I saw Ted Williams play a few times. He played against the Williams shift. They put the whole team in right field except for the third baseman who played short. He still hit 350.
He also averaged 50 Ks a year, which is damn good for a power hitter.
That’s the key thing, though; his raw numbers are inflated by context. Relative to his peers his is not the hitter Mays was. May’s 1963 season, when he hit .314 with 38 homers,was essentially as good as ANY season A-Rod has ever had - and for Mays it was just another year.
Actually, right now, A-Rod is an excellent comparison to Mike Schmidt, whose career OPS was 147+ and who was probably a more valuable defensive player. I don’t hear anyone call Mike Schmidt the greatest player of all time.
As to whether moving to third base has hurt or helped A-Rod, I’m not sure. It doesn’t make his hitting WORSE. A-Rod by some measures was not a sensational shortstop and he’s an awfully big guy. Moving to third might help him stay in the majors longer; the stresses of playing shortstop are breaking Derek Jeter apart, after all. If A-Rod plays another 5 healthy years imagine the numbers he could pile up.
Willie Mays was a San Francisco Giant. And I do not feel a need to spit on the ground when I say his name, or hear it spoken.
Let me assure you that those facts, taken together, speak volumes.
I read a column by Rick Reilly a few years ago that said Mays most likely would have hit 200 MORE home runs in his career if he hadn’t missed time to serve in the military AND if he hadn’t played in the cold, foggy windy conditions of Candlestick
Park.
But if you are looking for the greatest of all time who didn’t play in the majors, I ashamedly admit I had never even heard of this guy before I read about him just a few years ago, but here is what a few “experts” said about him.
“The best Major League Baseball player I’ve ever saw was Willie Mays, but the best baseball player was Oscar Charleston. Oscar could hit you 50 home runs, could steal 100 bases. This was Oscar Charleston. We old-timers say, “The closest thing to Oscar Charleston was Willie Mays.” -Buck O’Neil
“Charleston could hit that ball a mile,” Dizzy Dean said. “He didn’t have a weakness. When he came up, we just threw it and hoped like hell he wouldn’t get a hold of one and send it out of the park.”
Of course he didn’t play against the best WHITE players of his time, just as Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb etc. didn’t play against the best non-white players of their time.
ps Willie Mays was a speaker at my daughters college graduation 2 years ago and he is a cranky old bastard who dozed off a few times while others spoke. I still love him though and I grew up a Giant hating Dodgers fan.
Hey, I say you pitch against Juan Marichal one cold night at the Stick long ago! Nice game, dude. 
I’ve always heard that the best player from the negro leagues was either Josh Gibson or Satchel Paige.
When playing in San Francisco, I believe Mays hit more home runs at home, in Candlestick, than he did on the road.
Ruth’s career record was 94-46. That’s a 67% winning percentage, making him 8th all-time. I respectfully submit that he was every bit the best pitcher in baseball at the time. Few of his contemporaries were even close. Overlooking that, as you have done here, is a grave injustice.
So, who was better than he was? Surely you have a few names in mind.
Looking at his pitching stats. He was very good. But, not clearly the best pitcher in the majors.
1916 was Ruth’s best year. He had a good argument as the best pitcher in the AL. Leading the league in shutouts with 9, and in ERA+ with 158 (ERA 1.75). He had 23 wins against 12 losses on a team that went on to win the world series. He had 170 strike outs and 118 walks in 323 innings. Walter Johnson was pretty close. He had more strikeouts, innings pitched, and wins. He had 229 strikeouts and 82 walks in 329 innings pitched. It’s pretty much a toss up between them for the best pitcher in the AL that year. Grover Cleveland Alexander pitching for the Phillies in the NL bettered them both. He had 16 shutouts. An ERA+ of 170 (ERA 1.55). He only had 167 strikeouts, but 50 walks in 389 innings pitched. He had 33 wins and 12 losses.
Ruth’s very best year was in the top 3 of the league, but not the best by most measures. Could he have gone on to be a Hall of Fame pitcher? Sure. Could have have burned out early and been forgotten? Sure, again. It’s hard to know!
