Willie Aikens, Norm Cash, Carlos Delgado, Steve Garvey, Jason Giambi, Keith Hernandez,  Lee May, Fred McGriff, Wes Parker, Joe Pepitone, Vic Power, Richie Sexson, Dick Stuart, Mark Teixeira, Mo Vaughn.  Several players in this group have been popular Hall of Fame candidates, and several more, I would assume, will be or may be.   How do they rate, one compared to another?  

            This is how I see them, starting at the bottom:

15.   Willie Mays Aikens

            For a player who really wasn’t very good, Willie Mays Aikens made a hell of an impression, on me and on the game of baseball.     I was in the house when he had the greatest day of his career, hitting two home runs in a World Series game against the Phillies.    It was actually his second two-homer game of the series, but the Royals lost the other one.   Hours later I was at Arthur Bryant’s with Jim Carothers, Dana Leibengood and Roger Angell, and Roger told us that Willie had spoken movingly in the locker room after the game, at once eloquent and awkward, trying to talk about his lifelong struggle with a speech impediment.

            He was an impressive hitter; to this day I have no doubt that if he could have gotten rolling and stayed in the lineup, he could have hit 500 homers.   Something was always wrong, usually his defense.   He was a terrible, terrible fielder, and in those days I was young and harsh, and I used to make fun of his fielding misadventures in each year’s Baseball Abstract.   And his baserunning misadventures; he was dreadful on the bases, too.

            A bunch of the Royals in that era got into recreational drugs, none more than Willie.   He spent a little time in lockup here in the States, and later on, after his career, spent years locked away in a prison in Mexico.   It took all the humor out of his career, and most of the pathos as well; it was hard to relate to him after that.    He had real ability as a hitter.   The glove was not so good.   With a career won-lost record of 79-61, including fielding, I estimate that he was 29.90 Win Shares better, in his career, than a .350 player:

14.  Dick Stuart

            When I was seven years old, Dick Stuart hit 66 home runs for Lincoln in the Western League.   This was before I was a huge baseball fan; I know some of you became obsessive fans when you were five years old, but I didn’t; I didn’t really go baseball crazy until I was eleven.   However, the Western League had a team in Topeka, near where I grew up, and Topeka also had a big first baseman who was hitting a bunch of home runs, so his name was in the newspapers just about every day that summer, tracking how the two compared, and once, when Lincoln played in Topeka, my father took us to see them.   It was the first professional game I had ever seen.

            Stuart was a colorful, charismatic figure whose fame was out of proportion to his skills.   He was a ladies’ man, glib and funny and very handsome, and he signed his autograph with a star over the “i”.   He had some good years with the bat--.301 with 35 homers, 117 RBI in 1961, 42 homers, 118 RBI in 1963, 34 and 114 in 1964—but his real value was limited by horrible strikeout/walk ratios and horrific defense.    I have him as a less-than-.500 player in his career (109-116), and 30.36 Win Shares better than a .350 player.

13.   Joe Pepitone

            This is getting repetitious, but Joe Pepitone—like Aikens and Stuart—was more really famous than he was really good.    As a rookie and bench player he hit two home runs in an inning, and the buzz started about him.   He was a phenomenally talented athlete, or perceived as such, plus he was Italian and a native New Yorker, playing in New York.    The press loved him the moment they saw him, and the Yankees traded Moose Skowron, a well-established regular in mid career, to get Pepitone into the lineup.  His numbers were OK—27 homers, 89 RBI in his first full season in 1963, 28 and 100 in 1964.

            Jim Bouton would reveal to us later that Pepitone in those years would run around all night and come to the ballpark hung over.   Ralph Houk would put him in the lineup anyway, figuring that if he cut Pepitone a break because he was hung over, Pepitone would come to the park hung over every day.  He was OK, but he wasn’t really good, either; he rarely walked (although he struck out much less than Stuart) and in 1964, when he drove in 100 runs, he hit only 12 doubles.     He was playing at 40% of his ability.

