A few days ago, I talked a bit on the Continuum about who I’d select for every one of the “Franchise Fours” that MLB had up for voting until late last week. Well, with one exception: the choice for greatest living ballplayers.
I saved that just for you, HOVG fans!
First, though, a bit of a detour: It is said that Joe DiMaggio, throughout his retired life, stipulated that he be introduced as the “Greatest Living Ballplayer”. Well, the Yankee Clipper’s appearance contracts might have stipulated that, but reality was always against it, considering that at various points of his retirement Willie Mays, Ty Cobb, Hank Aaron, Cy Young, Ted Williams, Tris Speaker, Stan Musial, Honus Wagner and so on and so forth were all alive. And yet, until his death, Joe DiMaggio was being introduced as the greatest living ballplayer. On the other hand, he was married to Marilyn Monroe for a time, so maybe he was talking about a different kind of ballplaying.
Still, the fact that Joe DiMaggio was never truly the greatest living ballplayer really speaks to how hard it is to truly be the greatest at something, even with a criteria that eliminates some of your greatest competition (presumably Joe DiMaggio never claimed to be the greatest ballplayer ever because Babe Ruth would have risen from the grave and beaten the crap out of him).
You are still facing some of the greatest players in history, and you are going to face them in this argument until they pass, and given the fact that many of them (although not all by any stretch) have lived healthy lifestyles and made plenty of money, that can be a long time. Several members of the original Hall of Fame class, as I said, were still breathing when DiMaggio hung up his cleats, and Bobby Doerr, while in nobody’s conversation for greatest living ballplayer, is still alive and kicking at 97.
And then there is the fact that baseball is an extremely fragmented sport: between eras, between positions, between ballparks that might have given advantages and rule changes that might have extended or shortened times of dominance. To pick one greatest living ballplayer would be hard, and MLB asked for four… which isn’t that much easier… well, after the first three picks. This is probably why in previous polls that were similar they had people make choices for teams, going position by position (I’ll do that one day).
So, before we start, let’s refresh your memory. The candidates that MLB put forth were: Hank Aaron, Johnny Bench, Barry Bonds, Rickey Henderson, Sandy Koufax, Pedro Martinez, Willie Mays and Tom Seaver.
And immediately you have problems. Where is Ken Griffey Jr.? What about Frank Robinson? Or Greg Maddux? Paul Molitor is highly underrated and (I am not making this up) is listed as one of the players most similar to Ty Cobb using Baseball Reference’s similarity scores (to be fair, he isn’t THAT similar, having only a 556 match). Players like Sadaharu Oh and Omar Linares never played in MLB, but many believe they would have been greats no matter what league they played in- some old statistical analysis, for example, seemed to indicate that Oh would have still hit more than 500 HRs in North America- so where are they? And what about current players, like Albert Pujols or the great Ichiro?
But, since there’s no way a write-in campaign for anybody was going to win this, let’s work with what we are given- although I still want to know where Griffey and Robinson are.
The easiest pick, of course, if Willie Mays. If he isn’t part of the Franchise Four for Best Living Ballplayers this All-Star Game, it means either two things: either he has tragically passed away (hopefully not the case) or humanity, as a species, has proven it doesn’t deserve the right to vote on anything ever again. If you go to Baseball-Reference.com and go to Willie Mays’ page and then scroll down to all the records and awards he’s won, you’ll see he remains in the top 25 of almost every one of the categories that he qualifies for, including many where he remains in the top five.
The same goes for his godson, Barry Bonds. If not for the steroid stuff, his selection would be an even easier pick than Mays. And the fact is, even with all the steroid stuff, Bonds still is a good pick, a biomechanical machine who was one of the greatest who ever lived long before he allegedly picked up the juice. If he’d had a sudden and horrible injury after the 1998 season (which is right around where he allegedly began to use PEDs), I once noted that he would “have retired with 411 HRs, 1216 RBIs, eight All-Star appearances, three MVPs, eight Gold Gloves, seven Silver Sluggers, and an OPS of .966 that would be 15th all-time (as of 2012), ahead of such immortals as Willie Mays, Frank Robinson, Ty Cobb and Duke Snider. Had he kept going after 1998 without (alleged) steroid-use, he still likely would have gotten to 500 HRs, possibly even 600.”
So, yeah, Barry Bonds is one of the greatest living ballplayers, with an asterisk, if you’d like.
And then…it gets hard. Oh, who am I kidding, it still is easy. Hank Aaron. Too many people think of him as being just about home runs, forgetting that he was a great ballplayer anyway. He remains third all-time in hits, for pete’s sake! Even if you were to remove all 755 of his home runs from his career hit total of 3,771, he’d still have 3,016 hits, which is more than Wade Boggs! His RBI total of 2,297 remains the most in history, as does his 6,856 total bases and 1,477 extra-base hits. A legend of the game.
It is the fourth and final pick that is hardest. After all, with the first three picks, you feel comfortable, knowing “oh, I didn’t choose Bonds or Aaron, but I still have three more picks left to make”. Well, once you get to the fourth, there is no safety net. You can only add in one more player, and the rest just end up being also-rans.
And it is here where the specializations and fragmentations of baseball really hit you. Your mind becomes full of questions: The choices left are an outfielder (Henderson), a catcher (Bench), and three pitchers (Martinez, Koufax and Seaver). How does the fact he primarily played catcher help or hurt Bench? What about the fact the pitchers only played every four or five games? There’s already three outfielders on this list, why add a fourth? And Koufax was really only good for about half of his career- before that he was just a project who showed moments of brilliance but was hardly the guy you’d want on the mound in a big game. Is Seaver overrated due to the fact he is so identifiable with New York City? Pedro Martinez also had a definite dominating peak like Sandy Koufax, but he played longer, his peak came during a much more hitter-friendly era and was better start-to-finish on his career than Koufax was, does that put him above Koufax? I don’t know.
But, after much deliberation of these questions, I remembered something very important, words of wisdom passed down through generations.
Those words, of course, are the words that Rickey Henderson reportedly would say before games while standing naked, practicing his swing in front of a mirror:
“Rickey’s the best! Rickey’s the best!”
And, yes, Rickey is, was and will always remain among the best. The career leader in stolen bases and runs scored, possessing a WAR better than anyone else on the list who I haven’t already chosen, second in career walks (behind only, of course, Barry Bonds) and with an electrifying personality and love of the game, Rickey Henderson is my pick for the fourth head of baseball’s Mount Rushmore of Greatest Living Ballplayers.
Apologies to Mr. Bench, Mr. Martinez, Mr. Seaver and Mr. Koufax.
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LINKS!
Speaking of Barry Bonds, an interesting article from ESPN’s Bonnie Ford on how he is now big into cycling, even using his money to support a women’s cycling team
Another ESPN piece: “The Greatest Hitter Who Ever Lived On”, by Wright Thompson, on Ted Williams’ lone surviving child Claudia, and the complicated relationship she has with him even in death
An oral history of Big League Chew
The folks at Baseball Prospectus have a new stat called “Deserved Runs Allowed”, an alternative to ERA that takes even more into account the things that a pitcher can and cannot control
Jeff Sullivan looks at Andrew McCutchen’s bad start and finds the possible culprit
Vladimir Guerrero’s kid is a chip off the old block
SELF-PROMOTION OF THE WEEK: I put some context to Babe Ruth’s first home run.
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I’m going to be a bit more busy at the Baseball Continuum over the next week, so keep an eye out for that. But, don’t worry, HOVG fans! I’m going to have another great thing next week, on… overrated and underrated players, both now and in the past!
So… see you then!
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