In any case Grover Cleveland Alexander and Walter Johnson were both significantly better over the 5 years Ruth was pitching.
From 1914 - 1919 (Ruth’s Red Sox years)
Player W L W-L% ERA G GS GF CG SHO SV IP H R ER HR BB IBB SO HBP BK WP BF ERA+ WHIP H/9 HR/9 BB/9 SO/9 SO/BB
Ruth 89 46 .659 2.19 158 143 11 105 17 4 1190.1 934 378 290 9 425 483 29 4 25 4749 125 1.142 7.1 0.1 3.2 3.7 1.14
Alexander 139 62 .692 1.73 221 200 20 163 51 8 1769.1 1438 474 341 24 287 958 38 0 8 6927 161 0.975 7.3 0.1 1.5 4.9 3.34
Johnson 146 94 .608 1.70 271 209 59 190 42 14 2020.1 1559 525 381 9 401 1153 68 2 49 7743 168 0.970 6.9 0.0 1.8 5.1 2.88
Doing a quick look at pitchers from the time period I found two guys who had non hall of fame careers, yet had numbers as good as or better than Ruth’s over the same time period.
Player W L W-L% ERA G GS GF CG SHO SV IP H R ER HR BB IBB SO HBP BK WP BF ERA+ WHIP H/9 HR/9 BB/9 SO/9 SO/BB
Ruth 89 46 .659 2.19 158 143 11 105 17 4 1190.1 934 378 290 9 425 483 29 4 25 4749 125 1.142 7.1 0.1 3.2 3.7 1.14
Leonard 90 60 .600 2.18 198 161 30 100 26 10 1319.1 1101 406 320 23 383 729 44 1 30 5225 127 1.125 7.5 0.2 2.6 5.0 1.90
Vaughn 124 77 .617 2.10 241 212 26 141 29 4 1750.0 1480 573 408 19 482 941 48 3 35 7107 136 1.121 7.6 0.1 2.5 4.8 1.95
(All stats are from Baseball-Reference.com. Sorry if things didn’t line up in the code boxes.)
Eddie Cicotte was pretty good too over that period. 108 wins and a couple years as good or better than Ruth’s 1916. (Though whether 1919 really counts as a good year for him depends on how you define “good”).
I think the answer to this question needs to be emphasized just a bit. It’s kind of like asking who was a better 2-guard in the early 90s than Reggie Miller - there is an answer. I understand that this has already basically been provided above, but it’s fun.
Ruth was a pitching contemporary of a guy who finished with 400 wins, 110 shutouts, 3,500 Ks and a career ERA of 2.17. During the 5 years Ruth pitched, this same guy led the league in strikeouts every year, wins three times, ERA twice, innings twice, pitching WAR four times, and ERA+ three times. In 1918 Ruth’s ERA was 2.22, which is super good. Now subtract one run from that, and you’ve got the Big Train at 1.27. (Incidentally, that didn’t even qualify as a career year, since in 1913 he was 36-7 with a one-point-one goddamn four ERA.)
Johnson was so good, in fact, that Ruth not being as good as him doesn’t even tell us anything. In order to be the best of his era, Ruth would’ve had to be the best ever.
Another way to put it is that Ruth was Tom Glavine/Orel Hershiser good, not Greg Maddux/Pedro Martinez good.
Even looking at winning percentage for someone whose pitching career lasted 5 years and change (on a team that won 3 World Series and went 423-297 (.587) over that period) is a grave injustice in any discussion regarding career numbers.
[QUOTE=Tom Scud]
Another way to put it is that Ruth was Tom Glavine/Orel Hershiser good, not Greg Maddux/Pedro Martinez good.
[/QUOTE]
I disagree. Both Glavine and Hershiser had great careers reflected in their longevity. Ruth could just as easily have become Doug Drabek or Frank Viola.
That is what I always thought too. Like I said, I had never even heard of Oscar Charlston until a few years ago yet here are some players saying he was better than Mays.
It is funny how almost ANY American over the age of 10, even to this day, knows who Babe Ruth was, yet we had never even heard of this great player while some other Negro League players are well known.