Confession time: I’ve only been a baseball fan since 2004. It all started for me on July 19th, 2004, when the Cardinals visited Wrigley Field for a brief two-game series, which, due to a quirk in the scheduling, would actually be the last games between the teams for the rest of the season. I had just moved from St. Louis to Olathe, Kansas, having just finished 8th grade, so I had nothing to do for the rest of the summer, kind of like Scotty Smalls in The Sandlot. I basically spent all day watching TV, browsing the internet and generally contributing nothing to society.
I was browsing channels in the kitchen while eating dinner that night, and stumbled across the Cards-Cubs game on WGN. Now, I never hated baseball or anything, but it didn’t do much for me. Still, I figured I’d watch – if anything, it helped me feel less homesick to watch a St. Louis sports team a few hundred miles away. Fortunately, I picked a hell of a game to watch – a game that would eventually become known to Cardinals fans as “The Zambrano Game.” Jim Edmonds took Big Z deep, and Zambrano shouted and raved at Edmonds as he rounded the bases. A couple of innings later, after Rolen sent another of his pitches into the outfield stands, Zambrano plunked Edmonds and was ejected. Not legendary drama on the level of the Pine-Tar Game, but still pretty entertaining stuff. I made up my mind to make sure to catch tomorrow’s game as well.
Long story short, Matt Morris got shelled, the Cardinals were deep in the hole, and Albert Pujols more or less single-handedly snatched victory from the jaws of defeat, going 5-for-5 with three homers and a double. His last homer gave the Cardinals the lead for good. From then on, I was hooked. I convinced my dad to purchase MLB Extra Innings later that week, and I’ve been locked in ever since.
I’ve been fortunate to watch some pretty great Cardinal teams over the past few years, but obviously, I’ve missed a whole hell of a lot of baseball. One thing I love about baseball is its sense of history, and I love to spend hours at a time reading up on the players of years past from whatever source I can get it – ESPN Classic articles, Bill James’ New Historical Baseball Abstract, discussions on BaseballThinkFactory, whatever. But nothing is a replacement for actually getting to see the guys play. So, without further rambling, I present my All-Time “Players I Wish I Had Seen” Team.
Pretty much the consensus choice for the greatest catcher in baseball history, everybody knows that Josh Gibson was denied his chance to play in the Major Leagues due to segregation and instead became the greatest star in all the Negro Leagues. However, the fact that he didn’t play in the Majors may actually have helped his fame, in a way – he would be more of a household name if he had been a Major Leaguer, but the stories about him wouldn’t be nearly as colorful, like the anecdote about hitting a baseball out of Yankee Stadium (something nobody has ever accomplished, not even Mickey Mantle, who hit baseballs almost as hard as he hit the sauce), or the story about him hitting a ball so far and high into the night sky that it fell back into the field the next day.
Gibson was a stocky, powerfully-built man, with thick arms and legs and broad shoulders. It’s not a stretch to speculate that he may very well have hit baseballs as hard, as fast and as far as anyone in the game’s history. His life was tragic – besides the forced segregation of his baseball-playing career, his wife died while in labor, and Gibson himself was to die of a brain tumor aged only 35 – but he made the most of it.
I imagine that most of you right now are wondering, “Who in the hell is Ted Kluszewski?” I didn’t know myself until just a couple of years ago, when I was compiling a list of players who had hit 40 or more homers in a season while homering more often than they struck out. It was a list populated with some legendary names: Rogers Hornsby, Joe DiMaggio, those types of guys. Right in the middle of this list, I came across Ted Kluszewski, who had three such seasons in a row in the 1950s: 40-49-47 in homers from 1953-1955, with corresponding totals of 34-35-40 strikeouts.
Needless to say, I was impressed. I’ve never managed to dig up much information on Kluszewski otherwise, but the stat line has me intrigued enough on its own. Baseball Reference lists Kluszewski as 6′2, 225 – big, but not Frank Howard massive. So basically, you’ve got a pretty big guy who hits the ball hard a lot and puts the bat on the ball just about every time he’s at the plate. Those types of players are pretty fun to watch.
