Graham, our friend over at Baseball Past and Present, has embarked on a cool project to find the 9 best players in history (by position, obviously.) He’s narrowed down the choices on a ballot to make it easy, such as picking the best center fielder among Willie Mays, Mickey Mantle, Joe DiMaggio, Ty Cobb, Tris Speaker, and Ken Griffey. Easy, right?
He’s also commissioned an artist to make a set of team cards for the winning players. Neat stuff–go over and fill out your ballot today!
Love this. I do it all the time. I think the most interesting debate is pitcher – where the most interesting player to feature is… Babe Ruth.
I’ll take Mays because of his defense(better than all the others except maybe Griffey) and he’s the best overall hitter besides Mantle and he played partly in a terrible era for hitters(60’s).
I wish the ballot had space for reserves. I had to leave off Jackie Robinson, but he’d be the greatest utility man you could possibly have. (Unless you leave Honus out of the lineup.)
Andy…my apologies but I went out for a bit and wasn’t able to reply first. 🙂 Anyway, I’m surprised that Griffey even makes the list. He only produced 4.1 WAR after age 30. Granted, he was amazing pre-age 30 but the same is true of the other CFs on the list. And they all continued to produce post age 30.
WHAT THE HELL??????????? You’re supposed to sit at your computer waiting for every new post on this blog!!!
Hey, I covered your morning post, it was Dr. Doom’s turn!
Sorry, guys! Busy doing other stuff. But actually, I already cast my ballot this morning.
Also, as a clarification for everyone, you can write-in candidates, as well.
Ed, don’t be surprised that Griffey makes the list: the ballot has 20 names at each position, so Griffey is an easy inclusion. However, even with 20 names at each position, there are omissions; for example, 2B is missing Craig Biggio, which was noted in the comments section over at BPP.
Thanks for the clarification. I read Andy’s post to mean that they had already narrowed CF down to 6 finalists. And in my mind he’s clearly 6th on the names that Andy mentioned.
Where does Ken Griffey, Jr. rate in the Pantheon Of Center Fielders?
Cobb, Speaker, Mays and Mantle are all clearly greater than him in both career and peak. (5th)
Dimaggio doesn’t have the career, but he does have the peak, plus the great defensive rep (6th)
If you consider Negro Leagues, Oscar Charleton probably has him beat on peak, though it’s not well documented (7th?)
If you consider the 19th century, Billy Hamilton might have a better peak, although there’s much consideration for era and timeline adjustments.
So at best he’s 6th, at worst 8th. If you’re an extreme Griffey fan you might move him past Dimaggio to 5th, that’s the very highest I can see ranking him. Then again, some fans may discount Cobb and Speaker altogether. I would rank him 7th.
I was a lot more surprised to see Cesar Cedeno than Griffey. I suspect they might be going by WAR, plus some credible Negro League options. No Biggio??? Heresy.
I was really disappointed that Biggio was missed (I was the commenter who noted it, by the way, although I use my real name over on that particular blog). Especially because Dustin Pedroia and Robinson Cano are on the ballot. Sure, they’re great players, but their bodies of work are incomplete, so we just know a lot more about Biggio.
Also, as I noted over there, I was hoping Edgar Martinez would get a nod as a 3B, but he didn’t. Other than that, I don’t really have any major quibbles with the ballots. Maybe I would’ve included Gary Sheffield. I’m confused by Dick Allen at third rather than first. Why is Manny Ramirez listed in right? But those things are minor. Biggio is really the only thing worth getting worked up about, and even that’s not that big of a deal, because I’m guessing that the only people who would’ve voted for Biggio will remember him anyway, even without name recognition on the ballot. So I guess it’s all fine.
Taking a second look at the second base candidates, I see Steve Sax also, he of the 17.5 career WAR. I think Biggio has to be an accidental omission. Cano and Pedroia but no Chase Utley either.
