One-Hit Wonder Award Winners

Here’s something I didn’t actually know before doing the research for this story: the great majority of baseball’s big award winners have actually been tremendous players. Which is to say, most of them have not been one-year wonders. Or anything close, really.

Before actually checking, for example, I assumed that Rookies of the Year have often been mere flashes in the pan: statistical flukes, the products of a small pool of candidates (since not many rookies earn regular playing time for more than a few weeks or months, and most of them aren’t ready to post big numbers yet).

I was wrong. The great majority of Rookies of the Year have actually enjoyed bigger seasons later in their careers. Willie Mays, Frank Robinson, Willie McCovey, Tom Seaver, Rod Carew, Johnny Bench, Carlton Fisk ... all these Hall of Famers and more first burst upon the scene as Rookies of the Year.

That said, there have been a few one-year wonders, and two of them deserve special attention because of their striking impact on the public consciousness in that one year. In 1976, Tigers starting pitcher Mark “Bird” Fidrych made the cover of Sports Illustrated; four years later, a song about Indians outfielder “Super Joe” Charboneau rocketed to No. 3 on the Cleveland record charts.

Both players’ careers, of course, came to prematurely sad ends.

Fidrych wasn’t even a top prospect before debuting with the Tigers in ’76, and he got a shot at starting only because another pitcher got hurt. But his tremendous pitching and his mound antics—smoothing the dirt with his hand, talking to the baseball, applauding his teammates for good fielding plays—made him a household name practically overnight, and he nearly won the Cy Young Award after going 19-9 with 24 complete games for the not-so-good Tigers.

In 1977, Fidrych opened the season on the disabled list with a minor knee injury, but after rejoining Detroit’s rotation in late May, pitched brilliantly over eight starts, completing seven of them while allowing just one home run. But then came the career-killer: torn rotator cuff. Fidrych didn’t pitch after the All-Star break that season, and would manage only 16 appearances in the majors over the next three seasons. From 1981 through ’83, he toiled in the minors but without any success at all; at 28, he was finished.

Charboneau, after hitting .289 with 23 homers in his rookie season, suffered a back injury and managed only six more home runs in 70 games over the next two seasons; by 1985, his pro career was over.

Generally, though? Rookies of the Year have later enjoyed fine careers, with of course the occasional exceptions (as a Royals fan, Bob Hamelin and Angel Berroa come to mind).

The great majority of Most Valuable Players have been generally outstanding, too. No, Al Rosen (1953, American League) isn’t in the Hall of Fame. But Rosen was a tremendous player for five years, even if that’s largely been forgotten today.

Really, the closest thing to one-hit wonders among MVPs are players like Twins shortstop Zoilo Versalles, who captured the laurels in 1965 and was merely good for the rest of his career. Others in that category include Philadelphia A’s pitcher Bobby Shantz, who somehow went 24-7 in 1952, and Tigers fireman Willie Hernandez, who went 9-3 with 32 saves in 140 relief innings in 1985. If you’re a pitcher, it’s probably easier to catch lightning in a bottle.

Or perhaps that’s exactly backwards. Perhaps if you’re a pitcher and you catch lightning in a bottle, you’re more likely to pitch so many innings that you’re never quite the same afterward.

Indeed, it’s not the Rookies of the Year or the MVPs who tend to seem fluky in retrospect; it’s nearly always the Cy Young Awards. And for two reasons, I think.

One—and again, I guess—when pitchers are pitching well, their managers are tempted to keep pitching them, perhaps more than they should. Which in turn might well lead to injury, and in the old days, before Tommy John surgeries and effective shoulder-strengthening exercises, serious injuries didn’t just cost seasons; they often cost careers.

And two, Cy Young voters have historically rewarded pitchers who won a lot of games, sometimes to the exclusion of nearly everything else. And there have been more than a few pitchers over the years who essentially lucked into 20-some victories, through a combination of good pitching and great support from teammates in both the lineup and the bullpen.

The Cy Young Award began in 1956, and for its first 11 years it (unaccountably) was for just one pitcher in the major leaguers. Of those first 11 awards, seven went to future Hall of Famers: Warren Spahn, Early Wynn, Whitey Ford, Don Drysdale, and three for Sandy Koufax. Among the other four, three went to:

• Don Newcombe, who had Hall of Fame talent;

• Vern Law, who won 162 games in his career;

• and Dean Chance, who won 63 games in the four seasons after winning the award in 1964.

Which leaves only Bullet Bob Turley, the Yankee who went 21-7 in 1958 and won the Cy Young Award. Turley had not been a big star, but he had been an All-Star in both 1954 and ’55.  And by some qualitative measures, he was actually better in 1957 than in ’58. But after winning those 21 games (and the award) in ’58, Turley never won even 10 games in another season.

Another sort of case completely: Denny McLain, who didn’t just win a Cy Young Award; he won two straight in 1968 and ’69.  And this was after winning 53 games in the previous three seasons. What’s strange is what came after those two Cy Youngs: 17 wins, 34 losses, and a bloated 4.78 ERA. Oh, plus a three-month suspension in 1970 for being involved with mobbed-up bookmakers, and shorter suspensions for other, lesser offenses (not to mention his post-career stays in various federal prisons for various federal crimes).

In 1980, Baltimore veteran Steve Stone came out of nowhere to go 25-7 and win the Cy Young Award. In 1981 he hurt his arm, went 4-7, and never pitched again.

In 1989, San Diego lefty Mark Davis racked up 44 saves and was named Cy Young. That winter, he signed a huge free-agent deal with the Royals. The following spring, Davis pitched himself out of the closer’s role by the middle of May and essentially never got it back. While Davis pitched in six seasons after winning his Cy Young, he totaled only 11 more saves.

Finally, I suppose there’s a special category—Wait a minute, HE won a Cy Young Award?—for guys like Mike McCormick, Pete Vuckovich, LaMarr Hoyt, John Denny, Doug Drabek and the like: good pitchers for more than just a few seasons, who somehow won 22 games or something one year. Which was, probably for too many years, just about all it took for the baseball writers to consider you the best pitcher in your league. Whether you were or not.