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I think voting for a Series MVP is kind of foolish anyway. The practice began a few decades ago as a formal salute to the outstanding performer in the Series, the occasional Pepper Martin who dominates the short stretch of games. But not every Series has such a performer. Go back for example to the late 1930s – when the Yankees won not three but four Series in a row (Ah there, Connie Mack). The Yankee dominance from 1936 to 1939 was overwhelming. They won 4 games to 2 in 1936, 4 to 1 in 1937, 4-0 in 1938 and 4-0 in 1939. After they lost the first game of the 1936 Series they won 16 of their next 18, an astonishing display of superiority. Any team that wins 16 of 18 games at any time is red hot. To win 16 of 18 against pennant-winning teams is amazing, truly amazing.

But they had no individual heroes in the Pepper Martin sense. Charlie Keller had a great Series in 1939, and Joe Gordon was impressive in 1938, yet you cannot pick one Yankee player in any of those four years and say here is the unquestioned hero. This was a team, a superb team. To single out one player as hero would have been misleading and wrong.

For that matter, in a majority of World Series, it is all but impossible to say flatly, "This is the man." When there is a hero, with a capital "H", he stands out – like Don Larsen with his perfect game in 1956. Certainly, Larsen was the hero in 1956, the player you remember, but he wasn't the most valuable player in that Series. Yogi Berra was. Go look it up. But if we sportswriters had had a say in the matter and had voted Yogi the MVP it would have been a miscarriage of poetic justice.

There have been several injustices caused by the insistence on voting for an MVP. Ten years ago John Wetteland, the Yankees' big closer, "saved" four games in the 1996 World Series and was named Most Valuable Player. But Mariano Rivera, then in his first full season as a reliever and Wetteland's setup man that year, pitched more late-inning relief innings in the Series than Wetteland, yielded exactly the same number of hits and runs, had a better earned-run average and didn't give up as many long, screaming fly-ball outs. He was so impressive that the Yankees let Wetteland leave after the season and gave the closer job to Rivera. Why then should Wetteland be voted the most valuable player and Rivera ignored?

A worse mistake happened back in 1960, when the Pittsburgh Pirates won the World Series on Bill Mazeroski's dramatic homer in the last inning of the seventh game. This was before formal voting for an MVP, at a time when Sport, the excellent monthly magazine edited by Ed Fitzgerald – a man I liked and admired – gave a sports car to the World Series player the magazine felt was best that year. Bobby Richardson of the losing Yankees had 13 hits in the Series (surpassing Pepper Martin's ancient record) and Fitzgerald, after taking an informal poll of the press box, chose to award the car to Richardson instead of Mazeroski. Pittsburgh players, outraged when they heard that as they celebrated their victory, came out of the Pirate clubhouse half-dressed and half-drunk and angrily pounded the side of the bus carrying Fitzgerald and other members of the press away from the ballpark. They were right, and my friend Fitz was wrong. Richardson may have been better all around, but Maz was the hero of the Series.

Maybe there shouldn't be a vote. In probably the most exciting World Series ever played, the battle between Atlanta and Minnesota in 1991, there were two particularly admirable heroes for the victorious Twins – Jack Morris, who after a grueling Series pitched all ten innings of the thrilling 1-0 seventh game, and Kirby Puckett, who saved the Twins in the equally thrilling 4-3 sixth game, when he hit an RBI triple, a run-scoring sacrifice fly and in the 11th inning, belted a game-winning and Series-tying home run. Morris got the writers' nod as the Series MVP, which is hard to argue against. But by making Jack the official hero they swept Kirby behind the door, which seems unfair.

Why vote at all? A single hero doesn't always happen. If one doesn't appear, why create one artificially by votes from sportswriters and sportscasters? When there is a hero, he's self-evident, he's unmistakable. Does Dusty Rhodes in 1954 ring a bell? That was the year the underdog New York Giants were in the Series against the heavily favored Cleveland Indians, who had won a record 111 games and whose pitching staff was called the best in major league history. In the first game of that Series, Willie Mays made his astonishing, game-saving catch and throw, but whom do you suppose got the headlines? Rhodes, a utility player, pinched-hit in the tenth inning with the score tied and hit a three-run homer off Hall of Famer Bob Lemon to win the game. A day later the Giants were behind 1-0 to Hall of Famer Early Wynn, when Rhodes pinched-hit and singled to tie the score. He stayed in the game, came to bat again and hit a home run. Next day he pinched-hit with the bases loaded and whacked a single to drive in two runs, and the Giants went on to win for the third straight day. The next time Rhodes batted he was intentionally walked.

That was about it for Dusty. The Giants didn't need him the last day as they won for the fourth time in a row to sweep the Indians. But after the Series ended there was no doubt who the hero was. And, as with Pepper Martin, there was no need for a vote.