that 1st occasion. The first intercollegiate contests in ice hockey, soccer, and 5-on-5 basketball featured teams from Harvard and Yale.

Many now century-old, or older, aspects of American football were introduced by Harvard or Yale students or athletes. Yale introduced cheerleading at athletic events in 1890, and tailgate parties in 1905. Harvard introduced spring practice to collegiate football March 14, 1889.

Yalies sang "Hold the Fort" during the 1892 Harvard game, considered the first public performance of a collegiate "fight song." It predated "Boola Boola," in 1900, and what became their official fight song, "Bull Dog," written by Cole Porter when he was a senior at Yale in 1913.

In 1883, Harvard and Yale played each other at the Polo Grounds in New York, with Yale winning, 23-2. From 1891 to 1894, they played each other at Hampden Park in Springfield, Massachusetts. There was fan violence at the 1894 game, won by Yale, 12-4, leading to the schools taking the next 2 seasons off. They resumed in 1897, and have alternated between Boston and New Haven ever since.

They took 1917 and 1918 off due to World War I; 1943, 1944 and 1945 due to World War II; and 2020, due to COVID. But, since WWII, they have played at Harvard Stadium (built in 1903) in even-numbered years, and the Yale Bowl (built in 1914) in odd-numbered years. An exception was made in 2018, when Harvard, having the choice of home field, talked Yale into playing at Fenway Park in Boston. Harvard won that one, 45-27, making it the highest-scoring contest in the history of "The Game."

November 17, 2018

Both teams went into the 1900 game undefeated, and Yale won, 28-0. The 1908 game saw both teams undefeated as well, and Harvard won, 4-0. In 1914, Harvard spoiled the opening of the Yale Bowl, winning 36-0.

The Yale Bowl, with the field marked for "The Game"

Before the opening kickoff of the 1923 game, Yale coach Dwight Jones told his undefeated Bulldogs, "Gentlemen, you are about to play Harvard. You will never do anything else so important for the rest of your lives."

They certainly wouldn't have done so under worse conditions: According to the era's greatest sportswriter, Grantland Rice, the field at Harvard Stadium was "a gridiron of seventeen lakes, five quagmires and a water hazard." Perhaps it was fitting that the key play, a return of a fumble 67 yards for a touchdown, was made by a man named Raymond Pond, known as Ducky. Yale won, 13-0. Pond later served as Yale's head coach, from 1934 to 1940.

In 1947, the only way for a Harvard football player to win his varsity letter was to play in the Yale game. Legend has it that, knowing this, Robert F. Kennedy played in the Harvard-Yale game on a broken leg. In 1955, his brother, Ted Kennedy, caught a touchdown pass against Yale.

What the Kennedy legend doesn't say is that Bobby really played on "only" a sprained ankle, and that Yale won both of these games: 31-21 in '47, and 21-7 in '55. (Ted was good enough to receive interest from the Green Bay Packers, but his father told him to go to law school instead.)

Harvard Stadium

Both teams were undefeated going into the 1968 game at Harvard Stadium, making it the 1st Ivy League title decider between them since the League's official founding in 1954. Yale led 29-13 with 42 seconds to go, but Harvard scored 2 touchdowns and 2 2-point conversions to tie the game, and split the honors. The Harvard Crimson newspaper had the headline: "HARVARD BEATS YALE, 29-29."

November 23, 1968

In 1982, students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard's Cambridge neighbors, pulled one of the great college football pranks, pushing a balloon with the letters "MIT" on it through the turf at Harvard Stadium. (Harvard won, 45-7.) Not to be outdone, a little over a year later, during the 1984 Rose Bowl, students at California Institute of Technology in Pasadena hacked into the Rose Bowl scoreboard, so that what should have read "UCLA 38" and "ILLINOIS 9" read "CALTECH 38" and "MIT 9." (UCLA ended up winning, 45-9.)

November 20, 1982

Going into the 2025 game, Yale leads the all-time series, with 71 wins to Harvard's 61, while there have been 8 ties.

Micheal Ray Richardson, 1955-2025

It's hard to be named Michael Pacholek. You wouldn't believe how many ways "Pacholek" gets misspelled. But it shouldn't be hard to properly spell "Michael."

I've only known about one person who actually spelled the name "Micheal." And he was no role model.

