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Good morning! This is Dead Legends. The newsletter that keeps it coming like KC & The Sunshine Band.

Let’s dive in.

Today’s story is about a scandal that birthed the MVP award.

First, let’s introduce the man behind it all, Hugh Chalmers.

Hugh was the President of the the Chalmers Auto Company, and he was known for his adept marketing ability. 

He was like the Mattress Mack of the early 1900’s.

One day, Chalmer’s came up with a genius idea.

Before the 1910 season, he announced he would award a Model 30 to the “champion batsmen of the National and American leagues for the season.”

Winning a batting title was one of the most prestigious individual accomplishments in professional sports at this time.

The AL batting race that year turned out to be a heated competition between Napoleon Lajoie, the beloved second baseman for Cleveland, and Ty Cobb.

Between them, they had seven batting titles and two Triple Crowns.

Lajoie secured an early season lead, but gradually eased off the gas and Cobb caught up as the year went on. 

Cobb put together a hit streak in September, which moved him slightly ahead going into the final games of the season.

The Tigers was a lost cause at that point, so Cobb benched himself for the final two games of the season.

Entering the final day of the season, Lajoie had 219 hits in 583 at bats (.376).

He trailed Cobb by six or seven points in average.

The leagues didn’t provide daily statistics in those days, so the newspapers of the time had to make their best guess based on their own running tallies.

It was often months before the official league numbers were released.

The point is, Lajoie basically needed a miracle.

Cleveland closed its season with a double header against the St. Louis Browns, managed by Jack O’Connor.

O’Connor hated Cobb.

He instructed Browns third baseman Red Corriden to play deep all day so that any ball Lajoie bunted down the third base line would result in a hit. 

That’s exactly what Lajoie did, going 8-for-8, with seven of the hits being bunt singles. 

In his ninth plate appearance, Lajoie reached on an error, which caused him to fall short.

The final tally, at the time, was Cobb .385, Lajoie, .384.

Later, it was revealed that Browns scout, Harry Howell, attempted to bribe the official scorer into changing the error to a base hit, giving Lajoie a nine-for-nine day, but the scorer refused.

Some sources had Lajoie beating Cobb by a point; others had Cobb just barely edging Lajoie.

After a brief “investigation”, American League President, Ban Johnson, declared Cobb the official winner of the batting championship. 

Johnson ordered Browns President Robert Lee Hedges to fire O’Connor and Howell; neither worked in baseball ever again. 

It was determined that Lajoie was not in on O'Connor and Howell's plan, and thus he was not punished.

The showman that he was, Chalmers gave cars to both Cobb and Lajoie.

While the press and many fans were outraged about the lack of integrity and sportsmanship involved with the whole fiasco, Chalmers considered the award a huge success.

The spectacle of the batting title race and the scandalous finale generated a ton of press.

For a few automobiles, Chalmers received millions of dollars in publicity.

The following season, he broadened the parameters of the award and created a “Chalmers Commission” (comprised of baseball writers from each major league city) to choose the player deemed “most useful to his club.”

The MVP award was born.

He ran the promotion for another 3 seasons until 1914, but was never able to recreate the magic of the 1910 campaign, so they discontinued the promotion.

It would be nearly a decade before one of the major leagues brought back an award for individual player achievement, but the Chalmers award was the first of it’s kind.

The Chalmers Trophy established baseball writers as the arbiter of player value

It used a weighted point system to rank players, and in decoupling the prize from statistical benchmarks (such as a batting title), it clearly established that value was a judgement call.

For what it’s worth, about 70 years after this incident, a baseball statistician named Pete Palmer was going over the old box scores and discovered a discrepancy.

One of the 1910 Detroit Tigers box scores was counted twice in official records, which resulted in Cobb being given an extra 2-for-3 day, which raised his average. 

Instead of a .385, he should’ve finished with a .383. Which would’ve made Lajoie the sole batting champion.

If you forget about the cheating part of course.

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STRANGE NAMES 

Another day, another bizarre ballplayer name to add to the list.

Today's winner is:

Fatty was a journeyman, he played for 7 different teams over 8 major league seasons.

He made a total of $3,280 playing baseball.

Other than that, the only interesting fact I could find on this guy is that he lived in Wisconsin for 9 years as a child.

That's it gang. We're back at it again Friday. See ya!