Page 34 - Phoenix2000-01

~~-~-- - --- - - -------------------------- .,. i .Thursday, October5,-1000 - Page 14 'Arnolds' bring sibling riv~lryt(( Spor/sEdilor -,~ As the Major League Baseball regular season comes to a close, it remains to be .seen who will be the MVP of the Ameri- can League. At the top of the list in the American League, we hare Nomar Garciaparra, Ja- son Giambi, Frank Thomas and Carlos Delgado. ' Garciaparra has been hindered by such nagging prob~ems as hamstring and quad- riceps injuries for most of the season, but still has produced stellar numbers. He is leading the AL in batting aver- . age with. a .372 mark. His nearest com- petitor in this department is Anaheim's Darrin Erstad. who is hitting ata .355 clip. In an age of homerun hitting, the 1997 AL Rookie of the year scores low, with only 21 knocks, however, the other parts of his game make up for this by far. The Red Sox shortstop has hit 51 doubles thus far (Znd.in t~}\L behind Delgado), along ~ith 104 run~"'and 94 RBI's. f Along',,, with Pedro Martinez, Oarciaparrahas led a team limited in tal- ( ent to a 2nd placefinish inthe Al, East. This is a tribute to the two players. If they hada tleeper pitching staff and one more .prime position player. we'd b9 - watching the Red Sox's in th€; playoffs. : Instead, we'll be seeing the central di- . ,yJtiolJ ;'l.(Wtr Sox led liy.:Myr candidate Frank Thomas. After two subpar seasona; theonce perennial MVP candida~e hal>ref turned to his usual form. In fact, he is hav- ing a career year, He had career highs in' home runs with 43 after only hitting a pal- try 15 last year. He is also hitting career rriarks in RBis with 143 after only knock- ing in 77 last year . .: . On top of this resurrection, Thomas should be considered-as an MVP cantli- c!!lre because he if> leading a miraculous White Sox's turnaround. . ._ 'They will be maJb'r'players in the post season this year after being shut out of Oc- tober action since 1993. Another amazing ~~~etli~:~ around has been the ?afl~nd'