[Update unrelated to this post, 11:50 AM: Coco Crisp traded to Royals for Ramon Ramirez.]

From SI.com:

"He also is just the third player to become MVP the season after earning the Rookie of the Year award, joining Cal Ripken Jr. and Ryan Howard."

And they leave it at that, without mentioning the two players who won won both awards in the same year. In case you couldn't see (or didn't want to watch) my video from yesterday, I'll sum up why this is an egregious error here.

If you're talking about winning, say, two MVP awards in consecutive years, then, yes, you would say "this guy is just the fifth (or whatever) player to win the award twice in a row, joining these other players...." Because that's the best you can do over a two-year stretch.

But if you're talking about two different awards which can be won by the same person in the same year, and someone wins one of those one year and the other one the next year, you don't talk about the club they joined without mentioning the guys that have won both awards in the same year.

The SI article (and Ian Browne's) would be exactly right if rookies weren't eligible for MVP awards. But they are.

Let's you launched a rocket to Mars, walked around up there, came back to Earth, then went back up to Mars again the same year. Then a few years later, someone else went up there, became the second person to walk on Mars, came back, and went to Mars the following year. If you're writing an article about the second person, would you write "X is the first person in history to walk on Mars in consecutive years"? And just end it there, leaving out the key fact that the feat can be and in fact was accomplished within one year? Would the Guiness Book accept this "record"? No, because it's not a record, it was done better by someone else. Some people would argue, "but it would be true, they technically would be the only person to have done that exact feat." I'm just saying, technically I could be the only man to take 14 dumps in one day, but if 10 million people had taken 15 in one day, and another 10 million had taken 13 in one day, but somehow no one had ever gotten as high as 14 and stopped right there, would anybody be writing articles about me? If they were, I'd hope they'd at least casually mention that 14 is NOT the best you can do and has been topped countless times.

[Update 1: Okay, this is really pissing me off. I'm now searching other articles. I saw McAdam's. I thought, Okay, this guy's been covering baseball a long time. He'll have it down. Nope:

"Pedroia became just the third player in history - Cal Ripken (Baltimore Orioles, 1983) and Ryan Howard (Philadelphia Phillies, 2006) were the others - to follow up a Rookie of the Year award with an MVP honor in his second season."

Just the third! In HISTORY! Look, I hope this doesn't come across as me trying to diminish Dustin's amazing accomplishment. But Fred Lynn and Ichiro are in this club, too. Not only are they in it, they're on a higher tier! Yet they don't even get mentioned!]