Most Valuable City: It's Us

Could you rank sports cities — objectively, now — by the number of MVP seasons that city has witnessed?

The above is the question asked by Curtis Edmonds on his Northbound blog in response to a recent WaPo article. The most valuable city is – drum roll – Boston. We're not talking passion, championships, or even money spent on professional sports. Pure statistical analysis of the Most Valuable Player awards awarded to players on the teams. The NHL has the Hart Memorial Trophy. MLB has a National League and American League award determined the by the Baseball Writers Association of America. The NBA has their own award, and the NFL has a few coming from either the AP, the Pro Football Writers of America, or the Bert Bell Award. Edmonds takes it on aggregate and looks at all four major league sports for the last fifty years. Five awards are counted: NL and AL awards in Baseball, the NHL, NBA, and the NFL awarded by the AP which has been awarded since 1957, fifty years ago. He creates a chart, complete with city, number of MVP awards to a cities team, and the last year(s) and player(s) to receive the award. Let's take a moment to look at the top five.

Boston: 21

Chicago: 19

Los Angeles: 16

Philadelphia: 16

New York: 15

Yep, that's right we're on top. Take that number five NYC. Surprised? We're not. Maybe a little that the last time a Boston team took home an MVP award was in 1995 for Mo Vaughn. Don't tell SFist (they might hold it above our heads) but if you lump Oakland and San Francisco together they'd actually come out on top with 25 MVP awards.

Image from Flickr user Dan4th