Ahhhh, Dr. Doom, I found where in the comments section the author of the article/poll admits that he just mentally whiffed on Biggio.
Kind of odd though that he didn’t revise the ballot to include Biggio once his mistake was pointed out to him. I doubt he had received many completed ballots before then.
Yeah, exactly. Steve Sax? Seriously? Willie Randolph had 60.5 WAR, he’s the next worst omission after Biggio. Actually, that would put him 13th on the list of 20 as far as WAR goes, between Sandberg and Jeff Kent.
I thought about Rickey in left over Bonds(pre-steroids),just for the superhuman speed effect,then I checked their WAR totals.
Bonds 8+ WAR seasons(pre-2000): 7(12 overall)
Rickey 8+ WAR seasons career: 3
Case closed. You probably wouldn’t want to be risking an out for a stolen base anyway with this lineup. Perhaps only Davey Lopes would have the “GO” sign at all times.(all-time leader in CS%)
Your logic is unassailable, but I chose Rickey anyway — on the grounds that the team would steamroller any imaginable opponents anyway, so why not have they guy I’d rather watch?
Bstar:
I believe Carlos Beltran has Lopes beat unless the standard is 500 attempted steals
Really, I did not know that, thanx Paul.
Love this sort of thing. I hope he’ll show the breakdown of votes received when all is said and done; I’m curious to see what the biggest landslide will be (RF? SS?), among other things. Also it’s interesting to see so many current (even young!) players on a “greatest all-time” list; it’s so hard to judge where Evan Longoria or Troy Tulowitzki (say) belong given how early it is in their careers yet.
It definitely won’t be RF. I’m guessing a number of people will put Ruth as a pitcher, but others will put him in right. He’ll probably be on almost every ballot, but his position will be different.
I think you’ll see Bench at C and Schmidt at 3B as two of the bigger landslides.
Schmidt is my favorite for the biggest landslide. I wouldn’t be surprised if Wagner were close. I think Bench will face opposition from Josh Gibson. I also think Gehrig will do very well at first, but I bet some people will choose Pujols. My guess for the composite is that it will look like this (in Graham’s order):
C: Bench
1B: Gehrig
2B: Hornsby
3B: Schmidt
SS: Wagner
RF: Ruth
CF: Cobb/Mays/Mantle – I seriously have no idea.
LF: Williams
P: Koufax
P and CF are the two hardest to call, by far, especially since many will start Ruth at pitcher, further muddying the waters (I did that, actually). We’ll see, though. I can’t wait to see the results. I’m not sure I have the patience for
Imagine Ruth won in RF and P. What would happen then?
I wouldn’t have put Ruth on the pitchers ballot first because he’s obviously a better player as a right fielder and second because there’s so many good pitchers, he wouldn’t be missed
Actually hadn’t occurred to me that you couldn’t pick Ruth for both positions (I didn’t choose him at P); that adds an interesting twist. It would be weird if he splits deep enough to miss the team entirely!
It surprises me a bit to hear that people expect 3B to be the biggest landslide. It seems to me there’s a bit of vulnerability there — Boggs, Brett, C. Jones are all great, plus there’s Longoria for those who prefer the “young player” approach. I’d expect SS to be a much bigger lock. Will be fun to see!
Great stuff.
I admit I showed some love for a couple of favorites (Trammell, Kaline) and some close seconds that I thought may not get the respect they deserve (Matthews, Mantle) and if it came down to pretty much a coin toss for me I picked the one less likely to be the consensus candidate (Musial, Morgan, Seaver). I stuck with Gehrig because it’s possible Pujols may benefit too much from his active status and Gibson because I have no doubt that Bench will get the popular vote.
