I’m simply not grasping how any list of this kind that doesn’t include Ted Williams makes sense to anyone. You’ve got Bonds on this list, a guy who was known and made his bones on his ability to reach base (career OBP .444) and hit for power (career slugging percentage .607), and to do these things better than his peers (career OPS+ 182).
Ted Williams got on base more often (.483), had more power (.634), was better relative to his peers (191), and it’s not like his was a DH or a defensive embarassment.
DiMaggio, a great player, isn’t in the same ballpark with Williams as a hitter, and if you want me to believe he was that much better defensively, you better show me video of DiMaggio playing all three outfield positions at the same time. Mays is a notch closer, but only a notch.
Not a lot of love here for Lou Gehrig, but he was close to Williams at the plate. Mantle had some great numbers.
I’d have to go with Ruth – not just for what he did on the field (and who else had a Hall of Fame career both at a hitter AND a pitcher?), but for his influence off the field. Only Jackie Robinson had more off the field, and Ruth was a better player.
I think people are overrating how good a pitcher Ruth was. He was good, but he wasn’t all-time great good. I think, more likely than not, he would fizzled out or gotten hurt if he remained as a pitcher, rather than been a hall of famer.
That said, he is still number #1 on the list. He dominated the game amongst his peers more so than any player before or since. Plus, being a very good pitcher still gives a bit of a bonus.
The rest of the top five I have Cobb, Williams, Bonds, and Wagner in some order.
Williams may have had better career percentages than Bonds, but he had a significantly shorter peak. And while Bonds may be immobile now, in his prime (eh pre-prime?) he had much more of an all around player. Once upon a time he was a very good defensive left fielder and he could fly. I’m not sure that I’d put him above Williams, but it is at least very very close.
I also find Mantle and Aaron to a bit overrated on these lists, though for opposite reasons. Mantle didn’t have much of a post-peak portion of his career, so people only remember when he was great. Aaron was never really the best player in the game, he was just very good for a very long time. They are both inner-circle hall off famers, but they don’t make my top ten.
That is fair, but he was already by Mullinator Hawkeyeop, as to Babe Ruth as a pitcher… 94-46 for a .671 winning % with a 2.28 ERA, most of this by the time he was 26, sounds like a guy on his way to the Hall of Fame as a pitcher. That was with only 3 full years as a starter. By the time he was 23 Boston found his bat to valuable to pitch him every 4th game.
To any that questioned his fielding as a young man (under 30), go and read about him a little more. He had an awesome arm of course and actually covered a lot of ground. Too many people remember only those films of him as a pudgy older player. He was an good base runner and excellent fielder by all accounts.
Now by 1932 Ruth was strictly a hitter with a good arm. He was no longer a good base runner or fielder.
There have been an untold number of pitchers who have had great starts to their career, and quickly lost all value. It still happens now, but it was more common in the olden days when they didn’t have the medical knowledge we now have. In fact, far more fizzled out quickly than remained great. We just only remember the ones that stayed great. Ruth would have had to beat the odds in order to be anywhere near as good in his 30’s as he was in his 20’s. There is of course no way of knowing, but I just don’t see it as likely.
I’ll have to say Ruth as well. One thing that hasn’t been mentioned is how Ruth influenced attendance and helped the sport right after the Black Sox scandal.
You might be correct, but Ruth was a truly great pitcher before his even greater bat stopped him. Maybe his arm would have blown out by the time he was 28. This still does not take away from the fact he was a great pitcher before going on to arguably be the best hitter.
I’ll say this: if Honus Wagner had been born 20 years later than he was, he would have been a world-class slugger, close to the level the Babe established. He was built like few players ever were (before steroids at least), and would have easily adapted to the lively ball. So you want a shortstop who will hit .340 with 40-50 home runs, with a gun for an arm and excellent range for a man his size? Hard to beat that. Even just considering when and how he actually played he looks pretty good in comparison to these other guys.
The thing about Bonds is that he was a fantastic fielder and a very good hitter, and later a shitty fielder and the best hitter; but he never quite dominated both at the same time. This theoretical Bonds would be in the top five easy.
Although I already voted for Ty Cobb, I am adding another name to the mix- Jackie Robinson.
Baseball is a tough game. Ask anyone in it or around it, and they’ll agree. The worst thing is that the smallest kink can totally throw off a player’s game. Fight with his wife, not sleeping on the right mattress, issues with the kids, a bad apple in the clubhouse, whatever- average goes down, fielding starts to slip. Sometime it can be a dramatic slide from which a player never recovers (a certain former Angel comes to mind).
Jackie Robinson was a great player. But everybody hated him- everybody in the stands hated him and wanted him to fail. When he struck out, they cheered; when he got a hit, they booed. He endured constant death threats, he was surrounded by hatred, resentment and racism in his own clubhouse (and everywhere else in the league). He was the most hated man in sports, and even his own teammates didn’t want him there and made their feelings crystal clear.
Yet he continued to put up numbers that place him among the greatest in the game. He played through more adversity than any player before or since, and he excelled. On and off the field, he was an extraordinary man.
