Bryce Harper was voted most valuable player of the National League for 2015. It was self-evident. How self-evident? Even baseball writers voted him unanimously.
Harper joins Roger Peckinpaugh as the only baseball player awarded MVP in D.C. and as Frederic Frommer noted in his Washingtonian piece, teammate Goose Goslin probably should have won in 1925. We’ll just have to guess that Goslin lost because he name, while pretty good, isn’t as cool as PECKINPAUGH. Then again, Peckinpaugh had 8 errors in the 1925 World Series which the Washington Senators (or Nationals) lost to the Pittsburgh Pirates.
Has anybody asked Harper what it’s like to be in the same company as Mark Moseley? There’s a good Bog post in that question.
Joe Theismann also won that award for the 1983 season, and had a Peckingpaugh-esqe championship appearance, but even with that the Super Bowl XVII win, he’s still best remembered for his leg getting broken.
Back to the modern day the question is — does Harper stick around past 2018? Thomas Boswell invokes the comparison to Alex Ovechkin, another D.C. wunderkind thought to be a goner after he left club control.
Ovechkin, by the way, just became the NHL’s all-time leading Russian-born goal scorer.
Pretty good night for DC MVPs RT @CapitalsHill: Ovechkin scoreeees! #CapsStars pic.twitter.com/xFzWkcWkg2
— William F. Yurasko (@doubleuefwhy) November 20, 2015
Would have been nice if the Capitals had won…
Maybe we ought to just enjoy having the two-best players in two different sports in the same era for now.