I suspect if you assembled a team of the worst players on those lists and started them all as rookies that you’d still probably be looking at a pennant almost every year for a dozen years or so…
Yeah, Hartvig. I voted for the guys I thought would make the best team, but I’m actually regretting that a little. I kind of wish that I had voted for some people I really like rather than just going the boring route; however, I really want to see the composite list, and I didn’t want to mess it up. Of course, one vote probably won’t mess anything up, so I should have just had fun with it. I mean, no matter what team you assemble, it can’t possibly be bad, so who cares, right? Oh well. If this is my biggest regret in 2012, I think I’ll be able to say I’ve had a good year.
I’m a little concerned that old Honus Wagner may not get the support he needs since he’s maybe not a familiar as some of the old timers are and I don’t know how much baseball history followers of that website are aware of- but I’m hoping that based on it’s name (Baseball Past & Present) it means they’re a pretty sophisticated bunch, just like us.
Besides, Alan Trammell is who I want to be when I grow up in spite of the fact that he’s actually more than 2 years younger than I am.
Who else could possibly beat him, Hartvig? By the way, I’m sorta proud/sorta pissed at myself for not picking my boy Greg Maddux but I went ahead with the Big Train.
Jeter- ARod- Ripken- Ozzie…
Not to say that they’re better (especially Jeter) just that to a casual fan, depending on their age, those names are going to be a lot more familiar.
I just don’t know how big the voter pool is. There are a lot of fans out there who’s knowledge of the history of the game pretty much starts when they were about 8 or 9 years old and everything before that is blank slate except for the Babe and 1 or 2 others- although in truth there are also a LOT of baseball fans who are more knowledgable of it’s history than fans of other sports.
In addition and as much as I love old Honus, my own thoughts on how much to “discount” some of the earlier achievements in the game. After all, just a decade before Wagner started playing a 20 year old kid managed to win 45 games and pitch almost 600 innings and pitchers were still among the league leaders in batting as well. I think the curve is steepest by far leading up to 1893 (60’6″) but still pretty steep until 1920 and so on. I’m not settled yet in my own mind just how much this effects how players compare over time.
There’s not a doubt in my mind that Wagner would still be a great player if he were to play today. But that he would necessarily be better than Ripken or Rodriguez of that I am not as certain.
This has been done to death, half of the answers there is no argument over. If you are going to make a dream team it is more interesting to have other criteria like by decade or age or team etc.
I’m a little late to the party here, but questions I have:
Are we selecting:
1) the very best player at each position
2) the nine players who would make the best TEAM, taking defense and batting order position into consideration?
Are we playing for a game, a series, a month, a year?
If the answer is the first, I’d go with:
C: Johnny Bench (Josh Gibson, Berra also considered)
IB: Gehrig
2B: Joe Morgan (Hornsby, Collins also considered)
3B: Schmidt
SS: Wagner
LF: Barry Bonds (Ted Williams,Musial also considered)
CF: Mays (Cobb, Speaker, Mantle, Charleton also considered)
RF: Ruth
P: Walter Johnson (Pedro, Grove, Pete Alexander, Clemens also considered)
If it’s the second, with such a stacked hitting lineup, I’d sacrifice some offense for more great defense:
2B: E. Collins
LF: Barry Bonds
RF: Ruth
1B: Gehrig
CF: Mays
3B: Schmidt
C: Bench
SS: Ozzie Smith
P: Walter Johnson
Everyone above was a truly great defensive player in their prime, except Ruth and Gehrig. However, these are the two of the least important defensive slots.
Topper009 is somewhat right; this GOAT talk is more interesting by era or team or some other criteria (state? height? hair color?).
Of course, old Walter could just pitch to the score since he’d probably be sporting a double digit lead by the end of the first inning most of the time…
Well, the other team could have their use of _any other_ pitcher in history besides whom the “All Time Nine” was using, so it would take probably more than one inning, if they got there at all…
why not just put Jack Morris in, then?
I find it funny that some see Koufax as thius God like pitcher, he was God for 6 years and totally average at best(too much credit) before that. He pitched in the greatest pitchers era, probably ever. Sorry, I’ll take Pedro.
