MVP?

Listening to the Cubs game on WGN Radio this afternoon. Pat Hughes just mentioned that Phillies firts baseman Ryan Howard just hit his 53rd dinger of the year. He then asked Ron Santo, "How can he not be the MVP this year?"

Well, there are lots of reasons. Maybe hitting homers is the only thing he's done well. Maybe the Phil's ho-hum record will be held against him. Or maybe somebody else is just having a better year than he is.

I haven't looked closely at any post-season award candidates yet (it seems rather silly to do so with almost a month left in the season), so I don't know how Howard stacks up to my default MVP pick, Albert Pujols. Howard is having a fantastic year, and I don't mean to insinuate that he wouldn't be a deserving winner.

But statements like Hughes' point out the inherent bias in MVP voters' mind -- if a guy has lots of home runs and RBIs, he must be pretty darned valuable. Nothing else seems to matter.

Thinking like this is the only explanation as to why people believe that Jim Rice and Andre Dawson are Hall of Fame candidates...

On another Ryan Howard front, it's disturbing to see that the whispering has already begun:

Is Ryan Howard juiced?

Don't blame me for wondering. It might not be fair, but it isn't my (or your) fault for asking before plunging headlong into another home run chase. Blame baseball, blame society, blame a summer that has given us Floyd Landis, Justin Gatlin, Marion Jones, Barry Bonds and a host of other drug cheats who can make a cynic out of anyone.

The Philadelphia Phillies first baseman knocked home runs 50, 51 and 52 out of the park Sunday. So here on Labor Day he is within striking distance of Roger Maris' single-season home run record of 61, which means the attention, and the debate, will become sharper now.

There is no reason, no whisper, no allegation that suggests Howard is cheating. In fact, there is plenty of talk that he is clean. But how can you blindly trust anyone anymore?

Thanks to Yahoo's Dan Wetzel for clearing that up. There's no reason to believe that Howard's on the juice, but we'd better consider him guilty until proven innocent anyway. And while we're there, we'll mock Dusty Baker for his "steroid McCarthyism" comments -- nothing like that could ever happen here, right?

Wetzel goes on to make two more points: MLB is testing, but there's stuff like HGH that they can't detect with current tests (and the chemists are hard at work making more undetectable stuff as we speak), and humans are by nature cheaters (especially with the amount of money involved in baseball), so no testing program will offer enough of a deterrent to keep players clean.

It's hard to argue with logic like that. But if you accept that line of reasoning, you might as well just pack up your fandom (of any sport, not just baseball) and take it to the dump. If you're going to automatically suspect anyone who has a good year, what's left in the game to enjoy? Pretty soon the only players Wetzel and his ilk will cheer for will be guys like Neifi, because they'll be about the only guys left that they won't suspect of doping.

Wetzel may be right when he says you can't blindly trust anyone anymore. But is blindly mistrusting everyone really a better option?