Michael Ray Richardson, as his name was originally spelled, and he always used his full name, was born on April 11, 1955 in Lubbock, Texas, and grew up on the East Side of Denver, Colorado. He graduated from Manual High School, as did Wellington Webb, the 1st black Mayor of Denver, and Norman Rice, the 1st black Mayor of Seattle.

He was recruited to the University of Montana by head coach Jud Heathcote, who later coached Michigan State to the 1979 National Championship. He was succeeded at Montana by Jim Brandenburg, who, with Richardson as his best player, won the 1978 Big Sky Conference title.

The New York Knicks drafted him, and the New York media billed him as "the next Walt Frazier." Two picks later, the Boston Celtics drafted Larry Bird. Richardson made 3 All-Star Games as a Knick, was twice named to the NBA's All-Defensive Team, and led the league in assists and steals in 1980.

But the Knicks were going nowhere. On Christmas Day 1981, the Knicks lost to the New Jersey Nets, 96-95 at Madison Square Garden. It was their 4th loss in a row. The sportswriters asked Richardson what was happening, and he said, "The ship be sinking." He was asked, "How low can it sink?" He mixed his metaphors and said, "The sky's the limit."

At the end of the season, he was transferred off the sinking ship, traded to the Golden State Warriors. After 1 season with them, again leading the league in steals, he was traded to the Nets. At that time, tired of seeing his name misspelled as "Micheal," he legally changed the spelling to that.

On a Nets team coached by Stan Albeck, with Albert King (brother of his ex-Knick teammate Bernard), Darryl Dawkins, Otis Birdsong, Buck Williams and Mike Gminski, the Nets beat the defending NBA Champion Philadelphia 76ers in the Playoffs. It was the franchise's only Playoff series win between the 1976 ABA-NBA merger and the 2001-02 season.

It wasn't an especially good season for Richardson, because, like so many other athletes in the 1980s, he had become addicted to cocaine. In 1985, he once again led the league in steals, and was named to his 3rd All-Star Game. He was named NBA Comeback Player of the Year.

But on February 25, 1986, Richardson was banned for life by NBA Commissioner David Stern, after testing positive for cocaine for a 3rd time in 3 seasons. He was the 1st active NBA player to be banned by the league.

He was reinstated by the NBA in 1988, but decided to continue his career in Europe, and never played in the NBA again. He played for minor-league teams on Long Island and in Albany, then went to Europe, playing in the Italian, Yugoslav and French leagues.

In 2004, he retired, and was named head coach of one of his former teams, the Albany Patroons. After 3 years, he was fired, for making comments that were viewed as anti-Semitic and homophobic. But some Jewish advocates spoke up for him, and he was soon offered a new job, with the Oklahoma Cavalry in Lawton. He led them to the Championship of the Continental Basketball Association in 2008 and 2009. In 2011, he was named head coach of the London Lightning of Canada's National Basketball League, and he led them to the title in 2012 and 2013.

He left after the 2014 season, and it turned out to be his last coaching job. He returned to Lawton, worked for a financial firm, and ran youth basketball clinics with Birdsong. He was married to Kimberly, who owned a beauty salon. Their son, Amir Richardson, born in France while Micheal Ray was playing there, became a professional soccer player, currently with ACF Fiorentina in Florence, Italy. He plays for the Morocco national team, and helped them win the Bronze Medal at the 2024 Olympics in Paris.

Micheal Ray Richardson recovered from cocaine addiction, and stayed off drugs for the rest of his life. But that life was brought to an end today, November 11, 2025, in Lawton, from prostate cancer, at the age of 70.

November 11, 1985: Pelle Lindbergh Is Killed

November 11, 1985, 40 years ago: Pelle Lindbergh is killed in a drunken driving crash, ending his life and his hockey career at the age of 26.

Göran Per-Eric Lindbergh was born on May 24, 1959 in Stockholm, the capital of Sweden. He starred as the goaltender for hometown hockey teams Hammarby and AIK, and helped his country win the Bronze Medal at the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, New York. (It gets forgotten in the wake of the wins over the Soviet Union in the Semifinal and Finland in the Final, but Sweden actually came closer to beating the U.S. team than any other, with a tie in the opening game.)

In 1979, Pelle became the 1st European-born goalie to be selected in the NHL Entry Draft, by the Philadelphia Flyers. He made his NHL debut toward the end of the 1981-82 season, and was selected to the NHL All-Rookie Team and the NHL All-Star Game the following season.