With that said…
No DH lineup: With DH:
1. 2B Joe Morgan 1. 2B Joe Morgan
2. LF Barry Bonds 2. LF Barry Bonds
3. 1B Lou Gehrig 3. 1B Lou Gehrig
4. RF Babe Ruth 4. DH Babe Ruth
5. CF Willie Mays 5. CF Willie Mays
6. SS Alex Rodriguez 6. RF Hank Aaron
7. C Johnny Bench 7. SS Alex Rodriguez
8. 3B Mike Schmidt 8. C Johnny Bench
9. P Pedro Martinez 9. 3B Mike Schmidt
I’ll agree with you generally about Pedro vs. Sandy in a career to career, head to head competition, but don’t minimize Sandy’s six-year run. Yes, he was pitching in a pitcher’s park in a pitcher’s era, but WAR adjusts for that and I believe Koufax’s six-year run from 1961 through 1966 still adds up to the highest total pitching WAR performance over a six consecutive year period since Walter Johnson in the deadball era. I haven’t checked every six-consecutive-year possibility, but a spot check of the likely possibilities suggests Koufax 1961-1966 is unsurpassed in WAR over a six year period since Babe Ruth was sold to the Yankees. Plus over those six years he started six World Series games and posted an 0.95 ERA. WAR suggests his god-like stature in those days was earned on the field.
You’re right about the 6-year run. Since 1901, only Walter Johnson has had a better 6-year run than Koufax’s 47.6 WAR from 1961-66. (Gibson had 47.5 from 1968-73.)
Also in the Deadball Era, in addition to Walter Johnson’s several stupendous six-year runs, there was also Ed Walsh, 1907-1912, 48.4 WAR. Walsh pitched about as many innings over those six seasons as C.C. Sabathia has pitched in the 11 seasons of his career or Barry Zito has pitched in his 12-year career. Not surprisingly, Walsh’s arm was shot after those six seasons.
Thanks for the correction, birtelcom.
Check out Lefty Grove. 47 WAR 1928-33 in a batter’s era and batter’s park, preceded by 2 years at 11.1, and followed after an injury season by 6 years of 39 WAR in a worse batter’s park.
In the live ball era.
FYI — WAR already adjusts for the offensive context. So Grove’s 47 WAR in that high-octane time and place is no better than Koufax’s 47 WAR in his low-scoring time and place.
Speaking of Grove….he had an amazing 79% winning percentage at home (167-44). Despite a slightly lower ERA on the road, his road winning percentage was “only” 58% (133-97).
Thanks. Knew that, actually. My real point was the before and after. Plus, as Bill James notes at length someplace, Grove was held back from the majors for a few years because the owner of the I. L. Orioles in the early 1920s wanted to keep him in Baltimore to win games. Refreshing attitude.
NSB @47 — I agree that Grove was a superstar in the I.L. and very likely would have been a star in the big leagues 4 years sooner, had he been allowed.
At the same time, I think there’s room for doubt about the caliber of opposition he was facing. When I look at the hitters in the 1924 I.L., I’m not seeing many future or past MLB regulars.
Bill Kelly, Red Holt, Joe Kelly, Jocko Conlan, Dick Porter — these guys were BIG hitters in the IL, but did little in MLB. (Porter had the best MLB career of those 5, hitting .308 from 1929-34 — but that was only good for a 100 OPS+ in that era.)
Fred Merkle was a solid MLB hitter, compiling a 109 OPS+. When that was done, he came to the I.L. at age 32 and batted over .340 four years in a row with over 300 total bases each year.
Also, Grove was distinctly mediocre in his first year in MLB. It’s said that he battled injuries that year, and I believe it — but it could be that he also had to make a significant adjustment from the IL to the AL. He walked 6.0 per 9 IP that rookie year (and 2.5/9 for the rest of his career), which seems a lot to chalk up to injuries that still allowed him to throw 197 innings and lead the league in strikeouts.
