This article started with one of Joe Posnanski’s poll questions on the Hall-of-Fame. He raised a simple, straight-forward question:
What five players would you include in the Hall-of-Fame, if you could only have five?
I love questions like this. I think questions like this are why Joe’s site is a must-read for any baseball fan, because it’s filled with little ideas that send an obsessive like me down a rabbit-hole.
This question, I think, is not about identifying the five greatest players. Greatest certainly counts, of course, but the question demands a slightly different tact. What five players would best represent the story of baseball’s history? What five players would you pick to talk about, if you had to explain baseball someone who knows nothing about the game?
So let’s get into it….my five.
Babe Ruth, obviously. Babe Ruth is the easiest, most obvious pick. He’s the single most significant player in baseball history, perhaps the single most important player in all of American sports.
Ruth’s career in the majors stretches from 1914 to 1935. He’s a useful player because he was a pitcher and a hitter….he covers both sides of the game. He was a key figure in two dynasties: he started the Yankees utter domination of professional baseball, and he’s the marker for the end of the Red Sox first dynasty. He’s larger than life, a fascinating character that simultaneously reflected and transcended his era.
Okay. One down.
Number Two is Willie Mays. With apologies to Jackie Robinson and Hank Aaron and Mickey Mantle, Willie seems like he has to be on the list. Willie covers a lot of bases: he played in the Negro Leagues as a teenager, and he was the first black superstar to come up as a challenger to Ruth.
Mays gives us some nice contrasts to Ruth: he was an elite defensive player, a fast runner. So we get speed and defense and agility into our Hall. We get a National Leaguer….we have both of the major leagues represented. Mays covers us nicely 1950’s and 1960’s.
For number three, I’m going with Honus Wagner.
I’m a little sad about this, because I think Ty Cobb is a much more interesting player. Cobb is the baseball’s embodiment of a particularly kind of athlete, one that is intensely, relentlessly focused on beating everyone around him. Basketball has had most of the recent versions of this kind of athlete, with Jordan and Kobe. Ted Williams is in this camp, as is Rose.
But there are two big reasons to go with Wagner:
-Wagner’s career (1897-1917) comes a little before Cobb’s (1905-1928). Cobb has a lot of overlap with Ruth, while Wagner’s career exists more fully in the dead-ball era.
-Wagner is a shortstop, while Cobb is an outfielder. We have two outfielders already.
Actually, there’s a third reason: Wagner has a great nickname: The Flying Dutchman. I think great nicknames are important. We have the Sultan of Swat, the Say-Hey Kid, and the Flying Dutchman. Doing well….
So we’ve got three: Ruth, Mays, Wagner. Pretty good three. We’ve covered the years 1897-1935, and the years 1951-1973. Pretty good.
We need someone to represent the fifty years between Mays and our current moment. It’s really difficult to find one player that adequately bridges that gap.
Joe Morgan is interesting. He was perhaps the best player of the 1970’s, a star on the Big Red Machine, and his career gets us comfortably into the mid-1980’s. But Morgan has a decade of overlap with Mays, and he doesn’t really pass the ‘gut instinct’ test.
Mike Schmidt is another ‘GOAT’ to consider, but his last game was in 1989: we don’t get a hint of the 1990’s, or the 2010’s. We also have a couple of sluggardly sluggers on our board, and Schmidt doesn’t seem like the ‘force’ that the other three were.
It’s tempting to pick one of the great 300-game winners from the seventies: Seaver, Carlton, Perry, or Niekro. Seaver seems the best candidate, but his career overlaps with Mays, and doesn’t get us into the 1990’s.
It’s very tempting to pick Nolan Ryan. Ryan absolutely gets a check for being super-famous, and his longevity covers us into the early 1990’s. Ryan was an absolutely singular player, in the same way that Ruth was….a player that cannot reasonably be compared to anyone else. He gets us a Texan on the team, and a pitcher.
