A friend from London who we took to a Giants/Cubs game was quite surprisd to find out that the quite-literally-legendary Babe Ruth was indeed a real person.
Cobb
Ruth
Mays
Pitchers:
Johnson
Ryan
Spahn
I saw Williams many times. The fielders used a Ted Williams shift because he was such a dead pull hitter. The 3rd baseman had the whole left side to himself. The SS, 2nd baseman scooched over to the first base side. The left fielder moved 50 feet toward right. They all compressed into the right side of the diamond. He could have slapped pitches the opposite way for free singles. He defiantly hit his normal way and led the league, often. When he hit a popup the centerfielder waited for it in deep center.
- Babe Ruth
- Walter Johnson
- Ty Cobb
Re: The Williams Shift. It was first used against Cy Williams in the 1920s. AFAIK, Cy did the same thing Ted did: tried to hit over it instead of going the opposite way.
If we’re starting a Top Three Pitchers thing too, I nominate Johnson, Grove, and Clemens.
Yeah, I know.
Everyday players:
Ruth
Williams
Bonds
Pitchers:
Rivera
Martinez
Clemens
I can’t exclude Bonds or Clemens, because IMHO, all great current players are juiced up. They were just the unfortunate ones to get caught (sort of).
“Yeah, I Know” suggests you feel a bit … guilty(?) or uninspired in picking the same guys practically everybody picks.
Don’t be. There’s a REASON everybody picks the same guys over and over again. Johnson and Grove almost go without saying, and Roger Clemens (juicer or not) is right up there.
I’m sad that I’ve seen Nolan Ryan’s* name multiple times (but that’s no new phenomenon) but not Rogers Hornsby’s. Three names is obviously incredibly restrictive, but along with Gehrig I think Hornsby is so close to the very top that it’s a bit surprising nobody has mentioned him. So I will, which gives me the chance to post the following:
From 1921-1925, in a total of 696 games, Rogers Hornsby (a second baseman(!)) batted .402 with an OBP of .474 and slugged .690. His 162 game averages over this period of time: 143 R, 251 H, 48 2B, 15 3B, 34 HR, 139 RBI, 82 BB, 46 K.
(In 1920, he batted .370/.431/.559, which was black ink all around, but including that would still have brought the numbers down).
He led the league in OPS+ 12 out of 14 times during his prime. Second base.
(I still can’t see my way to pretending he’s better than my top 3, but still, if other names are going to be mentioned).
- You can’t be the best of all time if you were never the best in your league while you were playing.
edit: Jackknifed Juggernaut, I love your pitcher list, even though I’d have a hard time leaving Grove out of the top, well, probably 1.
- Babe Ruth
- Willie Mays
- Satchel Paige
I just felt that the list needed a pitcher. And there are so many good and great pitchers, I decided to go with one whose reputation fills a void where statistics can’t reliably go so as to forestall any numerical arguments.
In a probably predictable but good-natured defense of statistics and numbers, those numbers we do have strongly suggest that Satchel Paige was really, really damn good.
Yes, but I’d rather not have to defend a choice of, say, Christy Mathewson over Walter Johnson or Bob Feller or Tom Seaver, etc. by being cited statistics that disagree with my choice’s greatness.
notfrommensa:
By Johnson, I assume you mean Walter and not Randy?
Latest tally:
Ruth 24
Mays 11
Cobb 9
T. Williams 9
Bonds 7
DiMaggio 3
Wagner 2
Gehrig 2
Pujols 1
Clemente 1
B. Robinson 1
N. Ryan 1
Rose 1
Cy Young 1
Mantle 1
W. Johnson 1
Paige 1
It’s just that I don’t like picking a juicer (one whose roid rage was such that he threw a broken bat at an opposing player.) But he was awesome and so I have to pick him. His accomplishments are what they are.
Satchel Paige might well have been greater, but he was (more or less) a contemporary of Lefty Grove, and it just seems very unlikely to me that the three greatest pitchers of all time all had their peaks before 1947. It’s possible, though.
Jimmy, the Nolan Ryan thing is a Nolan Ryan thing. His mystique exceeds how much he actually did to help teams win by a very wide margin. You could do a whole thread on him, but it’s funny; I remember much of his career and nobody thought he was as great a pitcher as Steve Carlton when the two of them were pitching. Nobody. But Carlton has almost totally disappeared from the public consciousness outside of Philadelphia, while Ryan seems to be viewed as being in a class with Tom Seaver and Christy Mathewson. It’s weird.
I’m in Philadelphia, and I’d be willing to bet – a lot – that even here, if you did a poll on the street, more would name Ryan as the greatest, or one of the five greatest, or whatever, than would Carlton.
But anyway. Yeah, this thread isn’t about that.
I think it was the no hitters and 1 hitters that did the trick.
So, even with a limited sample size, Dopers seem to think the Top 5 players of all time are:
Babe Ruth
Willie Mays
Ty Cobb
Ted Williams
Barry Bonds
All outfielders. Is there a reason for that? I’d think that playing one of the tougher defensive positons would add weight for one of the all timers, like Wagner or Hornsby.
Southern Yankee, I think it’s because in the end, most fans are impressed by the guys who can hit home runs consistently, and the all-time home runs list was dominated by outfielders, until recently anyway.
Completely inadequate analysis there.
Life time batting ave. Cobb 366 Williams 344 Ruth 342 Mays 302 Bonds 298
life time RBI they are all in the top 15 all time.
They were a lot more than HR blasters.
I don’t mean to imply that these people were one-dimensional behemoths that could do nothing but hit home runs. But when we talk about Babe Ruth, we don’t usually start by talking about his .342 average, or that he was a top-flight left handed pitcher, or even that he played for seven World Series Champions. We almost always start with the fact that he hit home runs. Lots of 'em. More than anyone who played before him, and more than anybody afterwards until Aaron (and Bonds). Most of us think of great players as players that hit a lot of home runs. They may have done other things, and done them quite well, but the home runs are what usually gets our attention.