for rickjay and astorian:
still not quite buying it, and you can’t just look at pure numbers compared from the dead ball and live ball era, I could use my own. You say Wagner and Lajoie et. al. were Cobbs peers, but they didn’t come close - 11 batting titles, 6 SB titles, and 8 slugging titles in 13 years, and creating runs? over 2000 runs and rbi’s in that career. And Ruth had peers too, only they were as distant as Cobbs. In the early 20’s Rogers Hornsby hit .400 three times and won 2 triple crowns. Now, you say, yeah, but he was the only power hitter in the NL (except Cy Williams). This was Ruth’s absolute peak time when HE was the only modern power hitter in the AL, but he couldn’t do that, and by the late 20’s Foxx, Simmons, Gehrig, and Hack Wilson had joined the power gang. wait! I won’t go on like this, you guys’ll like what I’ll do next. Trust me.
This is the “most times leading the league” game, which (although not as spectacular as pure numbers), is a good measure of a player’s talent vs. competition. The players that pop up the most here are Ruth, Cobb, Hornsby, Williams, and Musial (he always gets lost, doesn’t he?) so I’ll only use them.
Average: Cobb 11, Hornsby 7, Musial 7, Williams 6, Ruth 1
On base %: Williams 12, Ruth 10, Hornsby 9, Cobb 7, Musial 6
Slugging %: Ruth 13, Hornsby 9, Williams 9, Cobb 8, Musial 6
OPS: Ruth 13, Hornsby 11, Cobb 10, Williams 10, Musial 7
Games played: Musial 5
Runs scored: Ruth 8, Williams 6, Cobb Hornsby Musial tied at 5
Hits: Cobb 8, Musial 6, Hornsby 4
Total Bases: Hornsby 7, Cobb Williams Musial Ruth tied at 6 (that’s gotta say something)
Doubles: Musial 8, Hornsby 4, Cobb 3
Triples: Musial 5, Cobb 4
Homers: Ruth 12, Williams 4, Hornsby 2, Cobb 1
RBI: Ruth 6, Cobb Hornsby Williams tied at 4, Musial 2
Walks: Ruth 11, Williams 8, others less than 5 (too lazy to look it up)
Strikeouts: Ruth 5 (this says more than you think, the other guys very rarely struck out)
Steals: Cobb 6 (none of the others ran and Cobb retired with both single season and career marks that lasted 50 years)
Adjusted OPS (for era, and this is a biggie): Ruth 13, Hornsby 12, Cobb 11, Williams 9, Musial 6
Extra base hits: Musial and Ruth 7, Hornsby 6, Williams 5, Cobb 3
times on base: Musial Ruth Williams tied at 8, Cobb and Hornsby 4
that was fun. if you look at the records, no other players (Wagner, Aaron and co. included) come close to these five, and you could argue that these were the five greatest hitters ever, dominating their eras like no other hitters did. Admittedly, Musial lags a bit in some of the categories, but who wouldn’t? And he was certainly the most gentlemanly and sportsmanlike of the pack. Williams was often surly, Cobb was a jerk, Ruth was a big little boy, and Hornsby was a bit of a nutcase who ate steak for breakfast, lunch, and dinner because he said it improved his vision (maybe it did). Curiousiy here prompts this question, what do you guys draw from this?
Indy
