Vern: Do you think Mighty Mouse could beat up Superman?
Teddy: What are you, cracked?
Vern: Why not? I saw the other day, he was carrying five elephants in one hand!
Teddy: Boy, you don't know nothing! Mighty Mouse is a cartoon. Superman's a real guy. There's no way a cartoon could beat up a real guy.
Vern: Yeah, maybe you're right. It'd be a good fight, though.
--scene from “Stand By Me” (1986)
Behind The Scenes
Bill James lets his writers submit questions for the “Polls and Arguments” section of this site. When I first heard that, I jotted down a handful of questions because I wanted to help out, I wanted to pitch in. It was important to me to try and contribute. But then, I started thinking about the opportunity at hand, the ability to tap into resources that I did not previously have access to. I could ask an educated and informed baseball audience to render an opinion. To make a judgment call. So I made a request and asked if we could post a specific online poll. I wanted to ask, “Who was the better offensive catcher, Mike Piazza or Josh Gibson?” Bill agreed to the request and I got excited. After a day or two, the poll went up.
Then I sat back, watched, and waited for the results to come in.
Voting Progress, Part One
After about forty votes, there was no consensus. The vote was pretty even, and was tight the entire way through that point. Twenty votes for Piazza. Twenty votes for Gibson. It was early. I kept watching.
The Credentials
Recently retired multi-time all-star Mike Piazza, or Negro League legend Josh Gibson? The power of statistics, empiricism, and firsthand knowledge, versus the power of conjecture, imagination, and myth making.
Mike Piazza’s career has been documented faithfully. You can chop and slice his career numbers in various ways. Most baseball fans remember Piazza. They watched him play. They know he was good. No. They know he was great. While he was playing and the moment he stepped away, his name carried a title alongside it. “Greatest hitting catcher of all-time.” Folks had no problem saying that. Piazza had earned it.
Josh Gibson comes to us like a ghost wielding a sledgehammer. He lives on through anecdotes and rumors. You can’t track down a single concrete statistic for him. You can’t. Yet we take it as an article of faith that the man could murder the ball with righteous fury. Who are you to question that? Nobody questions that.
So there’s the question. The one I’m curious about. The one I want answered. Who was the better offensive catcher? Which player would be anointed? Would the readers select the greatness we know firsthand, or the one we build in the corridors of our imagination? I had no idea. I was looking forward to finding out.
The Process
The first time I met Bill, he asked me whether I had been voting on the online polls. I told him that I had voted on a couple, but I couldn’t tell which ones were still active, and which questions had been closed out. He told me that the questions stayed open, and that they would continue to accept new votes.
So if I wanted to find out the readers’ preference between Piazza and Gibson, I could not simply wait for the end of the poll. Because there was no defined ending. It was perpetual. Instead, I needed to take snapshots of the polling numbers at opportune moments, recording those specific moments in time. And, when I felt that a representative number of votes had been gathered, I could write an essay. This essay.
I decided that a hundred votes seemed like a reasonable number. It was a nice round figure. We like our data in groups of one hundred. Plus, it would make the percentages clean and easy to handle. Just like that, we had our target number. One hundred readers, one hundred votes, one hundred separate opinions.
The voting continued.
Passages from the New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract
A moment to compare and contrast Piazza and Gibson..
Mike Piazza finished with 427 career homers. He hit 396 of those as a catcher, the Major League record. Josh Gibson has no career home run count. But on page 180 of the New Historical Baseball Abstract, James says “I believe that he would have hit over 500 home runs had he played in the majors.” Advantage: Gibson? By 73 imaginary homers?
On page 923 of the New Historical Baseball Abstract, in the section written after the bulk of the book was composed called “Last Minute Notes,” James writes “it has now become apparent that Mike Piazza is the best-hitting catcher in the history of baseball; not maybe, not “so far.” He simply is… There is no longer any doubt: even if you adjust for everything, he is the best hitter to play that position.” Well, that seems pretty definitive. Advantage: Piazza.
But on page 180, James says Gibson was “probably the greatest catcher in baseball history, and probably the greatest right-handed power hitter.” Piazza was a catcher. Piazza was a right-handed power hitter. So that means… Advantage: Gibson. Right?
I’ll be honest with you. It doesn’t really matter to me. Because I’m not actually out to prove Gibson is better than Piazza, or vice versa. I’m here to see how we make our decisions. I’m here to see how we decide what we believe in. So I checked the poll and looked at the numbers.
Voting Progress, Part Two
About sixty votes in, I noticed a trend. Piazza was the frontrunner, Gibson was the sleeper. Piazza would occasionally hold a lead, and he never fell behind. Gibson would occasionally fall behind, and never held the lead. But every time Piazza would inch ahead, it would only be by a few votes. It was always the slimmest of margins. One vote, maybe two. Three votes at the absolute most separating them. And every time that happened, Gibson would rally back and even the score. Piazza could not pull away. Gibson would always find a quick burst of votes and reel him back in.
It should be noted: there is no easy way to coordinate this. Each reader only has one vote, and can’t see the running percentages until after having participated. Each vote comes in blind. The readers can’t take the previous votes into account, and they have to make their own determination, independent of the way the poll is shaping up.
I was getting the feeling that Piazza was probably going to pull it out. He was in the lead more often. He had concrete stats that people could use to justify their vote. The voters left more comments on his behalf. And the tone of the responses from people who voted for Piazza were slightly more confident, slightly more certain that those voting for Gibson. It seemed like momentum was working in favor of Piazza.
I started rooting for Gibson.