Love Pedro; love Koufax. Saw Pedro pitch, never saw Koufax.
When comparing the two, a check point or two in Pedro’s favor is he pitched in a hitters’ park and he had to face the DH. In in favor of Koufax is he had maintained his dominance at his peak by starting 40 games a season and pitching 330 innings in a season, something Pedro didn’t have to do, and I don’t think he could have done and maintained his extraordinary level of effectiveness.
I sometimes use the Pedro/Koufax comparison when trying illustrate one of the questions I have around ERA+, or at the very least a caveat to consider when using ERA+ to compare pitchers from different generations (sometimes even the same generation). Pedro was so dominant at his peak that no matter where he pitched, or in what league he pitched, he was going to make the hitters look like little girls (no insult meant to any little girls reading this blog, which I’m comfortable estimating at ZERO!). Same thing for Koufax at his peak. Hitters just didn’t have much of a chance.
Yet the hitting environments greatly impact ERA+. It may very well be that lower scoring enviroments allows lesser beings to put up decent pitching stats, in essence compressing the ERA+ numbers, pulling the scores of the best pitchers down some as they can’t quite as easily separate themselves from the pack. The opposite could be true in high-scoring environments, where greater pitching dieties (think Pedro, Maddux, Big Unit from the recent hitting boom) can more easily separate themselves from the pack, and are rewarded with higher ERA+’s.
Perhaps Tom Seaver vintage editions of 1968 and 1969 were the same man skill wise at that point in time, but he was not impacted by the higher offensive environment of 1969 as were other lesser pitchers. His ERA+ is awarded an extra 30 points from 1968 to 1969 simply because lesser pitchers became less effective in the higher scoring environmnent. So if Pedro from ’99-’00 hops into a time machine and pitches for the 1966 Dodgers, he will of course still blow away all hitters, but his ERA+ might decrease in the process.
While Pedro is back pitching in 1966, Bob Gibson 1968 hops into the same time machine and takes Pedro’s place in the Red Sox rotation. He blows away all hitters, too, and he posts a higher ERA than he did in 1968, but by pitching in more of a hitters’ league, and in Fenway Park, his ERA+ could very well rise from 258 to 300. We of course don’t know, but I think it’s a fair question to ponder.
All these are great pitchers, but I don’t think ERA+ can be used to make the final determination across generations. It may not even be best way for pitchers in the same generation. Randy Johnson at his insane best was unhittable. Remove him from Arizona and put him in Fenway and instead of an ERA+ of 190, maybe he scores a 220. I’m not sure the data input into the ERA+ equation can do a great job when dealing with unhittable outliers like the Big Unit, Pedro, Koufax, Gibson, etc. at their peaks.
Just food for baseball thought on a Monday morning.
Over their 6 consecutive year WAR peaks Sandy is about 10% more valuable because he pitched about 33% more innings. Per 162 innings Pedro was much more valuable, about 5.7WAR/162innings vs 4.7 for Koufax. Of course we cannot know if Martinez would have kept up the great rate stats in a 4 man rotation, averaging 272innings/season. Or if Sanford would have lasted longer, and provided much more career value, in a 5 man rotation with about 203innings/season. (Not to mention medical/training advances.) Outside those 6 year peaks Koufax provided average at best value, less than 2WAR/162innings, while Pedro Jaime was over 3.2WAR/162. A rate for the worse part of his career, that probably compares well to the average HoFer.
You know that’s weird, Jeff, because Pedro, of all great pitchers since, has more Koufax in him than anyone else. He was really great when he was on but he only won 219 games. Sure, he was unstoppable in ’99 and ’00 but Greg Maddux was 98% as good in ’94 and ’95(two consecutive seasons of sub 1.70 ERA), and he managed to get 136 more wins than Pedro.
Huge props to this comment. I agree about the parallels between Koufax and Pedro.
