Updated: September 17, 2003, 9:37 AM ET

Should MVP award be changed?

With no obvious choice from among the contending teams, does Alex Rodriguez deserve the MVP?

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By By Jim Baker
MLB Insider
One doesn't write an opinion piece on a major award without hearing about it. Yesterday, I suggested that Alex Rodriguez should finally get an MVP Award for himself in 2003. I argued that he is having the best season this year and that this would be a good year to make up for past injustices -- especially in light of the fact that no player from a contending team leaps out of the pack. That brought responses on both sides of the argument.

Some agreed:

    Great article Jim! This addresses my problem with the MVP. Why don't they just vote for the best player all the time? Why is it that the writers have to get all intellectual and take the words Most Valuable Player so literally? As for that, why does the Most Valuable Player have to be interpreted as the player most valuable to a winning team? If you are going to take it so literally, you've got it wrong anyway. The award is not called the Most Valuable Player to the American League Pennant Race ... It is the American League Most Valuable Player. Each league's Most Valuable Player should simply be the most valuable player in that league. Who was the most valuable player in the American League this year? Here's your simple litmus test: If you were creating a team for one year and you were guaranteed 2003 production from each player, who would be your first pick. That is your MVP. We can have all the fun in the world disagreeing on who that is, just as long as that is how you made your decision. I don't want to hear that Barry Bonds is the MVP because his team did so badly without him and so well with him. Who's to say they wouldn't have won an extra 6 games with Albert Pujols out in left instead?

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