The Flyers won the Stanley Cup in 1974 and 1975, and reached the Finals in 1976, with Hall-of-Famer Bernie Parent in goal. They remained strong through 1978-79, but late in that season, Parent took a stick through the eyehole in his mask, permanently damaging his vision, and he never played again.

And, ever since, the Flyers have had some talent, but they haven't found that lockdown goalie. With Pete Peeters, they reached the Finals in 1980, but lost. Lindbergh looked like the answer, especially in 1985, when he made his 2nd All-Star Game, became the 1st European to receive the Vezina Trophy as the NHL's top goalie, and helped get the Flyers into the Finals again, losing to the Edmonton Oilers' dynasty.

While the Oilers seemed to have a hammerlock on the Clarence Campbell Conference (now the Western Conference), the Prince of Wales Conference (now the Eastern Conference) looked wide-open. The Montreal Canadiens' dynasty of 1976-79 had gotten old, and the New York Islanders' dynasty of 1980-84 was already starting to break up due to injury.

There was room for a new dominant team in the East, and with Lindbergh in goal; Mark Howe, Brad Marsh, Brad McCrimmon and Ed Hospodar as defensemen; and forwards like Dave Poulin, Peter Zezel, Brian Propp, Tim Kerr, Dave Brown, Rick Tocchet, and the twins Ron and Rich Sutter, the Flyers looked like they could become that team.

On November 9, 1985, the Flyers hosted a team party at the Coliseum, their practice facility in Voorhees, Camden County, New Jersey. Part of the stereotype of hockey players is that they like to drink, and Lindbergh drank a lot that night. Unfortunately, he got into his car, a customized Porsche 930 Turbo, and headed back toward his apartment across the Delaware River in Philadelphia.

He didn't even make it 2 miles: He crashed into a wall in front of Somerdale Park School, damaging his brain stem and his spinal cord. His blood-alcohol content was .24, and the legal limit in New Jersey was then .10. He had 2 passengers, not easy in a 2-seater, not players but friends of players: Edward Parvin had a fractured skull, and Kathy McNeal had a broken pelvis, a ruptured liver and a ruptured spleen.

They both survived. Lindbergh was brain-dead. His family was brought in from Sweden, and he was kept on life support long enough for them to arrive and say their goodbyes. The machines were turned off on November 11, and his parents gave their permission to have his organs harvested for donation.

Lindbergh received the most votes in the fan balloting for the 1986 NHL All-Star Game. It was the 1st time an athlete was posthumously voted to an All-Star Game. It's only happened once since, with Sean Taylor of the Washington Redskins being selected to the 2008 Pro Bowl.

Given his early death, the Flyers have never again given out his uniform Number 31. But, given the cause of his death, they can't officially retire it. They have instituted the Pelle Lindbergh Memorial Trophy, given to their most improved player. He hasn't been elected to the Hockey Hall of Fame, but he has been elected to the Swedish Hockey Hall of Fame.

The Flyers played the rest of the season in a daze. But they made Ron Hextall their new starting goalie, and he got them into the Stanley Cup Finals in 1987. They reached the Finals again in 1997 and 2010. But they've never won another Cup. Given Hextall's performance in the 1987 Finals, it's hard to say Lindbergh would have made the difference that time. But in 1997, when they got swept by the Detroit Red Wings, Lindbergh would have been 38 years old, which is hardly too old to be a Cup-winning goalie.

November 11, 1975: The Australian Constitutional Crisis

Gough Whitlam

November 11, 1975, 50 years ago: Sir John Kerr, the Governor-General of Australia, dismisses the country's Prime Minister, Gough Whitlam, from office. It is the only time in the history of the office, which dates to 1901, that its holder has been dismissed, rather than losing the office through death, resignation or an election defeat.

Australia is an unusual country in many ways, including the fact that its leading conservative party is named the Liberal Party. Its leading liberal party is named the Australian Labor Party. (There's another thing that's unusual: They use the American spelling, "Labor," rather than the British spelling, "Labour." Canada's version uses the extra U, while Israel's does not.)

Edward Gough Whitlam, who dropped his first name, became Prime Minister on December 5, 1972, having led the Labor Party to victory in the elections for the House of Representatives (not "House of Commons," as in Britain and Canada), with a small majority. However, the Liberals still held control of the Senate. Another election, in 1974, changed hardly any seats in either house of Parliament.