Before he became an incompetent ESPN baseball “analyst” and color commentator, Joe Morgan was primarily known for being really freaking awesome as a player, winning two MVP awards in the 1970s, being named by Bill James as the greatest second baseman in the history of baseball, and so on. There’s nothing he didn’t do well – he hit for decent averages, he walked a ton, he rarely grounded into double plays, he had a pretty good amount of power, he stole tons of bases, and was a solid fielder. There’s really not a lot to say about Joe Morgan – he was just awesome, and I like awesome stuff, and wish I could’ve witnessed him awesome-ing it up.
Awesome.
I’m probably starting to make you guys feel really old right now. Wade Boggs? The dude just retired in 1999. Well, like I said, I didn’t start watching baseball until five years after that. And besides, I’m referring to 1980s Wade Boggs, the Wade Boggs that opened his career by batting .349 in 104 games and then proceeded to win five batting titles in the next six years, as well as leading the AL in on-base percentage in six of the next seven by merit of walking 90 to 100 times each year.
Wade Boggs wasn’t a good baserunner – in fact, he was clumsy and slow and poor, and probably cost the Red Sox some runs due to this. He was considered a decent, if indifferent fielder. He didn’t have much power – a career slugging percentage of .443, and only one season with more than 11 homers (that aberrant 1987 season where he randomly hit 24 homers and proceeded to hit no more than 8 in a season until 1994). But, my god, he could hit the baseball around the field. And he did have nearly 600 doubles, so it’s not like he was the original Ichiro or anything.
Plus, he once downed like 200 beers on a flight or something, which earns him a spot in my All-Time Awesome Guys Hall of Fame, which will be a separate post in the future.
Yeah, since I only started watching baseball four years ago, I never saw The Wizard of Ahs*, at least not beyond a few hazy memories of him in the twilight of his career. I would’ve loved to be able to see him in the 1980s, where he managed to be a legitimate MVP candidate in spite of OPS+ numbers of less than 100, due to the fact that, by popular and critical acclaim, Ozzie Smith is the single greatest defensive player in baseball history.
Everybody knows that, of course, so I’m just going to go off on a tangent here and make the point that Ozzie Smith was a much better offensive player than most people remember or are willing to give him credit for. His career OPS+ was a rather pedestrian 82, but that comes with several caveats:
A) Before the age of 29, Ozzie’s OPS+ was 72. Afterwards, it was 95. So, he went from pathetic to slightly below the average offensive player.
B) Ozzie’s OPS+ in his prime years was very OBP-heavy, and as a result, OPS+ underrates his offensive contributions by weighting slugging percentage the same. Hilariously, Ozzie’s career OBP of .337 is actually higher than his career slugging percentage of .328. That’s a poor slugging percentage by any standard, but remember than in the 1980s, it wasn’t uncommon for the league slugging percentage to be less than .400.
C) Ozzie was one of the greatest basestealers of all-time, swiping 580 bags while being caught only 148 times, good for a 79% success rate, significantly above the typical “break-even” point of 75%. And the break even point was lower than that for most of Ozzie’s career, due to the lower offensive environment in which he played.
D) While the 1980s were the beginning of the end for no-hit, good-field shortstops, with the arrivals of players like Cal Ripken Jr., Alan Trammell and Barry Larkin, they were still the exception to the rule, and teams regularly ran players like Andres Thomas, Angel Salazar, and Rafael Santana out onto the field. Granted, those are just about the worst of a bad bunch, but the 1980s were not the golden age of shortstops that the current era of baseball is. As a result, Ozzie wasn’t just in his prime an average to slightly above average offensive player, he was a WELL above-average shortstop, even as a hitter.
*Most people refer to Ozzie as “The Wizard of Oz,” a nice pun on his name and on the classic 1939 movie, but I’ve actually read before from some older baseball fans that his nickname was originally “The Wizard of Ahs,” referring to the “oohs” and “ahhs” that his fantastic play at shortstop elicited. I prefer the latter, myself.
