Braun wins National League MVP award

Ryan Braun sat alone on a balcony in his Malibu home that overlooks the Pacific Ocean, uneasy about winning the NL Most Valuable Player Award.

With the season Los Angeles' Matt Kemp had, he wasn't sure the call would come at all.

The phone rang all right, and Braun has been smiling since. Braun was voted the NL MVP after helping the Milwaukee Brewers win their first division title in nearly 30 years.

"I'm not going to pretend like I wasn't anxious or nervous because I was," Braun said. "It's honestly difficult to put into words how much this means to me."

The leftfielder received 20 of 32 first-place votes and 388 points in voting announced Tuesday by the Baseball Writers' Association of America.

Braun, 28, shared the news with his brother and girlfriend, who were at the house. He called his parents, then rang good friend Aaron Rodgers, the Green Bay quarterback, and exchanged text messages with Kemp.

"This is beyond my wildest dreams to be in this position at this point in my career," Braun said.

Kemp earned 10 first-place votes and 332 points after coming close to winning the first Triple Crown since Carl Yastrzemski in 1967. Prince Fielder finished third (229), and Arizona's Justin Upton finished fourth (214). Fielder and Upton each received one first-place vote.

St. Louis' Albert Pujols finished fifth. It was the 11th straight year the three-time MVP was in the top 10 in balloting.

NL Cy Young Award winner Clayton Kershaw was 12th in the voting a day after Detroit's Justin Verlander added the AL MVP to his Cy Young.

"I think he was the single most dominant player in baseball this year," Braun said of Verlander. "As a position player, I'm biased to the fact that I think position players should be at the forefront of the award, but if you honestly look at what he accomplished, how much he meant to that team and how dominant he truly was, you cannot make any argument against him winning that award."