As a result, while Whitlam was able to get some reforms passed, others were stalled in the Senate. He tried to get a budget passed in October 1975, but the Liberals refused to pass a budget until Whitlam called another election. He tried to bypass this, calling for a "half-election," putting only the Senate up for election, which he had the authority to do, although it had never been tried before, and has not since.

But to get permission for the election, full or half, he had to go to the Governor-General. Since many nations in the British Commonwealth, formerly the British Empire, are far from the home islands, their head of state, the British monarch, appoints a representative, a Governor-General, to act as a "sub-king" or "viceroy" for the country.

Ordinarily, the G-G has very little power. But this person does have the power to call new elections and to dismiss the Prime Minister, even if that person has rightly won an election -- even if, as in Whitlam's case, he has won two of them.

On November 11, 1975, Whitlam went to the Governor-General of Australia, Sir John Kerr, and asked him to call a half-election for the Senate. Instead, Kerr saw this as a power play on Whitlam's part, and dismissed him from office. The Prime Minister was fired. What's more, Kerr appointed the Leader of the Opposition, the Leader of the Liberal Party, Malcolm Fraser, as a caretaker Prime Minister.

John Kerr

It should be noted that this had never happened before in Australia. Nor had it ever happened in the United Kingdom, or in Canada, or in Australia's neighbor, New Zealand. Nor has it happened in any of those countries since.

It was a counter-power play. It was a coup d'etat. And it got worse. This was before social media, and before the rise of mobile phones. Fraser quickly gathered his allies and formed a new Cabinet. They wrote new appropriation bills, and got Parliament to pass them, faster than Labour could even make sure all of its members knew what had happened. Kerr then dissolved Parliament and called a new election.

It should be noted that Kerr was not the head of state. He was the representative of the head of state, Queen Elizabeth II of Britain. This was Kerr's decision, not the Queen's. Whitlam had to get Kerr's permission to do what he wanted. Kerr should have gotten the Queen's permission before doing what he wanted. It was certainly possible by that point to make a telephone call from Government House, the Governor-General's residence in the capital of Canberra, to Buckingham Palace, or to Windsor Castle, or to wherever the Queen was at that point.

Kerr didn't get the Queen's permission. He didn't even try to contact her. He acted completely on his own. He acted like a dictator. Did the Queen punish him for this? No, she took no action at all. That was seen as a royal endorsement of his action.

That, and the fact that there was now action on the budget, convinced Australians that this constitutional crisis might not have been so bad. On December 13, the Liberals gained 30 seats in the snap election, and Fraser remained Prime Minister for 7 years, winning elections in 1977 and 1980.

Malcolm Fraser

What reaction did President Gerald Ford have to this coup? Very little. He sent a letter of congratulation to Fraser upon winning the 1975 election, and hosted a State Dinner for him at the White House on June 27, 1976.

Whitlam, cast into Opposition, remained Labor's Leader until 1977, losing another election, and then stepping down. After Fraser was defeated by Bob Hawke in the 1983 election, Hawke appointed Whitlam to be Australia's Ambassador to the United Nations.

Whitlam may have lost the office and the subsequent elections, but he won the historical argument. Not only has no Governor-General fired a Prime Minister again, but while Kerr got the result he wanted, and Fraser got the support of the people, Kerr did not get the support of the people: They turned on him, and he resigned as Governor-General in December 1977, a few days before Whitlam resigned as Leader of the Opposition. Kerr died in 1991, Whitlam in 2014, Fraser in 2015.

November 11, 1900: The Hershey Bar Is Introduced

November 11, 1900, 125 years ago: The Hershey Milk Chocolate Bar -- or, just "The Hershey Bar" for short -- is first sold. Milton Hershey had been making caramel candy, but saw a chocolate-manufacturing machine at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893, started selling chocolate novelties, sold off his caramel company in 1899, and used the profits to invest in the machines to make the Hershey Bar.

It became the most popular candy in the history of the world. It even replaced money among soldiers in World War II. Milton Hershey lived just long enough to see that happen, dying on October 13, 1945, at 88, in the town he founded: Hershey, Pennsylvania, just north of his hometown of Derry, 16 miles east of Harrisburg, and nearly 100 miles west of Philadelphia.