Did Maddux get too much of an expanded strike zone, so he deserves a bit of a discount?
Given how good the negro league players were when given a chance, Gibson & O.C. may well have been good choices. Oscar was a fiercely competitive 5 tool guy whop played forever, James had him #4 all time, & said many called him the greatest player ever. I’ll bet he was very similar to Mays in value.
Yes, he and Tom Glavine probably did get too much of an expanded strike zone, but if anybody, by repeatedly hitting spots perfectly an inch or three off the outside corner, deserved to get that call it was Maddux and Glavine. And they were the only ones in the NL to continually hit those spots repeatedly and get those calls.
I wouldn’t view an expanded strikezone for Maddux as a negative in the discussion. Expanding the strikezone is something all pitchers try to do; some do it much better than others. If Maddux was able to do this (and I’m sure he did), then it’s a check point in the favor of his greatness, IMHO.
I re3spectfully disagree. Besides that an expanded K-zone is usually much to the catcher’s credit in framing the pitch, the pitcher’s reputation & the particular culture at the time permits biased calls. It is reported that Maddux declined when the they started measuring it with technology. It is a skill to continually be within a finger of the K-zone, but measuring greatness accurately, we must assume an equal playing field. Ditto for a pitcher that gains from illegal head hunting.
Not that he still would not be great, but if someone needs that extra 1-3 inches to be AS great, that is not as “good” objectively as a guy who has equal stats but did so “legally”. Just like Jordan may well be the greatest player ever, & given the competition, his overall efficiency ob defense too, pressure play, peak value, he is the best candidate for #1.
But if he got any significant bump compared to other stars on calls “Jordan Rules”, then that would add points & prevent players from guarding him as aggressively, so maybe he is “just” around as good as the best ever.
I respectfully counter with some measures of Maddog’s greatness which will hopefully just reinforce the idea that Maddux is one of the greatest ever. Hard to argue with the greatness he showed in ’94 & ’95:
1994 16-6 1.56 ERA / ERA+ 271
1995 19-2
Sorry, here’s the rest of that:
Maddux 1994-95
1994 16-6 1.56 ERA/ERA+ 271
1995 19-2 1.63 ERA/ERA+ 262
Those two seasons are 2 of the 5 best ERA+ seasons of all-time(#4 & #5).
Agreed. No Negro league pitchers? Nuts to Satchel and the rest of them? Obviously its much harder to reduce a list of the best pitchers to 20 than for any other position, but still.
I tried to look at best during their peak since it tells you to pick the best to win one game. I still ended up with probably the best ever at most positions, but the one game scenario did factor in at least with Pedro.
C – Bench
1B – Gehrig
2B – Morgan
SS – Wagner
3B – Schmidt
LF – Ruth
CF – Mantle
RF – Williams
P – Martinez
BTW, when I was deciding about the starter, I came across Tim Keefe’s page. He has the best single season ERA+, and once put up a 16 WAR season. I wouldn’t have picked him, but he probably deserves to at least be on the list.
This story concerns Sandy Koufax, but it has nothing to do with ERA+ or sabermetrics, so I didn’t want to include in my note above about Koufax/Pedro. It’s more about the fun of baseball, or the wonder of baseball. The type of mythic stories we love to hear, even if we question them as we get older and more jaded.
Back in the 1980s, I remember sitting in a college course on Spanish literature. I used to stagger into the class at noon, half asleep (I mean, come on, who didnt’t try to schedule their first class as late as possible back then?!), I would go to the back of the room where the teacher really couldn’t see me, eat a brownie and drink a Dr. Pepper, hoping the sugar rush would wake me up, while flipping through baseball section of the Sporting News. (Yes, we needed printed news before the Internet). I saw a very small blurb in the lefthand column about something Sandy Koufax did while participating in the Dodgers spring training camp as an instructor. A paragraph at the most. I read it and thought, “Wow, can this be true? I hope this is true? Please let it be true!” Yet there was no way I could know if the story was true, so I filed it away in my memory, never quite forgetting it.
