Major League Baseball recently unveiled its team of the century as we entered the new millennium (actually that won’t happen till 2001, but we’ll play along). They turned the voting over to the fans, with mixed results. The fans got a lot of it right, but were way off base on some others, in my humble opinion. Let’s run through the picks at each position:
CATCHER
The fans were pretty much on the mark here, voting in Johnny Bench (1) and Yogi Berra (2). These two belong at the top here, with Mickey Cochrane being next in line. I’m not sure about who’s 1 and who’s 2 though. Bench was a great power hitter and an outstanding defensive catcher with an incredible arm, but Berra was no slouch as a catcher and was probably a better, more consistent hitter with great power himself. Bench won two MVP’s and Berra won three. Berra actually has a higher career on base percentage and slugging percentage. My vote goes to Berra.
FIRST BASE
Lou Gehrig was the leading vote getter by a comfortable margin over second place Mark McGwire. I agree with the fans here, Gehrig was a fearsome slugger on some great Yankee teams before ALS struck him down, and McGwire has moved himself up with his last three years. Hank Greenberg had a very short career because of the war, but put up some impressive numbers when he did play. One of the resources I checked in researching this column was the Sporting News TSNdex, an attempt to evaluate performance in the context of the seasons when they occurred. One of the reports they developed displayed their 100 Best Individual Hitting Seasons of all time. Greenberg only played eight seasons, but five of them show up on the 100 best seasons list. Had he enjoyed a longer career he would be a strong contender for number one at this position.
SECOND BASE
Jackie Robinson led the voting here, followed by Rogers Hornsby. Jackie Robinson was an amazing individual who endured terrible harassment to break the racial discrimination that existed in the game for so long, but he is not the best second baseman of all time, though he is a close second to Hornsby. Hornsby had two seasons make TSN’s list and had much higher career numbers than Robinson. Joe Morgan is right up there also.
SHORTSTOP
Not surprisingly Cal Ripken tops the voting here, with Ernie Banks finishing second. A special veterans panel added Honus Wagner. Wagner gets my vote here, finishing with higher career raw numbers than Ripken despite playing in the dead ball era. Ripken is to be commended for his iron man feat of consecutive games played, but Wagner was a better player.
THIRD BASE
No argument here, Mike Schmidt has offensive numbers that belong right at the top of all the hitters regardless of position and the fans correctly voted him #1. Schmidt has three seasons among TSN’s top 100, with his 1981 season ranked as the twelfth best of all time. I would have voted Eddie Mathews number two ahead of Brooks Robinson. Robinson was a tremendous defensive player who worked hard to make himself a pretty good hitter, but he was not in Mathews league at the plate.
OUTFIELD
This is where I have my biggest beef. Ruth, Aaron, Williams, Mays, DiMaggio, Mantle and Cobb I agree wholeheartedly with, but I have big problems with one of the other two picks, and lesser problems with the other one. Pete Rose does not belong on this list – I don’t think he is one of the top 50 outfielders of all time. Rose Supporters hang their hat on his all time hit record, but he played a long, long time to get it. Rose did have 67 more hits than Cobb but he batted 2,619 more times to get them, a batting average of .026. But Cobb did make the team, so let’s compare Pete with Stan Musial, who finished just out of the top nine and right behind Rose. Musial finished with 3,630 hits, on the all time list. So Rose had 626 more hits than Stan the Man, but he went to the plate 3,081 more times, for a mighty .203 average. Musial also had considerably more power. Musial is eleventh on the all time OPS list at .976. Pete’s is .784, behind the likes of Mike Hargrove (.787) and a host of others. I won’t get into comparing him to others who might belong on this list because I could go on forever.
I also think that Barry Bonds has been a better player than Ken Griffey, Jr. Bonds edges him on career OPS, .968 to .949, and has 460 stolen bases compared to Griffey’s 167. These stats are thru 1999, so obviously Bonds is widening the margins now with his tremendous start, while Griffey is wallowing in the low.200’s in batting average.
PITCHERS
The voting ended in this order: Nolan Ryan, Sandy Koufax, Cy Young, Roger Clemens, Bob Gibson and Walter Johnson. I would replace Gibson and Young with Lefty Grove and Warren Spahn, and I think Koufax, Grove and Johnson belong on top of this list. Grove and Spahn, along with Christy Mathewson were names by the review panel. Koufax’s career was cut short by his aching arm, but he was virtually unhittable for his last four years, and pitched a no hitter in each of those years. Grove and Johnson are an afterthought to many in this generation, but I would urge fans to check their statistics, as well as accounts of their exploits, and be amazed. They were great, great pitchers with serious heat.