Voters Kept Their Rights in Mind

Something finally goes right.

Days after an admired Kansas City Chief turns a lopsided football game into an alley fight . . .

Weeks before an undefeated college football team might be cheated out of a national championship . . .

While bickering basketball millionaires shut down their sport over relative pennies . . .

Something finally goes right.

Sammy Sosa is voted The Man. His lopsided victory over Mark McGwire in the National League MVP voting Thursday was as refreshing as a blown kiss to your mother.

In an age when people usually give awards to those they see in People, this was a popularity contest that succeeded despite a usually unpopular ending.

The most-loved man did not win.

The most-publicized man did not win.

The most-statistically enhanced man did not win.

The best man won.

Sammy Sosa is the MVP, and our hearts are warmed that while many in the sports world have lost sensibility and perspective, a group of baseball writers still knows where to look up the meaning of the word valuable.

I was privileged to sit in stadiums above both players during their most heroic moments this fall.

I saw McGwire hit his record 62nd home run.

I saw Sosa hit his then-record 66th home run.

I saw more than a dozen monstrous, breathtaking blasts in between.

I questioned the competence of pitchers, the eyesight of umpires, the judgment of opposing managers, anything that might taint or inhibit the greatest sports chase ever.

But every day, from St. Louis to San Diego to Milwaukee to Houston, on one matter there was never any question.

While McGwire was more historic, Sosa was more valuable.

While McGwire swung for records, Sosa swung for victories.

The baseball writers have thankfully reminded us there is a difference.

Watching McGwire in the final month was like watching a one-man revue.

With his St. Louis Cardinals long since out of the championship race, when McGwire came to the plate, everything else disappeared.

There were no teams, no scoreboard, no game.

It was just the pitcher, and McGwire, and 60,000 fans on their feet cheering for you-know-what. McGwire had one job, and one job only.

While his achievements were amazing under those conditions, at times it felt as though you were watching something other than baseball. Golf, maybe? Long hits, long waits, more long hits.

Watching Sosa in his final month, however, was like watching the main character in a musical.

When Sosa came to the plate, everything else was magnified.

With his team fighting to overcome a losing legacy and make the playoffs, his dramatic range needed to be enormous.

Maybe he should shorten his swing and hit just a sacrifice fly, just enough to score the winning run from third.

Or maybe he should shorten even more and hit a line drive to the right side, move along the winning run from second.

A home run?

In nearly every situation, with his Chicago Cubs battling two other teams in a playoff race too close even to be decided in the regulation 162 games, only a man with magnificent heart and courage would dare hit a home run.

On 66 occasions, Sammy Sosa was that man.

On 70 occasions, McGwire homered, a record that captivated the nation and will probably never be broken.

Supporters feel McGwire should have won the award based solely on that number.

Even Sosa conceded Thursday, “It’s hard to hit 70 home runs and not win the MVP.”

But to base an MVP vote strictly on a number is to concede that life is entirely scoreboard. And life is not.

Life is also basepaths, it is dugouts, it is bleachers. Life is not always what you do, but how you do it.

“[McGwire] had a great year, he’s been unbelievable,” Sosa said. “But I took it a different way.”

Four fewer home runs, but seven more wins.

Four fewer home runs, but three more postseason playoff games.

Four fewer home runs, but six months of successfully carrying the hopes of an entire city to a place it had been only twice in the last 52 years.

Sosa also talked Thursday as if his pleasant off-field demeanor and inspiring charity work in his hurricane-ravaged Dominican Republic homeland also contributed to his MVP victory.

“I’ve been also great outside the field. . . . I did everything correctly,” he said.

This is inadvertently unfair to McGwire, who also did everything correctly.

It was McGwire who first poured amazing amounts of money into an important charity, giving $1 million for abused children even before the season started.

It was McGwire who turned the chase into a display of family values, hitting 61 on his father’s 61st birthday, hugging his son when he crossed home plate, including his ex-wife in the celebration.

It was McGwire, not Sosa, who lifted the spirits of the entire nation with his shattering of a previously considered unbeatable record, perhaps the most famous record in sports.

McGwire will be a Hall of Famer, if this voter has any say, and deserves to be remembered forever.

But Sammy Sosa deserves to be remembered for this year.

And in the next millennium, what do you tell your children or grandchildren?

When they look at the record books and notice that way back in 1998, one man hit 70 homers and yet another man was the MVP?

You tell them that, in life, the most valuable person is not always the biggest or strongest, but the one who does the most to help his team or family or business succeed.

You tell them a person judges his worth not by looking in a mirror, but by shining that mirror on those around him.

On a November day in 1998, you tell them, people understood this. A day that something went right.

Bill Plaschke can be reached at bill.plaschke@latimes.com.