Make a Stand
Back in college, my brother was on the school debate team. He traveled around the world, competing against teams from international universities. And the primary structural foundation central to a good debate is that you have to adopt a position, either in favor or opposed to the resolution. You were not allowed to straddle the fence. You needed to pick a side, then you were expected to defend your position.
In my experience, I’ve found that the Bill James Online readers are opinionated. About everything, it seems. But definitely about baseball. Especially about baseball. I can see it in the comments to my essays, in the questions asked in the “Hey Bill” section, in the messages in the “Readers Post” area, and in the general interaction present on the site. And the anonymity granted by the internet only serves to make people more vocal and more opinionated.
Well, most of the time. Except in this case, apparently. Because the poll asking the readers to choose between Piazza and Gibson seemed to throw them off. It made them uncertain, unwilling to commit even after they’ve made a selection. Comments came in, and they showed a lot of reluctance, a lot of respect for both sides of the debate. Here’s a representative sampling of comments:
‘Richie’ voted for Piazza then added:
“Gibson for all I know.”
‘sandy32’ voted for Gibson then said:
“I guess he was better, but it's a shame we can't know for certain.”
'alljoeteam' voted for Gibson, but added:
“We don't really know but this would be my guess.”
'rnotr2' voted for Piazza and wrote:
“That is not to say that (Gibson) wasn't the better ballplayer.”
‘evanecurb’ asked:
“How in the world are we supposed to know?”
‘jk2755’ noted:
“Hard to know how to choose, for all sorts of reasons.”
‘mikee’ commented:
“Hasn't a sabermetrician studied this? If so what's the official answer?”
‘monahan’ said:
“I don’t think I’m armed with enough data to truly decide... historical racism robbed me of what I need to answer this question.”
‘DerekHiemforth’ wrote:
“Really a no-win question”
'BigDaddyG' noted:
“This is a very hard question.”
'DiamondDog' commented:
“Impossible to say, since most of Gibson's exploits are anecdotal evidence and Piazza's are documented.”
And 'brian14leonard' said:
“The unfortunate truth is we don't really know and can only make a semi-educated guess.”
You can see the dilemma. What I began to observe was this: people didn’t want to choose between empiricism and legend. They didn’t want to decide between statistics and storytelling. If forced to make a decision, they would do so, but only begrudgingly and without enthusiasm. Picking a side, choosing a camp, meant eliminating one source of joy from the game. Fans love their stats. And fans love their stories. They didn’t feel comfortable brushing one aside for another.
And I suspect this phenomenon may be more true than we realize. Polls, debates, and arguments like to divide topics up into black-and-white scenarios, dividing opinions across well-delineated barriers. We want to reach a definitive conclusion. We want to offer a concrete assertion. But often, opinions aren’t so clean and precise. Trying to draw boundaries might be a foolish exercise when our opinions often function like semi-permeable membranes, with thoughts sliding back and forth without a proper resting place. Are you a Republican or a Democrat? Well, what if you’re a Republican on foreign policy, but a Democrat on domestic issues? What if you agree with the Republicans on taxes, but Democrats on education reform? How do you answer the question then – Republican sometimes on some issues, but Democrat sometimes on others? Is that an acceptable response?
Personally, I feel this type of uncertainty responding to the “Polls and Arguments” section all the time. All the time. Months ago, Bill James asked “Which would you rather watch: boxing or beach volleyball?” Depends. What time of day is it? I prefer watching beach volleyball during the day, and boxing at night. Who’s competing? I would watch Stoklos/Smith play Whitmarsh/Dodd or Kiraly/Steffes play beach volleyball until the cows came home. But if Joe Calzaghe is squaring off against Jeff Lacey in the ring, then I’m tuning in to the prizefight. Am I in a good mood, or a bad one? What did I watch yesterday, a comedy or an action movie? These factors influence my decision-making. We want a simple “Yes or No” response. But my answer changes, depending on when you ask me the question.
One of my favorite quotes of all-time comes from the author of The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald. He said: "The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function." And I think the Bill James Online readers are comfortable with that idea. In some ways, Mike Piazza is the greatest offensive catcher of all time. In other ways, Josh Gibson is the correct answer. There’s only one right answer. But we feel comfortable acknowledging both possibilities.
No Riots, No Anger
In the end, I was surprised. I figured there would be crusaders championing their viewpoint. I mean, it happens in almost every discussion. “The Yankees are the greatest dynasty of all time” or “Yankees suck.” “Barry Bonds is the greatest hitter who ever lived” or “Barry Bonds was a cheater and jerk.” I had an eye out for the extremists. No matter what issue is on hand, they’re always the ones to be careful of, the ones who skew rational discourse. Extremism is bad. It gets in the way. We get in trouble when we put blind faith into ideological dogmatism.
But in this case, people defied my expectations. They went the opposite route. They called an audible. I asked them to make a choice, and consistently they said, “I don’t really know.” Which might be the best answer in this case. Maybe the most truthful one.
(Author’s note: I want to point out that the ability to say “I don’t know” is a valuable skill to have. A very useful one. Yes, it makes debates a little more difficult to contest. But in the end, it can make your journey through life far less overbearing.)
Voting Process, The Result
On Friday, October 10th, during the second game of the 2008 National League Championship Series between the Dodgers and the Phillies, the one hundredth reader cast his vote in the poll.
I hit my target number. I took a look at the results.
What I saw was this. Fifty readers had voted for Piazza. And – of course, almost predictably – fifty readers had voted for Gibson. After a hundred votes, it was completely even, a dead heat.
What more can you say? Perfect.
Just perfect.
If you have any thoughts you want to share, I would love to hear from you. I can be contacted at roeltorres@post.harvard.edu. Thank you.