American Pharoah for SI Sportsman of the Year

[Merlinsky]

Originally Posted by GenuineRisk

Pharoah is now almost 13,000 votes behind the Kansas City Royals. Boo. I call shenanigans!

Apparently when you break it down, it's the midwest fans mainly. Nationally Pharoah's got the most widespread support. I can believe Royals fans and people in the area that are just trying to support baseball or the local boys or whatever would pitch in so I don't know that it's shenanigans, it's just straight up not accurately about an individual accomplishment.

His claim is the strongest and most significant even in terms of time since the last occurrence. The Royals haven't won a World series in about 30 years I think, but we have them beat at 37 years. There's a whole team of them, Pharoah did it himself and had to be good enough in a tighter timeframe. He couldn't lose any of 3 races, they could lose several times over a season (winning less than 60% of their games which I know is fine in baseball, but that's not the point) and technically even five times in the playoffs and make it. The point is American Pharoah had no room for error. None. 100% wins or nothing to win the Triple Crown. He got it, then spent the rest of the year being an ambassador for sport. The Royals haven't even been in a position to do the same as WS champs for as long, nor do they risk anything now. Their season is over. Pharoah's kept going and he risked both injury and failure to solidify his reputation historically in open company. There's just no contest. The editors have to pick him if the public does not.