|
1916 AL Top Rookie
Okay, okay—wait a second, just… just hear me out for a minute, all right?
So we’ve got this rookie, Brendan Morine. Shortstop. Houston Astros. Now, on the surface? On the surface, you look at his stats—.219 average, .255 OBP, zero home runs—you think, "Wait, this guy? This guy won Rookie of the Year?" And I know, I know—it doesn’t look like much. But that’s exactly the problem! You’re thinking about it too linearly!
Let’s take a step back. This kid? He played shortstop every day in a league filled with guys hitting like they're swinging at alien spacecraft, and he survived. Not only survived—thrived, relatively speaking. Forty-seven RBIs, 45 runs scored. That’s production! That’s grit! That’s—dare I say—human resilience in the face of impossible odds!
And get this: he got 16 first-place votes out of 30. That’s not just luck, that’s a pattern. That’s evidence. Someone—scratch that, a whole group of someones—looked at Brendan Morine and said, “Yeah, that’s the guy.”
Now, Rickey Doll? Boston Red Sox. He came close. Really close—only one point behind in the voting. But you know what close gets you in this league? The silver medal. And no one’s building statues for silver.
So here’s the breakdown:
Player Team 1st Place Votes Total Points
Brendan Morine Houston Astros 16 97
Rickey Doll Boston Red Sox 12 96
Edgar Ruiz New York Yankees 1 29
Aaron Marshall Texas Rangers 1 28
Kelly Brunke Texas Rangers 0 18
Eric Usher Boston Red Sox 0 2
Look, all I’m saying is this: sometimes the numbers lie. Or at least, they don’t tell you the whole story. Sometimes the story is hidden in the margins, in the grind, in the human moments that don’t show up in the stat sheet. Brendan Morine didn’t just win an award—he proved that in the right moment, with the right heart, you can overcome anything.
Even aliens.
...Or, you know, .219 batting averages.
|