Phil Rizzuto's 1950 MVP Season

October 26, 1950. The baseball writers finished counting, and Phil Rizzuto -- a 5-foot-6 shortstop with seven home runs -- was the American League's Most Valuable Player in a landslide. He'd hit .324 with 200 hits, 125 runs, and 92 walks for the New York Yankees. Sixteen of the 23 voters put him first.

The other seven weren't wrong, exactly. They just had a harder case to make than they realized.

The Leadoff Man Grows Up

The groundwork went down a year earlier. Casey Stengel moved Rizzuto to the top of the order in 1949, and the Scooter answered with a .275 average, 110 runs, and a runner-up finish to Ted Williams in the MVP voting. That was the breakout. What came next was something bigger.

In 1950 Rizzuto set career highs in hits, batting average, on-base percentage, slugging, runs, doubles, and walks. He even set a career high in home runs with seven (which tells you everything about the rest of his career). His .418 on-base percentage was the only time he ever cleared .400. He struck out 39 times in 735 trips to the plate.

His 200 hits trailed only George Kell's 218 in the league. His 125 runs tied Vern Stephens for second, six behind Dom DiMaggio. And because this was still a Stengel team, he also led the league with 19 sacrifice bunts. The league MVP was also its sacrifice-bunt king. Try selling that to a front office today.

Fifty-Eight Games Clean

The bat got him the headlines. The glove was the reason he'd been in the lineup all along.

Rizzuto didn't make an error at shortstop from September 18, 1949, through June 7, 1950 -- 58 straight games. That broke Eddie Joost's American League record of 46, and it held up until Ed Brinkman went 72 games for Detroit in 1972. For more than two decades, nobody who played the most demanding position on the infield in the AL had gone longer without a mistake.

Stengel, the same man who'd waved him off at a Brooklyn tryout in the 1930s, came all the way around. He'd eventually call Rizzuto "the greatest shortstop I have ever seen in my entire baseball career." Hard to argue with a man eating his own words that publicly.

The Vote

Rizzuto collected 284 of a possible 322 points. Billy Goodman of the Red Sox finished second with 180 and four first-place votes, and Yogi Berra came third with 146 and three.

Goodman's case was genuinely strange. He won the batting title at .354 without holding a regular position, chipped an ankle bone in an April collision, and wound up in left field after Ted Williams broke his elbow in the All-Star Game. Berra's case was simpler -- he drove in 124 runs as a catcher, part of a breakthrough season that would win him the award a year later.

The writers still went with the shortstop. Berra and DiMaggio did the heavy lifting in the middle of the order, but somebody had to be standing on base when they did it. Most days that somebody was Rizzuto.

October

He wasn't done. In Game 3 of the World Series against the Phillies, the score sat tied 2-2 with two outs and nobody on in the bottom of the ninth at the Stadium. Gene Woodling beat out a slow roller. Rizzuto followed with a hard shot that caromed off second baseman Jimmy Bloodworth's glove, and both runners were safe. Jerry Coleman singled to left-center, Woodling scored, and the Yanks had a 3-0 Series lead.

The next afternoon, Whitey Ford took a shutout into the ninth, Allie Reynolds struck out pinch-hitter Stan Lopata, and the sweep was done. Nineteen days later the MVP was his.

If we'd had Rizzuto in Boston, we'd have won all those pennants instead of New York.

Williams wasn't being gracious. He was being accurate. Boston had the batting champion and the loudest bats in the league, and it finished third. The Yanks had a shortstop who bunted, walked, caught everything, and scored 125 runs.

Frequently Asked Questions

When did Phil Rizzuto win the AL MVP?

Rizzuto won the 1950 American League MVP award, selected by the Baseball Writers' Association of America on October 26, 1950. He received 16 of 23 first-place votes and 284 of a possible 322 points.

What were Phil Rizzuto's stats in 1950?

Rizzuto hit .324 with a .418 on-base percentage and .439 slugging percentage in 155 games. He had 200 hits, 125 runs, 36 doubles, 7 triples, 7 home runs, 66 RBI, 12 stolen bases, 92 walks, and only 39 strikeouts. Most of those were career highs.

Who finished second to Phil Rizzuto in the 1950 MVP vote?

Billy Goodman of the Boston Red Sox finished second with 180 points after winning the batting title at .354. Rizzuto's teammate Yogi Berra finished third with 146 points.

Did the Yankees win the World Series in Phil Rizzuto's MVP year?

Yes. The 1950 Yankees swept the Philadelphia Phillies in four games, October 4-7, 1950. Rizzuto kept the Game 3 winning rally alive in the ninth inning before Jerry Coleman's walk-off single.

Stengel had put him first in the batting order. In the fall of 1950, the writers put him first, too.