A committee of newspaper men last week voted Arthur Vance, pitcher on the Brooklyn “Dodgers,” “most valuable to his team” of all players in the National Baseball League. In the American League, Pitcher Johnson of Washington was so voted (TIME, Sept. 22).
Vance, called “Dazzy” from the dazzling velocity of his pitches, was acquired by the New York “Yankees” in 1917 for a pittance paid a very minor league team. His arm, developed in boyhood by farmwork in Nebraska, went bad; he was released. In 1920, the arm recovered. In the past season, Vance won 28 games, lost but 6, struck out 262 batters. The “most valuable” vote brought him $1,000 from the National League.
From St. Louis came murmurs of surprise, dismay, annoyance, that the writers’ second choice, Rogers Hornsby, second baseman of the St. Louis “Cardinals,” had not been first choice.
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