Flash forward about ten years, I’m running a sports event for the company I worked for, and I hired a sports marketing firm to help. I was having dinner with the guy who ran the firm and once was the head of PR for the Los Angeles Dodgers. We’re talking baseball, he’s telling me stories about players that only an insider would know, when suddenly I remembered the little blurb about Koufax, and figured he might actually know the answer.
His name is Steve, so I look at him and I say, “Steve, I have a question about Sandy Koufax, something I read in the 1980s that I’ve never been able to forget.” Steve, who carried the curmudgeonly persona one would expect from former sports journalist, looked up, and his face lit up like a little kid, and says something like, “Mike, I know exactly what you’re going to ask me, and the story is true.” I look back amazed, wondering how could he possibly know what I was going to ask about Sandy Koufax out of leftfield, from a small blurb in the Sporting News, so I respond, “Okay, Steve, I’m game, what am I going to ask?” He leans back, smiling, and says, “You want to know if during spring training batting practice, if Sandy Koufax, now in his early 50s and twenty-something years removed from pitching, was clocked throwing a pitch at 90 mph.” I was dumbfounded, because that was the very question I was going to ask. Steve added, “I know it’s true, I was there, and I placed that story.”
Now being a good PR guy, he is going to take his stories about what is true and not to the grave, and he is certainly not going to tell me the story was false. Yet the look of joy on his face, and the way he told the story, led me to believe that it was true. That of course gets the mind to racing, as it did when I first read the story, wondering just how hard did Sandy Koufax throw in his prime.
Anyway, sorry about the long story that has nothing to do with stats, but I always remember it whenever I think of Sandy Koufax.
Really make you wonder, with advances in modern medicine, what might have been.
Good question. He retired because of arthritis in his left elbow. From what I read, it was very painful when he pitched and he feared the continual act of pitching would make the arthritis worse. I don’t know if there is anything we have even today that would address his arthritis.
I do remember some doctor recently saying Koufax could have continued to pitch (as long as he could stand the pain) and based on what we know today that the act of pitching wouldn’t have made his arthritis any worse. Don’t know if that’s true, but it’s a shame if it is. Koufax wasn’t still at peak, indeed seemed to be getting better. If he had made it to 1968, the year of the pitcher, maybe we would have seen a starter with an ERA under 1.00!
*was* still at his peak.
MikeD,
Yes, I’m not sure what advances in modern medicine would’ve extended Koufax’s career, he probably had a degenerative condition that no operation was going to fix. I recall reading that he had to put very strong inti-inflammatory medicine on his left arm before every start just to get through a game. Team mates marveled how he could even stand such stuff (it was HOT!) on his arm, let alone pitch 7/8/9 innings.
I suppose he could’ve kept pitching through the pain, but there was also his quote around his time of retirement “I want to have the use of my left arm whem I’m 50”.
I’ve also heard stories about Ted Williams cranking out HR’s in BP, in his fifties, during Red Sox spring training.
Me too Lawrence. He was a hard driving manager, A demanding curmudgeon not adored by all of his players. He was entreated to take some cuts one day, until he came raging out of the dugout, cursing up a storm. He was pretty fat then, & it was felt some players hoped the perfectionist would fail.
he stepped into the box & watched a couple of meatballs come over the plate. Then he motioned for the pitcher to really bring it. Started smashing pitches all over the field, off the wall, a dozen or two shots in a row, then stopped suddenly & returned to the dugout.
He was 5 days short of his 54th birthday.
Great story, MikeD. There’s got to some form of medication on the market now which would have helped him extend his career.
GREAT story, MikeD. One of the things I love about the group who posts here is that it’s never been just about stats, and it’s never been just about stories. It’s always been about baseball, and how and why we love it.