September 4, 1964: Ken Boyer, a valuable player if not the Most Valuable

The big hits Ken Boyer delivered for the Cardinals in 1964 didn’t stop with the end of the regular season. They continued into the World Series, where the opposing Yankees third baseman was brother Clete. The Yankees’ Boyer was something like the Cardinals’ Boyer — an even better defender but a lesser hitter though with power. By 1964, Clete had played in four straight World Series, winning two, so when brother Ken won Game 4 with a sixth-inning grand slam that effectively turned the Series, the Yankee third baseman wasn’t completely disappointed. “When he hit that homer, I loved it,” younger brother Clete said, according to a 2007 Sports Illustrated story after Clete’s death. “In my heart, I think I was pulling for him because it was his first Series.” The Series came down to a seventh game which the Cardinals won, 7-5, and both Boyers homered. It was the first time brothers had homered in the same Series game. Ken hit his in the seventh inning with the Cardinals ahead, 6-3, an insurance run they needed when Clete and Phil Linz homered in the ninth off tiring Cardinals starter Bob Gibson. From the Sports Illustrated story: “They acknowledged the feat by nodding to each other as they rounded third base.” It was the only World Series Ken would play in; it was the last World Series Clete would play in. Ken Boyer was the Cardinals manager from 1978-80; he was fired before the team hired Whitey Herzog.

Editor’s note: This is one in a series of articles retelling the 1964 season. Stay for the end.

Ken Boyer won the Most Valuable Player award in the National League in 1964, even if he shouldn’t have, and perhaps no hit was more important than the only one he had on this day.

Boyer was 0-for-4 when he batted in the ninth inning of a tie game against the Cubs, two on and two out, the winning run having just been thrown out at home on Dick Groat’s grounder, the Cardinals on the brink of falling eight-and-a-half games behind with 28 to play.

Boyer’s three-run homer to the opposite field off Freddie Burdette won the game for the Cardinals, 8-5, kept them seven-and-a-half games behind the first-place Phillies, and made the daunting task of erasing that deficit a little more possible. The journey of seven-and-a-half games starts with a single win.

The Cardinals had tied the game, 5-5, in the eighth with a double steal, Mike Shannon stealing home as Dal Maxvill stole second. It wouldn’t be the last steal of home to factor into the September pennant race the Cardinals weren’t even sure on this night they’d be a part of.

Rookie reliever Gordie Richardson, who won six games in a three-season career, earned his third major-league win, getting a double-play from Ellis Burton after Ron Taylor had walked two with one out in the ninth.

September and the first few days of October were full of big hits by Boyer — he homered seven times, he batted .400 in five games against the Phillies, and in the five games the Cardinals won by one run, four of Boyer’s five hits were for extra bases.

His 1964 season, at age 33, was one of his best — he batted .295, hit 24 homers, led the NL with 119 RBIs, had 64 extra-base hits, walked 70 times, scored 100 runs, and had a positive defensive WAR of 1.0 despite 24 errors.

Yet Ken Boyer no more should have been the MVP of the National League than the 109-loss New York Mets should have been in the World Series.

That’s not meant to belittle Boyer, who’s not in the Hall of Fame but should be, in this view, more than the Cardinal (Ted Simmons) the Modern Era Committee elected last year. But the MVP he won is another example of the casual manner in which awards were once decided (had the Phillies won, runner-up Johnny Callison likely would have been the MVP, even more of an affront. Callison wasn’t even the best player on his own team).

Ken Boyer was voted the MVP because he was the best everyday player on the best team. He hit the most homers, scored the most runs, had the most RBIs, and there wasn’t much more thought put into voting for him than where to bat Lou Brock in the order.

That two of the top three finishers and four of the top 11 in the MVP vote were Cardinals apparently didn’t seem a contradiction. Nor that six of the 26 players who received votes were Cardinals. MVP voting was once confirmation bias in action. The Cardinals won. Therefore, they were the most valuable, never mind that they won by the scantest of margins. Had the Phillies or Reds won the pennant, two of the top three, four of the top 11 and six of the 26 would likely have been Phillies or Reds.

It apparently never occurred to voters that the Cardinals won, if barely, because they had the best team and not the best, or most valuable, player.

In 1964 Boyer (.295/365/489) wasn’t even the most valuable third baseman in the National League, let alone most valuable player. The Phillies’ Dick Allen (318/382/557) and the Cubs’ Ron Santo (313/398/564), who played the same position as Boyer, were better, as any mimimal research would attest. Measurably better.

The MVP in the NL in 1964 was so obvious, as we look at it today, that it’s as if it were a trick question. It couldn’t be this simple if someone were asking.

Willie Mays didn’t hit .300, but he came close (.296). He slugged .607, hit 47 homers, walked 82 times, stole 19 bases, won a Gold Glove, drove in 111 runs, scored 121 runs, had a .383 on-base percentage, .990 OPS, 172 OPS+, 11.0 WAR. You can compare Mays and Boyer or Mays and any other player in the NL by whatever metric you choose — advanced stats or traditional stats — and the former was the best and most valuable player in the National League in 1964.

The voters, guided by something other than logic, disagreed. Mays was sixth, behind Boyer, Callison, Bill White, Frank Robinson and Joe Torre. Lou Brock, who finished 10th, got a first-place vote, and give that writer points for unconventional thinking. He was so close to solving the puzzle.

The Giants didn’t finish fourth, three games back, because Mays wasn’t more valuable than Boyer. They did so because Mays’ teammates were far less valuable than Boyer’s.

The MVP for Boyer was something of a lifetime achievement award, given to an 11-time All-Star and accomplished player who won his first pennant. It was akin to the MVP awards won by Charles Barkley over Michael Jordan in the NBA in 1993 and Ryan Howard over Albert Pujols in the NL in 2007, not because the winners had better seasons but because the voters took it on themselves to act as point guards and spread the wealth.

But awards aren’t baubles to be shared. They’re accolades that are earned by performance, and the Cardinals’ reward for the pennant they won was the World Series. Willie Mays was punished enough for the play of his teammates by not getting to play in it. Awarding his MVP to someone else was a slight he didn’t deserve.

• Phillies 5, Giants 3: The Phillies rallied for four runs in the eighth inning to turn back the Giants and increase their lead before 28,149 fans at Connie Mack Stadium to six-and-a-half games over the Reds, who were blanked, 2-0, by Tony Cloninger and Milwaukee. The Giants took a 3-1 lead in the seventh on Jose Pagan’s two-run homer off Art Mahaffey, but Dick Allen singled to start the eighth and Frank Thomas homered to tie the game. After an out, Gus Triandos doubled and scored on Johnny Callison’s single to give the Phils a 4-3 lead and they added another run on pitcher and winner Jack Baldschun’s squeeze bunt. (Mauch so loved the bunt that the squeeze having worked once, he apparently tried it again with Cookie Rojas at bat. The Giants snuffed that one out and trapped Ruben Amaro off third). Baldschun gave up a leadoff triple in the ninth to catcher Tom Haller, but got Matty Alou on a groundout with two on to end it.