Lou Gehrig’s 1934 season still sits in a category all by itself, and not in the way most Triple Crown winners do.
As the Baseball Writers’ Association of America gets ready to unveil its MVP finalists Monday, the old Gehrig question is back in circulation: how does a player put together a full Triple Crown and still finish fifth in the voting? It’s the kind of ballot result that has shadowed the Yankees legend for 92 years.
This year’s American League race doesn’t run through the Bronx the way it has so often lately. Aaron Judge, a three-time AL MVP, was limited to 66 games after a rib stress fracture, leaving Houston’s Yordan Alvarez as the front-runner.
Alvarez won the major league batting title at .316 and finished with 42 home runs and 106 RBIs. He was on pace for the first Triple Crown since Miguel Cabrera in 2012 before falling short, with Baltimore’s Pete Alonso edging him with 43 homers and 113 RBIs.
That near miss puts the spotlight right back on the ballot and what a Triple Crown really means once the writers weigh in. For most of baseball history, the answer has been simple: win the crown, and you usually take home the trophy.
Mickey Mantle did it in 1956 for the Yankees. So did Jimmie Foxx, Joe Medwick, Frank Robinson, Carl Yastrzemski and Cabrera.
Even the rare exceptions came close. Chuck Klein won the 1933 NL Triple Crown and finished second to Carl Hubbell. Ted Williams captured the crown twice for Boston and came in second both times, behind Joe Gordon in 1942 and Joe DiMaggio in 1947.
Gehrig’s 1934 season, though, broke the pattern.
He hit .363 with 49 home runs and 166 RBIs for the Yankees, leading all of baseball in every one of those categories. He also paced the American League with a .465 on-base percentage, a .706 slugging percentage and 409 total bases, according to Baseball-Reference. He played all 154 games and struck out only 31 times, according to MLB.com.
And still, the voters put him fifth.
The award went to Detroit catcher and player-manager Mickey Cochrane, who hit .320 with two home runs and 76 RBIs and collected 67 of a possible 80 points. Tigers second baseman Charlie Gehringer finished just two points behind him. Yankees ace Lefty Gomez was third, and Detroit’s Schoolboy Rowe was fourth.
The standings clearly mattered. Detroit won 101 games and the pennant, while the Yankees finished 94-60, seven games back in Babe Ruth’s final season in pinstripes. Cochrane had taken over a Tigers team that had not won a pennant since 1909, and Gehringer later described what the catcher meant to that clubhouse.
“When Mickey was managing the Tigers from behind the plate I can’t remember him ever fouling up anything. Seemed like he made snap judgments that always worked out well, especially in ’34 and ’35,” Gehringer said.
Gehrig’s own value was harder to package into a vote, even if his teammates knew exactly what they were getting. Bill Dickey put it this way: “He just went out and did his job every day.”
That line still fits the oddity of Gehrig’s MVP finish. Since the BBWAA began voting on the award in 1931, no other Triple Crown winner has finished lower than second. Gehrig is also the only Triple Crown winner in that span to finish behind a teammate, with Gomez claiming the pitching Triple Crown that year at 26 wins, a 2.33 ERA and 158 strikeouts.
The Sporting News did name Gehrig its AL most valuable player for 1934, but the BBWAA result never changed.
It also became the starting point for a long Yankees pattern of near-misses. Ron Guidry’s 1978 season - 25-3, a 1.74 ERA and a then-franchise-record 248 strikeouts - brought a unanimous Cy Young Award, but not MVP honors, which went to Boston’s Jim Rice.
Don Mattingly hit .352 with 238 hits, 31 homers and 113 RBIs in 1986 and lost to Roger Clemens, 339 points to 258. Derek Jeter hit .343 in 2006 and fell to Minnesota’s Justin Morneau by 14 points.
Judge’s 52-homer rookie season in 2017 ended with a second-place finish behind Houston’s Jose Altuve.
Gehrig’s own MVP history is still impressive in its own right. He won the AL MVP in 1927 under the old league award format and again in 1936.
He entered the Hall of Fame in 1939. But the 1934 result remains the one that keeps getting dragged back into the conversation.
Finalists will be announced Monday at 6 p.m. ET on MLB Network, with the AL and NL winners following Nov. 12.
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