MVP: Most Voted Player

Today Barry Bonds will win his record fifth MVP award (breaking the record, four, he established last year). I was wondering if Bonds would be a unanimous pick this year, which in turn caused me to wonder how rare such a feat was.

There have been 15 MVPs who were unanimous selections. They are:

1911 Ty Cobb, AL
1923 Babe Ruth, AL
1935 Hank Greenberg, AL
1953 Al Rosen, AL
1956 Mickey Mantle, AL
1966 Frank Robinson, AL
1967 Orlando Cepeda, NL (first time in NL)
1968 Denny McLain, AL
1973 Reggie Jackson, AL
1980 Mike Schmidt, NL
1988 Jose Canseco, AL
1993 Frank Thomas, AL
1994 Jeff Bagwell, NL
1996 Ken Caminiti, NL
1997 Ken Griffey Jr., AL

Bonds has never won unanimously. Here are the results for each time that he won the award:

1990 Bonds: 23 out of 24 first place votes; 1 first place to Bobby Bonilla
1992 Bonds: 18 of 24; 4 for Terry Pendleton and 2 for Gary Sheffield
1993 Bonds: 24 of 28, 4 for Lenny Dykstra
2001 Bonds: 30 of 32, 2 for Sammy Sosa (the saps!)

For those of you interested in the other end of the spectrum, here are the MVP winners receiving the lowest percentage of points available (the number of votes and the system to allocate points have changed over time):

45% Frank Schulte, NL, 1911
55% Yogi Berra, AL, 1951
57% Marty Marion, NL, 1944 (1 point ahead of Bill Nicholson)
60% Joe Dimaggio, AL, 1947 (the famous 1-pt victory over Ted Williams)
64% Keith Hernandez and Willie Stargell (tie), NL, 1979
64% Ivan Rodriguez, AL, 1999
65% Yogi Berra, AL, 1955
65% Robin Yount, AL, 1989