In those nine seasons he won three MVP awards, and was in the Top 5 in MVP voting seven times.
During that time frame, the only hitter who was even on the same planet as Bonds was Frank Thomas, who, superb though he was, contributed nothing in the field.
Barry Bonds was the dominant hitter of the '90s. He was also the best defensive corner outfielder of the '90s. So, Top 5 easy, right?
You can make a case for Wagner or Williams ahead of Ruth. But it’s not overwhelming. Throw in Ruth’s pitching and I don’t see how anyone else could be considered #1. It’s a no-brainer.
OK, I’m willing to allow the assumption that the talent level is the same. That the smaller leagues off set the lack of foreign and black players, the need for the average American to stay on the farm and the complete lack of little leagues and leisure time for prospective players. I think that there are way more kids growing up with the opportunity and interest in becoming a professional baseball player, a number large enough to greatly offset the fact that there were 8 teams versus 30 teams in the 20s, but it’s impossible to quantify so we’ll set it aside.
How to you argue away the fact that Walter Johnson and Christy Mathewson regularly pitched 45+ games per season, which was a solid 10 games more than Clemens and Maddux’s career highs? Matthewson’s career high was 56 games! Maddux’s was only 37 games. Clemens once threw 36 games to Johnson’s 51 games. This was all before the Slider was invented. Johnson and Mathewson were insanely good pitchers but with the amount of work they shouldered is it realistic to think that their stuff was on par with todays best? This doesn’t even take into consideration the Mariano Rivera’s and Goose Gosage’s of the league.
Would Ruth have been able to go for 60+ dingers and .320+ BA if he played today? I’m skeptical, there’s a ton more thought and energy exerted today on scouting reports and matchups. The numbers A-Rod is putting up might be light years ahead for what Gerhig and Ruth did in context.
These are all valid points, but I think you are missing a point. If you really want to compare these guys, maybe you need to add to the what-ifs? What if Ruth & Gehrig had the benefit of modern training, nutrition and scouting reports?
Players are stronger and faster but on the other side they don’t play the game as well or as hard. Think about the bunting for singles, the stretching what today are doubles into triples. The high hard slides and bean balls that were common. Hell, Ruth & his generation faced legal spit-ballers. I don’t think today’s players understand the fundamentals of baseball near as well as those of past generations.
As to little league, I am at a loss. Far more baseball and stick balled was played by kids before the 50s than after the 50s. They had little else to do and all the old-timers talk about playing ball from immediately after school until it got too dark to play. They played on bad fields or roads or abandoned lots. They played with bad equipment and learned how to play bad hops. It is similar to the conditions that most Dominican players overcome to become professional ball players. Most players also came straight from high school and the college kid was rare. It was a different time. A time when disease ended many careers early.
As to the innings pitched by the greats, you are looking at the cream of the top. Most pitchers did have short careers or at least short peak careers. The Matthewsons and Johnsons were the best from a different school of pitching.
Now today’s closers are great and something that did not really exist until Fireman Murphy of the Yankees. Johnny Murphy was back in the 30s though, so while that had little effect on Ruth, relievers were a big part of the game before Rollie Fingers & Gossage. I would use the counter argument that most middle relievers today actually help hitting stats.
What? I don’t think there is any question that the level of play in baseball is better than it has been. I also strongly disagree that players don’t play “as hard.”
A lot of time going for the extra base is a bad baseball play, even if you are more likely to be safe than out. So I think some of you thinking players playing less hard is players playing smarter. Sure players had to deal with spitballs then, but now they have to deal with splitters, relievers coming in throwing 98, etc… I also don’t believe this generation is any less fundamentally sound. Errors are at an all time low. Everyone always thinks that things were better back when, but I don’t see the evidence supporting that. I think just the opposite that baseball is constantly getting better.
In additon to that, there were far less strikeouts and walks in those days. So while pitchers threw a lot more innings, they didn’t throw as many pitches per inning. There were also a number of poor hitters in each lineup, so pitchers didn’t have to be throwing at 100% all the time. Now, other than pitchers in the nl, there are no easy outs.
Players don’t going into the base as hard. Pitchers rarely throw at the hitters anymore or even back them off. Too many players do not run out balls these days or stand and admire Home run shots. In some cases these are shots that don’t actually go over the wall. Players do not execute run downs very well. Forget about the hidden ball trick and do you want to talk about bunting?
Good point and it does make a huge difference, but why have we reduced our starters to 100 pitch pitchers? This is a bad trend that has to do with the too careful development of the pitchers these days. I can’t believe all these stronger, bigger guys with better conditioning and medical help can’t last 120 to 140 pitches like the guys through the 80s did. Something has gone wrong and thus we have a lot of mediocre relievers pitching and rosters carry 12- 13 pitchers. There were teams with 9 man staffs in the 70s. The Whitesox carrying 11 seemed like a bad joke.
Shouldn’t today’s top pitchers be better than Ryan, Seaver and Carlton? These guys put up far more innings and threw far more pitches, especially Ryan.
