Greatest Baseball Player

A month or so back I finished a book, Baseball 100 by Joe Posnanski. It ranks the greatest players ever. What a daunting task, choosing the greatest baseball players of all time ("all times" as Muhammad Ali used to say). How does one evaluate over the years, from dead ball to juiced ball eras, from the high pitcher's mound to the flatter, from bus or train rides to opponents' cities to transcontinental flights, and more? What about the segregated years, with Major League Baseball and the Negro League? Add the Latin and even Asian players later. What carries more weight--hitting and to a lesser extent baserunning (offense) or fielding (defense)? How to rate everyday players compared to pitchers? What about other changes in the game, from the designated hitter and perfectly groomed cookie-cutter fields to starting pitchers lasting only six or seven innings to be followed by a relief specialist throwing upper 90-mph heat? All that said, Ponanski has done a marvelous job of rating and writing. No doubt there will be disagreements. But that's a lot of the fun of such lists. There are no definitive answers/choices, but there really are definitive answers/choices--our favorites! Ponanski rails on Bowie Kuhn's absence at Henry Aaron's 715th. In mocking his excuse, he adds, "Kuhn is in the Hall of Fame. He might not be the least deserving member, but he's in the photograph." I'm still chuckling. Several things caught my eye and are things I have thought about over the years. Willie Mays is generally considered, in almost all rankings, if not the greatest all-time player, at least in the top two or three. Yet, his lifetime batting average was .301, barely above the gold standard for hitters. (I know, I know. Al Kaline, Mickey Mantle, Carl Yaztrzemski, and others didn't have lifetime BAs of .300. Of course I consider them legitimate Hall of Famers. And had he not been injured for much of his career, Mantle might be right up there with Mays!) I'm not knocking Mays at all; I, too, consider him one of the very top players, if not the best ever. But consider this. With his lifetime BA of .301, how great must his other abilities/skills have been? Hitting for power. Baserunning. Fielding/Defense, both catching and throwing. Everyone remembers Mays' catch in the '54 World Series of the ball off the bat of Vic Wertz. It was astounding! Yet, I remember reading somewhere (although I can't remember exactly where) one of his teammates agreeing it was great catch. But he added he saw him make many other better catches. Better?!?!?! Many others?!?!?! Wow! Toss in a black man playing in the Major Leagues in the still often racially hostile cities of the '50s and '60s. I wonder if position players and pitchers should have their own "greatest" categories. Weighing greatness between a pitcher and an everyday player is tough. There are so many different criteria. Sandy Koufax rates position #70 on the list. He only had five really great years. Granted, they were likely the five greatest consecutive years any pitcher ever had. He was virtually unhittable. But it was only five years. Hmmm..... Is that ranking legitimate? I think so. I can see where some might disagree, but I always return to something Mickey Mantle said after striking out for the third or fourth time against Koufax in a World Series game. Koufax threw a three-or four-hit shutout, whiffing about 15 Yankees. Returning in frustration to the dugout, Mantle threw his bat, swearing, "How're we supposed to hit that shit!" I don't think it was really a question. Oh, and from early in the game, the Yankees knew, with a bum arm, Koufax could throw nothing but fastballs! Who was the greatest hitter? What criteria? Power? Average? Both? Of all the hitters I've seen, in person, Ted Williams and Miguel Cabrera are the best. I just remember Williams' last few years, seeing him hit at Tiger Stadium in the late '50s. I remember, at age 39 or so, he parked one off the facing of the third deck in right right field. If I recall correctly, at the time, only two or three balls had been hit over that third deck. I think, his second to last year in his late '30s, he led the league hitting .388. He slumped the next year, a year old, hittig only .328. In those marvelous years Cabrera had with the Tigers, I marveled at how he hit. It was as if he was hitting 95 mph fastballs off a tee. No shifts on him; he was as likely to hit a 400-foot home run to right center as to left center. And then there was the time he caught up with a 99 mph Mariano Rivera fastball, depositing it about 440 feet to straight-away center--to win the game. What about character? It's no secret I think character, good character, matters. That's especially so in government, politics, business, and other areas. What about baseball? Should a player who used PEDs, before they were banned by MLB, be penalized by exclusion from the lost of greatest players? After all, the commissioner who looked the other way when PEDs were helping baseball to revive after the labor disputes of the '90s was inducted into the Hall of Fame. What about someone who gambled on games, perhaps not even his own? Shoeless Joe Jackson? Excluded? So how do we evaluate Gaylord Perry, with him admitting he threw the spitter? As one of my buddies facetiously noted, "I think the spitter was illegal." Does his cheating eliminate him from consideration as "great?" I don't know all of the players Posnanski has in his Greatest 100. I was surprised at the inclusion of several, although Posnanski makes very convincing arguments. I'm not sure I agree. But that's the fun of such lists. One can be wrong, but right at the same time.