Mauer a worthy MVP, but deserved more

No catcher ever has won the Most Valuable Player Award unanimously, an honor Joe Mauer of Minnesota somehow was deprived of in the 2009 voting announced Monday by the Baseball Writers Association of America. Only one vote stood between Mauer and his rightful claim to history: a first-place vote for Miguel Cabrera, a powerful hitter, but a guy who played first base for a second-place Detroit team that coughed up a division title by finishing 1-4 while Cabrera went 3-for-20 and, on the last weekend of the season, was drunk and involved in a domestic violence episode. The vote was cast by Keizo Konishi of Kyodo News and the Seattle chapter of the BBWAA.