THE CHEAP SEATS with STEVE CAMERON: Making the case that it should have been Cal

Baseball awards are a mess.

Don’t think so?

Talk to Cal Raleigh.

Oh, he’ll be polite and gracious. Tell you that Aaron Judge is MLB’s closest thing to Superman. Say, with complete honesty, that the most amazing trophy of them all is that uniform he wears to “work.”

Cal will mean it when he says there’s no award greater than being chosen for a spot as a major league catcher.

How can anything be better than putting on the gear, crouching down to take endless abuse — foul tips off the mask that rattle your brains, for instance — and all the while, searching in the dirt for ways to win a game for the Mariners?

Cal believes that.

If you want to hear someone claim it’s an outrage that he wasn’t named the American League’s Most Valuable Player, you have to find spectators, some members of the media (outside New York), and bona fide experts who grasp that no one can be more valuable than a great catcher.

No one.

Returning to our very first sentence, though, baseball’s award system is so screwed up that nothing really makes sense.

So, Cal Raleigh gets the consolation prize.

I SURELY don’t mean this screed to insult Judge, one of the best all-around hitters of his era.

Perhaps any era.

The problem is that there was an elephant in the room.

With a giraffe.

Judge’s numbers were spectacular, as he became just the third player to win a batting title while hitting 50-plus homers.

And yet, this sounds bizarre, but he didn’t crack as many long balls as Raleigh — who hit 60 to Judge’s 55.

The idea of a catcher, already acclaimed as one in a generation handling pitchers and quarterbacking the Mariners young team to the AL West division title, pounding the ball like Raleigh has always seemed close to impossible.

Catchers take such a beating just managing their everyday job that staying strong beyond the regular season (Cal hit five more homers in the playoffs), has felt mythical.

The game is just so hard.

Still.

Imagine this two-pack: While busy erasing Mickey Mantle’s record for home runs by a switch-hitter (60 to 54), Raleigh unleashed 20-plus bombs from each side of the plate.

Let’s see who’s done that previously, shall we?

Oh.

Nobody.

Owning a record that had never been set is one thing, but Cal did it while catching 1,072 innings and being charged with ZERO passed balls.

Unless Raleigh pulls off that double again, we may wait until eternity for somebody to approach that “Class of One” again in the future.

Some of the national stories about Judge’s three MVPs did mention that Raleigh (13 first-place votes to 17 for Judge) faced an unusual barrier.

All the tasks facing a catcher have made it almost impossible to compare the elephant with the giraffe, leaving voters with a headache trying to separate two fantastic players who mastered different roles.

One of Raleigh’s teammates, who insisted on anonymity to speak freely, put an interesting spin on the comparison.

“There’s a chance we’ll see another hitter like Aaron Judge,” he said. “But another Cal? Baseball waited more than a century to see the first.”

WE MAY strike up a fair argument about that comparison.

Someday, at least.

But the sport’s chaotic statistics and award system (if you can even call it that) make it impossible to vote fairly on the elephant and giraffe — or penguins against condors, for that matter.

Only baseball would ask you to honor a most valuable player (like Judge) for doing it three times.

But.

Also for sharing it in 2025 with ANOTHER winner from ’24.

That’s the bizarre comparison involving Judge and Shohei Ohtani, who conveniently changed leagues prior to this season.

There are relentless oddities in baseball.

For instance, neither Judge nor Raleigh can win a Cy Young Award, but Ohtani (depending on various health issues) surely could.

There are no hard and fast rules concerning relief pitchers, which is typical baseball.

We could go on and on, about Silver Sluggers and Platinum Gloves, yada, yada.

Most of all, though, we have a mess when a catcher is so overwhelmingly beyond his peers that voters have to puzzle out what all he does, anyway.

For what it’s worth, Cal, we get it.

You are the Class of One.

Email: [email protected]

Steve Cameron’s “Cheap Seats” columns appear in The Press three times each week, normally Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday unless, you know, stuff happens.

Steve suggests you take his opinions in the spirit of a Jimmy Buffett song: “Breathe In, Breathe Out, Move On."