If there’s a red-blooded Cardinal fan that wouldn’t choose Stan Musial as their left-fielder, I have yet to meet him or her. I could write forever about Musial, but I couldn’t do a better job of it than Joe Posnanski did in his essay a couple of months ago, so I won’t try. If you were making a list of the greatest baseball players of all time, Musial would be a shoo-in for the top 15, and would make the top 10 on most lists. If you made a list of the nicest baseball players of all-time, he might be #1.
Stan Musial is probably the most underrated top-fifteen player in the history of baseball. Everybody who really knows baseball knows Stan Musial, but he’s not a household name like Mays, Cobb, Ruth, Gehrig, and others, while he certainly should be.
I’ll close this by quoting my favorite excerpt from Poz’s essay:
“To me, the best description of Musial through his stats is to say that 16 times in his career Musial hit 30 or more doubles. It might not make for a great movie. But it tells you that all his baseball life, Stan Musial hit baseballs into gaps and he ran hard out of the box.”
Mickey Mantle. The man, the myth, the legend. Quite arguably the most talented baseball player that ever put on a uniform, capable of hitting 500-foot homers while drunk and/or hungover, with the speed of a gazelle and an unmatched eye for hitting. Not quite the greatest centerfielder of all-time, but he’d finish no lower than 4th on any respectable poll, in a class with Mays, Cobb, and Tris Speaker, and well above his once-teammate Joe DiMaggio, who, quite frankly, couldn’t hold The Mick’s jockstrap.
Mickey Mantle was so good for so long it defies explanation. He finished first in the AL in OPS+ an amazing nine times. His career OPS+ was 172, better than Albert Pujols’ current career OPS+ of 170, and not only has Pujols not started his decline phase, the Mick was a centerfielder – AP is a first baseman. Wow.
In 1956 and 1957, Mantle put up back-to-back seasons as good as any two-season stretch by just about any other player in baseball history:
1956: .353/.464/.705, 210 OPS+, Triple Crown
1957: .365/.512/.665, 223 OPS+
Those seasons would make a first baseman the obvious choice for MVP. A centerfielder who puts up those numbers is nothing short of a God. To think that Mantle did this while suffering from the effects of osteomyelitis, as well as ravaging his body through his own party-hard lifestyle, only makes you wonder, could he possibly have been even better?
For as incredible as he was, Mantle was a tragic, even pathetic, figure in ways. But it was his flaws that made him so endearing and so beloved. I’ve read stories of grown men who wept for Mantle’s death, who were transformed back into their 14-year-old selves when they finally got the chance to meet their boyhood idol. Mantle came to lament his past in the later years of his life, and it’s hard not to feel a bit of sadness when you hear quotes like, “If I’d known I was going to live so long I’d have taken better care of myself.” Bob Costas put it wonderfully when he eulogized Mantle:
“In the last year, Mickey Mantle, always so hard on himself, finally came to accept and appreciate the distinction between a role model and a hero. The first he often was not, the second he always will be. And, in the end, people got it.”
Hank Aaron, until very recently, was Major League Baseball’s all-time home run leader, but I still wonder if he gets the respect he deserves. Nobody fails to recognize that he’s one of the all-time greats, but the names of Babe Ruth, Willie Mays, et al, seem to have taken on a more mythic status – and while Hank is no Babe, you could make a strong argument that Hammerin’ Hank was every bit as good as the Say Hey Kid. Hard to believe, maybe, but a look at the numbers bears it out. They were virtually identical hitters:
Aaron: .305/.374/.555, 155 OPS+, 76% stolen base rate
Mays: .302/.384/.557, 156 OPS+, 76% stolen base rate
Mays has a clear defensive advantage, but Aaron makes up most if not all of that ground due to his extra 1,447 career plate appearances – an extra two-and-a-half seasons of the same quality of hitting. If push came to shove, I’d probably pick Mays over Aaron, but the argument for Mays isn’t as decisive as you might suspect.
