Another Response

Since evidently I need to say it to satisfy you, fine: I’m not a Mets fan. Now that we’ve put that behind us, hopefully we can move on. Connie Mack was a great manager (and yeah, I’ve read Macht’s biography of him that came out a couple years ago), but I think that Rickey did more for the game, and was better at putting together teams. John Heidenry’s book on the Gashouse Gang is a great book too, though short.

As for Comiskey, I’m clearly not going to argue that he was a good person, because he obviously wasn’t, but I’m trying to keep that from influencing my view on his importance to the game. His importance in founding the American League can’t be overstated, and it turned out that the AL has been a pretty big deal. Honestly, if he hadn’t been such an asshole I probably would have had him up a level.

And Landis, well, he pretty much single-handedly shaped the role of Commissioner. Yeah, he let Cobb and Speaker off the hook for betting on baseball, but that surfaced seven years after the incident, when both were winding down their careers. Beyond that, though, he absolutely cleaned up the sport. There had been pretty much no gambling scandals between the Black Sox (Cobb and Speaker bet in 1919, even though it came out later) and Pete Rose. He shepherded baseball from a rough, haphazardly organized game into America’s Pastime.

Regarding Mel Ott, Harmon Killebrew is a great comparison; both played 22 seasons without missing significant time during the middle of their careers (Kiner only played ten seasons, so I’m going to leave him out of this). I know you criticized me for using statistics, but they’re really the best way to compare players across eras. Killebrew was a career .256 hitter, with a career OBP of .376. Ott hit .304 for his career, with an OBP of .414. Ott also has an advantage in slugging, .533 to .509. Ott scored and knocked in more runs, which admittedly doesn’t say much about the player, but I suppose it’s worth noting. The only statistical category in which Killebrew holds an advantage over Ott is in home runs, 573 to 511. I don’t see how you can make any argument that Ott wasn’t better than Killebrew.

You say that Feller was the best pitcher in the AL for almost two decades, and that I’m wrong, but you don’t back it up with anything. Yeah, he lost years to WWII, and that sucks, but even if he was the best pitcher in the AL during the 40s and the first half of the 50s, so what, there are so few pitchers during that era who are comparable. He wasn’t as good as Warren Spahn, who pitched in the NL during Feller’s career and also lost years to the war. Beyond the purely subjective “Feller is better than you have him” there is nothing that makes me feel like I should move him up.

Finally, Gehrig. Yeah, Frank Robinson and Joe DiMaggio were both great players. But neither one of them was better than Lou Gehrig. Robinson holds a pretty significant edge in HRs, 586 to 495, but in every other meaningful category he falls behind Gehrig. In my eyes, the biggest difference between the two is on base percentage: for his career Gehrig put up an OBP of .447, almost 60 points better than Robinson’s .389. They aren’t close in slugging percentage either, with Gehrig leading .632 to .537. As for DiMaggio, Gehrig played four more seasons, and accordingly beats him in pretty much every counting stat. But he also has a higher batting average, on base percentage, and slugging percentage, and leads him in OPS+ 179 to 155. I don’t see how anyone can argue that Gehrig isn’t better than either of those two. I haven’t read any biographies of DiMaggio, but I don’t see how anything could vault him past Gehrig.

And one last note about Wagner: he was the last person I cut from the top level. It was between him and Gibson, and in the end I decided to give the Negro Leagues more representation there. He was probably the best middle infielder of all time (I have Robinson ahead of him for obvious reasons), and I consider him number 15.