It’s amazing to me how one-sided most fans are in evaluating these two long-time New York firstbasemen–the overwhelming majority (everyone but me, in fact) prefers Gehrig to Kranepool, but I think they’re overlooking some critical differences that, IMO, push Steady Eddie into the lead over Larrupin’ Lou–sure, Lou has his well-known and highly publicized edge in HRs and in consecutive games played, and several other glitzy areas, but how many people recognize that Eddie played in the major leagues at a younger age than Lou did, and continued to play long after Lou’s health had deteriorated to the point that he couldn’t play at all? Is there no credit to be given for being active in more MLB seasons?
Also, and I can’t stress this too highly, Eddie was far more versatile than Lou ever was. Lou was strictly a firstbaseman, a very good one, but still. Eddie mainly played 1B, but he also put in some time as an outfielder, and deserves much credit for being able to play a variety of positions, unlike Lou, who was, as I said, limited to playing 1B. Boooo! Booooo! Louuuuuu! Boooo! On the offensive side of the ledger, Eddie batted in a variety of positions, even (surprisingly) as a leadoff batter early on, while Lou was stuck in the middle of the batting order throughout his MLB career. Again, Boooo!
Someone want to help me out with this one? I’m guessing this is a parody thread, right. So someone posts comparing two baseball players and they put it in the right forum… why the pitting?
This one guy kept arguing that Stan Musial was better than Willie Mays because he played a lot of relatively easy positions very well, as opposed to Mays who played one of the harder positions as well as anyone ever, and kept insisting that the Mays defenders were being nasty, personal, belligerent, and generally poopyheads, so I thought I’d come into the Pit and make a slightly more ludicrous case but with extra-special hot sauce and personal abuse. I haven’t really gotten started yet.
Yeah, I got that. I should have been more clear. Restating:
“I’m guessing this is a parody thread, right (given the link at the end of the post)? So someone (Southern Yankee) posts comparing two baseball players (Musial and Mays) and they put it in the right forum (Game Room) … why the pitting?”
The Musial vs. Mays thread (linked to above) just keeps getting sillier and sillier. If I didn’t know better, now I’d think that the guy was trying to out-ludicrous my ludicrous parody.