Joe DiMaggio, 1947, American League

While DiMaggio’s victory over Ted Williams in 1941 is defensible, this one is not. 

How do you win the league Triple Crown without also being the MVP?  Were DiMaggio’s intangible contributions so much greater than Ted’s superior performance in batting, slugging, on-base, hits, doubles, home runs, runs, and RBIs? 

Williams finished one single point behind DiMaggio in the voting, and one sportswriter refused even to list Williams on his ten-man ballot (though it was not a Boston sportswriter, as Williams charged in his autobiography My Turn At Bat; the man Williams named did not vote that year).  Stranger still, Williams only received three first-place votes (worth 14 points each) out of twenty-four, while DiMaggio received eight, no doubt reflecting New York’s pennant-winning season and Boston’s lackluster one.  Strangest of all are the two first-place votes cast for Philadelphia Athletics shortstop Eddie Joost, a good glove man who batted .206 for the season.