This Date in Baseball History- November 26, 1975- Boston Red Sox centerfielder Fred Lynn became the first rookie to win both the Rookie of the Year and Most Valuable Player Award in the same season. In the MVP voting Lynn received 22 of the writers’ first place votes- easily beating out Kansas City Royals first baseman John Mayberry.
Fred Lynn had a fantastic all around season in 1975- he could do it all- and he helped lead the Red Sox back to the World Series- where they ended up losing in 7 games to the Cincinnati Reds in one of the greatest World Series ever. I thought in 1975 that Lynn was going to be one of the greats- and while he did have a fine career- a 9 time All-Star, 306 home runs, 1111 RBI’s and a .283 career average- he was injury prone and somehow fell short. He only had one other season where he finished in the Top 10 in MVP voting- when he finished 4th in 1979. There was another rookie that season on the Red Sox- who would become a baseball hall of famer- Jim Rice. The outfield of Rice-Lynn and Dwight Evans was one of the best outfields of the 1970’s.
slicethelife 
Lynn had the making of a Hall of Famer no doubt. That was a great outfield they had…I still think if Rice is healthy for the 75 World Series…they could have won it…but we will never know.
Good point- if Rice hadn’t been injured…. can you imagine having two rookies like Lynn and Rice in the same season?
That doesn’t happen much. That is a good question…what other two are comparable? The only twoI remember… off the top of my head would be the 2003 Marlins… but it wasn’t in the same league… Dontrelle Willis and Miguel Cabrera…I checked and they were both rookies with Dontrelle winning ROY. Still no comparison to Lynn and Rice…..Now I’ll be thinking.
Your Dodgers were great at getting rookies of the year- sometimes in a row–wonder if they ever had 2 outstanding ones in the same season?
I’m thinking….they had a string of them in the 90s counting Nomo
The Dodgers have had– gulp– 18 ROY since 1947 when the award started…that’s incredible.
https://dodgerblue.com/all-time-brooklyn-los-angeles-dodgers-rookie-of-the-year-award-winners-history/
That is increidble. In my baseball lifetime I remember from Sutcliffe on. Like the Cardinals they had that farm system aligned perfectly. That is really unbelievable. I didn’t realize it was 18!
says something about their consistent farm system over a long period of time.
I completely forgot about Seager and Bellinger lately winning it lately. I thought they were going to trade them away a few times.
I thought the Cardinals would have been close behind….they have had only 6…which surprises me.
It perhaps takes time and space (over 40 years in this case) to really notice how incredible that was – MVP and Rookie of year. For all the great talent that has arrived in the past five years, no one’s come close to duplicating that lately.