Little tear-shaped candies known as "Hershey's Kisses" debuted in 1907. A bar with almonds was added in 1908, and a "Special Dark" bar made from dark chocolate in 1939.

Hershey introduced Mr. Goodbar in 1925, Hershey's Syrup in 1926, semisweet chocolate chips in 1928, and the Krackel bar in 1938. In 1923, Harry Burnett Reese founded a candy company nearby, including Reese's Peanut Butter Cups. In 1963, Hershey bought Reese's out. In 1969, the Peanut Butter Cups became Hershey's best-selling item, and it remains so today. That same year, Hershey bought the rights to make and sell Kit Kat and Rolo.

In 1977, Hershey bought Y&S Candies, makers of Twizzlers. From 1986 to 2001, Hershey owned Luden's cough drops. In 1988, Hershey's made a deal with British candy company Cadbury, to sell their products in the U.S. This meant that they also owned Peter Paul, makers of Almond Joy and Mounds. In 2004, Hershey bought Mauna Loa Macadamia Nuts.

Milton opened Hersheypark, an amusement park, in 1906, and it has grown and expanded since then. An arena was built on the grounds in 1936, and in 1962, it was the site of the game where Wilt Chamberlain scored 100 points for the Philadelphia Warriors against the New York Knicks. It still stands, under the name of the Hersheypark Arena. It was long the home of the Hershey Bears of the American Hockey League, until 2002, when a new arena was built adjacent, now named the Giant Center after a supermarket chain.

November 10, 1975: The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald

November 10, 1975, 50 years ago: The SS Edmund Fitzgerald sinks in a storm in Lake Superior, between the American State of Wisconsin and the Canadian Province of Ontario, with 29 men aboard. There were no survivors.

A year later, Canadian singer Gordon Lightfoot would have a hit song about the ship, reaching Number 2 on the U.S. music charts.

Lightfoot described the way the wind whipped up the Great Lakes as "the Witch of November come stealing." And there was recent precedent: On November 29, 1966, 9 years to the month earlier, the freighter SS Daniel J. Morrell, named for a Pennsylvania Congressman, sank in Lake Huron, taking with it 28 of its 29 crewmen. The sole survivor was named Dennis Hale.

The SS Edmund Fitzgerald, known as "the Eddie Fitz" or "the Big Fitz" was launched in 1958. As Lightfoot said, "As the big freighters go, it was bigger than most." In fact, at the time of its launch, it was the largest ship of any kind sailing the Great Lakes: From west to east, Lake Superior, Lake Huron, Lake Michigan, Lake Erie and Lake Ontario.

(Mark Russell, a native of Buffalo, New York, between Erie and Ontario, and a comedian whose specialty was politics, once commented on a bill before Congress to declare Lake Champlain, between New York, Vermont and Quebec, "the 6th Great Lake": "It is not a Great Lake. It's a pretty good lake, but it's not a great lake." He had a point: It is considerably smaller, with considerably less commercial traffic.)

The ship was owned by the Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company, and named for its president. Its home port was Milwaukee. There, on June 8, 1958, it was launched. It took Edmund’s wife Elizabeth 3 tries to break the champagne bottle at its christening. A delay of 36 minutes followed, while the shipyard crew struggled to release the keel blocks. Upon sideways launch, the ship created a large wave that "doused" the spectators and then crashed into a pier before righting herself. One man watching the launching had a heart attack and later died. Maybe all of this was a bad sign.

The ship regularly went to Duluth, Minnesota, where it would pick up deliveries of taconite iron ore from nearby mines in Minnesota's "Iron Range," and taking them to Great Lakes port cities, including Detroit, Toledo and Cleveland. She set seasonal haul records six different times.

On November 9, 1975, at 2:15 PM Central Standard Time, commanded by Captain Ernest McSorley -- as Lightfoot sang, "with a crew and good captain, well-seasoned" -- it left Superior, Wisconsin on its last voyage of the calendar year, due to arrive at Zug Island, off the coast of Detroit. (Lightfoot, either mistakenly or on purpose because it made for a better rhyme, said, "they left fully loaded for Cleveland.")

It would have to be the last voyage of the year, because it was getting colder, and a storm on any of the Great Lakes could be as bad as one on an ocean. As Lightfoot sang, such storms were known among the freighters' crews as "the Gales of November" and "the Witch of November."

