Kick Out the Sports!
by Bob Cook

Bob Cook's weekly ruminations on sports appear Mondays in Flak.

It's been a week since the NBA's Most Valuable Player voting was released, and the results are still generating a lot of buzz and controversy, particularly over the wisdom and biases of the sports journalists who submit the ballots. I'm talking, of course, about P.J. Brown of the New Orleans Hornets and his inexplicable, single fifth-place vote, and who his mystery voter might be.

What, you thought I was talking about Steve Nash over Shaquille O'Neal? Let the chattering classes of the sports elite sit at the Algonquin Pre-Game Buffet Table and debate whether journalists voted for Nash because he, like them, is a scraggly-looking white guy who, unlike them, got to shag Elizabeth Hurley. At least a vote for Nash, who helped lead the Phoenix Suns to a 32-win improvement this year, is defensible, even if Nash himself plays no defense.

P.J. Brown has been a solid power forward for many years in the NBA. He's probably the best NBA player from Louisiana Tech who didn't answer to a postal nickname, do ads for Rogaine and get accused of hitting on Kobe Bryant's wife, Vanessa. Many teams would be happy to have him.

And it's not unheard of for sports journalists to give an MVP award to a player on an awful team. In 1958 and 1959, Ernie Banks won back-to-back National League MVPs from the Baseball Writers Association of America despite his Chicago Cubs finishing in the bottom half of the league each year. The BBWAA named the Texas Rangers' Alex Rodriguez the American League MVP even though his team finished in last place. In each case, their statistics overrode their teams' sorry performance. (Big numbers for a losing team — that should have been a warning to the Yankees before they traded for Rodriguez after his MVP season.)

However, neither Brown's numbers nor his team's performance qualify him to get his measly fifth-place vote. Saying that a guy who averaged 10.8 points and 9 rebounds for an 18-64 team is the fifth-most valuable player in the league is lunacy. Even people who voted for Ralph Nader twice shake their heads at that one.

The idea that Brown even belongs within three-point distance of an MVP reminds me of an old baseball tale from the early 1950s. When Ralph Kiner, slugger for the woeful Pittsburgh Pirates, informed general manager Branch Rickey of his desire for a raise, Rickey shot back: "We could have finished last without you."

The question that gets asked in such a questionable vote is, who is responsible? There's no exit polling, so no one can surmise that moral-values driven, working-class men in their 30s put Brown over the top.

So you have to go with your best guess — a sportswriter from Brown's hometown, who might have cast a sympathy vote to recognize how hard Brown worked in a hopeless cause, or to recognize his general good character. To vote like this is to "Deshaies" an athlete. The verb got its name from former Houston Astros pitcher and current announcer Jim Deshaies. In 2000, Deshaies, a pitcher for 12 years who retired in 1995, was eligible to be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. With an 84-95 career record, his chances of getting the necessary 75% of votes from the BBWAA were nil, so he launched a web site called "Put JD in the Hall" as a humorous stab at getting at least one vote.

And by god, Deshaies got one vote — from the Houston Chronicle's John Lopez, who took great heat for throwing away his vote (even from Nader voters). But Lopez told anyone and everyone that he voted for Deshaies because — as he told USA Today in 2004, still justifying his vote like a Nader supporter — he represented players who made the most of limited talent and respected the game of baseball. "I wanted to tip my cap to those kinds of players," Lopez told the newspaper.

Alas, whoever cast Brown's vote hasn't fessed up like Lopez. I e-mailed Jimmy Smith, the NBA writer for the New Orleans Times-Picayune, and asked if he cast the vote, or knew who did. He did not respond. I don't take this as an admission of guilt, or as a sign that he's protecting somebody. Smith might have thought I was expending too much time and energy worrying about this and wasn't going to encourage me. Or maybe he thought I was some sort of fifth-place MVP stalker.

Maybe the person who cast this vote has heard just about every NBA announcer wondering what sort of dimwit would cast a fifth-place MVP vote for Brown, and is afraid to explain himself or herself. But I say, be proud!

You're hardly the first, and you'll hardly be the last, sports journalist to cast a sympathy vote for a seemingly undeserving candidate. Heck, just look at the "also receiving votes" section in the media's weekly college football and basketball polls.

So proclaim your sympathy to Brown from the rooftops! Say it loud — I'm for P.J. Brown and I'm proud! At the least, you might be able to get more readers from moral values-driven, working-class men in the 30s by proclaiming that at least you didn't vote for an anti-war foreigner like Nash.

E-mail Bob Cook at bobc@flakmag.com.