Mentally, I’ve always had an image of Aaron as the original Vlad Guerrero – high average hitter who walked a bit but was never near the league leaders in that category, lots of power, and the ability to hit bad balls out of the park with authority. (I have no way to know if that last part is true of Aaron, so feel free to correct me.) Both were right fielders as well; Aaron has a fine reputation as a fielder, and though Guerrero isn’t the greatest fielder, he’s certainly garnered plenty of attention for his arm, which is one of the strongest in the league, even if his accuracy occasionally leaves something to be desired.
All-in-all, Hank Aaron was easily one of the greatest players in MLB history (well, duh), but for whatever reason, his name isn’t spoken with the same hushed reverence as the likes of Mays, Ruth, Cobb, and others. It certainly should be.
Starting Pitcher: Sandy Koufax
I made the choice for starting pitcher a lot more difficult than it otherwise might have been by limiting myself to one, instead of an entire starting rotation. It was hard to narrow down the list – some of the names that just missed the cut include Gibson, Seaver, Feller, Walter Johnson, and Steve Carlton – but when it comes down to it, I don’t think there’s any pitcher more popular or revered than Sandy Koufax, or one with as much intrigue. He’s one of baseball’s romantic heroes – a legendary player who was, in his own time, the most popular player in either league, more popular, even, than Mays and Mantle and Williams, who threw four no-hitters including one perfect game, who held the single-season strikeout record until Nolan Ryan broke it, and who had a sub-1.00 ERA in the World Series, baseball’s biggest stage.
To me, the defining moment in Koufax’s career is his Game 1 start in the 1963 World Series, against the New York Yankees, 104-win juggernaut who finished second in the American League in runs scored and featured Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris and Yogi Berra. Koufax went the distance while striking out 15 batters and allowing only two runs. Koufax struck out the first five batters he faced, and of the first 14 batters he faced, only one even managed to get the ball into the infield. Here’s how those batters went down:
Strikeout, strikeout, strikeout, strikeout, strikeout, foul popout, strikeout, groundout, foul popout, strikeout, strikeout, strikeout, strikeout, foul popout.
10 strikeouts, three foul popouts, and one groundout by Clete Boyer. Utter domination.
Pitching has always been my favorite part of baseball ever since I became a fan. To me, the aesthetic beauty of a good pitch is unmatched by any aspect of any other sport; I’ve always loved to watch pitchers with big, knee-buckling curves in particular. And very few, if any, pitchers have ever had knee-buckling curves as renowned as Sandy Koufax.
Mariano Rivera may be nearly a household name, but Hoyt Wilhelm is still the all-time greatest relief pitcher. He was so good for so long, starting his career at the late age of 29 and still managing to squeeze out a 21-year-long career, throwing 2,254.3 innings with a stellar 146 ERA+, including a 155 ERA+ -after the age of 40! Wilhelm was such a good pitcher that in 1959, when the Orioles gave him nearly a full year’s worth of starts, he pitched 226 innings, posted a 2.19 ERA (173 ERA+), and, had the award yet existed, would’ve been a shoo-in for the Cy Young.
The key to Wilhelm’s longevity, in addition to his quality, was that he was a knuckleballer. Knuckleballers, due to the low-velocity pitches they throw, put much less stress on their arms than the Pedro Martinezes and AJ Burnetts of the world. So, a pitcher of the quality of Hoyt Wilhelm, starting at the late age of 29, throwing low velocity pitches for his entire career – it’s actually not too surprising that he pitched all the way up to the age of 49.
So, there you have it – my (extremely long) personal list of the players at each position I most wish I had been fortunate enough to see play. It’s a shame video archiving wasn’t implemented for such a long time, and that such archives usually aren’t released for public consumption. I’d pay a lot of money for extended highlights of the careers of any of the players above, and tons of others as well. Hopefully, I have enough baseball watching ahead of me that someday I’ll be able to tell younger generations about the great players they weren’t fortunate enough to see. And laugh at their misfortune.
Nice. Third Man, you’re a good writer. Keep plugging away at it.
I know I’ve mentioned this book before, but you should try and track down a copy of “Beyond The Shadow of the Senators.” It really gives you an idea of just how good Josh Gibson was and a glimpse into the Homestead Grays juggernaut.