The Edmund Fitzgerald traveled Lake Superior at a top speed of 16 miles per hour. At 1:00 AM on November 10, the ship's radio reported winds of 52 knots (60 miles per hour), and waves 10 feet high. At 2:00 AM, they received a report from the National Weather Service, upgrading their official warning from gale to storm. The ship kept going through the night, and the next morning. At 2:45 in the afternoon, it began to snow.

Another freighter crossing Lake Superior, the Arthur M. Anderson, had been in contact with them much of the way, and were even within visual contact until the storm and the fog got to be too much. At 3:30 PM, McSorley radioed the Anderson, reporting to Captain Bernie Cooper that the Fitzgerald was taking on water and listing. He chose to slow his ship down, so that the Anderson could catch up, in case a rescue was necessary.

Shortly afterward, the U.S. Coast Guard warned all shipping that the Soo Locks, between the city of Sault Ste. Marie in Ontario and the city of the same name on Michigan's Upper Peninsula, were closed, and safe anchorage should be sought.

At 4:10, McSorley called the Anderson again: The Fitzgerald's radar had failed, so they were effectively blind. The Anderson would have to get close, and use their radar to act as the Fitzgerald's "eyes." Cooper told McSorley head for Whitefish Bay, Ontario. McSorley learned that the lighthouse at Whitefish Point was on, but not its radio beacon.

At 6:00, both ships were reporting winds of 58 knots (67 MPH), with gusts up to 75 knots (86 MPH -- hurricane force, by definition, is 75 MPH). Waves were regularly as high as 25 feet, and some as high as 35 feet.

At 7:10, the Anderson received a message from McSorley, saying, "We are holding our own." It seemed to be a message of confidence, unlike in the song. But it would be the Fitzgerald's last received message. There was never a distress signal. The Anderson lost both radio and radar contact. At 7:39, after nearly half an hour of trying to reach McSorley, Cooper called the Coast Guard station at Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan on Channel 16, the distress channel -- not for his ship, but for the Fitzgerald.

There weren't sufficient search-and-rescue vessels to look for the Fitzgerald. At 9:00, the Coast Guard advised Cooper to turn around and look for survivors. At 10:30, the Coast Guard asked all commercial vessels in or near Whitefish Bay to assist. Although no other vessels were lost in the rescue attempt, it would take until November 14 to find the Fitzgerald, its hull broken in two and sitting on the bottom of the lake.

The Mariners' Church in Detroit -- in the song, Lightfoot called it "the Maritime Sailors' Cathedral" -- held a memorial service, ringing its bell 29 times, once for each life lost. From 1976 to 2005, it held a memorial every November 10. Starting in 2006, it broadened the annual ceremony, to commemorate all lives lost on the Great Lakes.

Lightfoot had also called the Church "a musty old hall." Due to complaints, he changed the lyric to "a rustic old hall" in his live performances. The native of Orillia, Ontario, a few miles inland from Lake Huron, died on May 1, 2023, at the age of 84.

The 29 men: Ernest McSorley, Captain, at the age of 63 the oldest man on board; John McCarthy, first mate, 62; James Pratt, second mate, 44; Michael Armagost, third mate, 37; George Holl, chief engineer, 60; Edward Bindon, 1st assistant engineer, 47; Thomas Edwards, assistant engineer, 50; Oliver Champeau, assistant engineer, 41; Russell Haskell, assistant engineer, 40; Ralph Walter, oiler, 58; Blaine Wilhelm, oiler, 52; Thomas Bentsen, oiler, 23; John Simmons, senior wheelman, 62; John Poviach, wheelman, 59; Eugene O'Brien, wheelman, 50; William Spengler, watchman, 59; Ransom Cundy, watchman, 53; Karl Peckol, watchman, at 20 the youngest man on board; Paul Riippa, deckhand, 22; Bruce Hudson, deckhand, 22; Mark Thomas, deckhand, 21; Gordon MacLellan, wiper, 30; Joseph Mazes, special maintenance man, 59; Thomas Borgeson, maintenance man, 41; Robert Rafferty, steward, 62; Allen Kalmon, second steward, 43; Frederick Beetcher, porter, 56; Nolan Church, porter, 55; and David Weiss, cadet, 22.

As Lightfoot sang, "And all that remains are the faces and the names of the wives and the sons and the daughters."

Lightfoot died on May 1, 2023.