            The Yankees collapsed in ’65, and Pepitone about the same time started to struggle.   He could play the outfield as well as first base.   Although he started his career as a first baseman because the Yankees had Mantle in center field and Maris in right, in his career he played almost 400 games in center field.   He hit 31 homers in ’66, but I make his won-lost record 18-16.   He lost his hair, and he started wearing ridiculous-looking toupees on the field, fake hair the size of a bale of hay.

            After his playing career he co-authored a biography, Joe, You Coulda Made Us Proud, with Leonard Schecter, who had co-authored Bouton’s book.     It’s actually a pretty good book—a long rumination on his failures, rather than a celebration of his meager successes.   Although the concept of “sex addiction” wasn’t invented until years after that, what Pepitone is really talking about is the destruction of his career by his addiction to sex, leading him to roam the streets until all hours of the morning, day after day, trying to pick up women.   He was always famous.  Seinfeld mentioned his name numerous times, and, in an episode of The Golden Girls; Dorothy says something like “Who do I look like to you, Blanche, Joe Pepitone?”   He’s mentioned on The Sopranos.  He’s a cultural reference point.  But I make him a less-than-.500 player (144-147), and 42.36 Win Shares better than a .350 player.  His best seasons were his first full season (1963) and his first full year with the Cubs (1971), which was his only season as a .300 hitter or a .600 player. 

12.   Vic Power

            Regarded as the premier defensive first baseman of his time, Vic Power won the Gold Glove from 1958 to 1964, even though in 1964 he was a bench player.    He had some years with the bat that looked better at the time than they do in retrospect.    In 1955 he hit .319 with 190 hits including 34 doubles, 10 triples and 19 homers, and had similar numbers in 1958.  He didn’t strike out or walk.

            One thing that Power was famous for was hitting home runs on bean balls.   People used to throw at him a lot—he was a black guy, and he was really mouthy—and once or twice a year he would anticipate the ball at his head and hit it 400 feet.    People would say they never saw anybody else who could do that, but it didn’t stop people from throwing at him.   Story he used to tell. . .one time he was in a restaurant, and the manager came up to him very apologetically and said, “I’m very sorry, sir, but we don’t serve black people.”

            “That’s OK,” Power responded, “I don’t eat black people.”   I have him at 46.82 Win Shares better than a .350 player, over the course of his career.  

11.  Richie Sexson

            Richie Sexson, at home plate, bore an absolutely uncanny resemblance to Dave Kingman at the plate; that’s probably why I thought he was a worse defensive player than he was.   With won-lost equivalents of 20-10, 21-10 and 20-11, he was distinctly better than the players we have listed up to now, none of whom ever earned 20 Win Shares in a season.    I have him 53.82 Win Shares better than a .350 player in his career, and 28 games over .500.

10.  Wes Parker

            Wes Parker had one great season in baseball, when he hit .319 and drove in 111 runs in 1970.   Otherwise he was mostly underrated.

            In yesterday’s article I wrote about the 1966 season, when the Dodgers had Parker and Dick Stuart and, for a while, let Dick Stuart do most of the work at first base.   It is not a surprise that Wes Parker would score in our system as a dramatically better fielder than Dick Stuart.   What may be surprising is that he also scores as a better hitter than Dick Stuart.

            I mentioned yesterday. . .Parker in 1965 hit .238 with 8 homers, 51 RBI—and yet kept his regular position on a championship team.   One reason for that, of course, was his glove—but he also drew 75 walks that year, so his on-base percentage was decent, and it is really hard to understand how big each run was on that team.     In 1965 the National League ERA was 3.54, and the park factor for Dodger Stadium was 0.78.   Parker’s numbers look like hell, but his offensive won-lost record was 14-11.

            Parker was blond and very handsome and played in LA, so he got lots of bit parts on television sitcoms and such.   He left baseball early to pursue a career as an actor, hoping to become the Chuck Connors of the 1970s.  Although he appeared in a dozen or more movies his movie career never really took off, but he was a very underrated baseball player. 

The rest of the list is continued in Part Two.