Unfortunately, I’m not inclined to pick a player who wasn’t that great. Greatness seems an important qualifier here, and while Ryan was a singular player, he ranks behind four or five of his pitching peers in terms of actual talent. He was unrelenting, but I don’t think he cracks the Five.
I would love to put Pedro on, but he didn’t have a career that was long enough. Plus he’d leave a big game between Mays and himself. The same holds for Mariano, who I would also disqualify for being a closer.
It really comes down to two players: Bonds and Clemens. Bonds covers us from 1986 to 2007. Clemens gets us two extra years, going from 1984 to 2007.
This is unpleasant, having these two guys on the list. It’s be nice to just cheat and go with Greg Maddux, or Ken Griffey, Jr. But I think we have to look at this era directly, and represent it honestly. Clemens and Bonds were the two best players of this era, and they are, for better and worse, players indicative of the era…players who sought every way to maximize their greatness.
Between the two, I think it’s essentially a jump ball.
Bonds is tempting because he represents the best of two players: he was Willie Mays, who then turned into Babe Ruth. He owns many of the significant hitting records. In a period when average players put up eye-popping numbers, Bonds’ numbers managed to be more than merely eye-popping. They were eye-gouging. He hit 73 homeruns one year, .370 the next. He walked 177 times in a single-season. Then he walked 198 times. Then he walked 232 times. From 2000 to 2007, his on-base percentage was over .500…he reached base more than he made out for eight years. In 2004 he had a .609 on-base percentage.
This was his ‘decline’ phase. In his prime, he was Willie Mays: an excellent corner outfielder with speed and power. Like Mantle and Musial and Mays and Williams, he was the guy the writers had to argue not to give the MVP to.
The arguments against Bonds are that we’ve got two outfielders already. We should also consider league balance: Wagner and Mays are both NL players…Ruth’s all alone from the AL. And Mays and Wagner already represent the Giants and Pirates: Bonds doesn’t bring any new teams into our Hall.
Clemens is a pitcher. That seems like enough of a reason to push him past Bonds. Clemens won seven Cy Young Awards, he was the first pitcher (and the second pitcher) to notch a 20-K game, and he gives us the Red Sox, Yankees, Blue Jays, and Astros into the Hall. Nice to have Canada represented.
But I’m still on the fence about this one. Bonds, to me, represents the absolute excesses of his era. Clemens’ statistical record, while impressive, isn’t nearly as jaw-dropping as Bonds….he seems closer to the pack. I think, for instance, that Pedro was a greater pitcher in their respective primes…Pedro doesn’t have the longevity, but he was a few ticks better at their peak. Maddux and Randy Johnson have their cases, too: it’s not an absolutely sure thing that Clemens was the best of his era.
But Clemens does have the great nickname: Rocket. Barry Bonds has no nickname, unless we consider an asterisk a nickname.
I’m really torn about spot #4….but I think it’s between these two. Push come to shove, I’m taking Bonds. Those numbers, and the hubris they represent, is too much to pass up. In a way, he brings a dimension of personality lost when I picked Honus over Tyrus.
That gives us this coverage for baseball history:
Year
|
Player
|
Year
|
Player
|
Year
|
Player
|
Year
|
Player
|
Year
|
Player
|
Year
|
Player
|
1897
|
Wagner
|
1917
|
Ruth/Wag
|
1937
|
??
|
1957
|
Mays
|
1977
|
??
|
1997
|
Bonds
|
1898
|
Wagner
|
1918
|
Ruth
|
1938
|
??
|
1958
|
Mays
|
1978
|
??
|
1998
|
Bonds
|
1899
|
Wagner
|
1919
|
Ruth
|
1939
|
??
|
1959
|
Mays
|
1979
|
??
|
1999
|
Bonds
|
1900
|
Wagner
|
1920
|
Ruth
|
1940
|
??
|
1960
|
Mays
|
1980
|
??
|
2000
|
Bonds
|
1901
|
Wagner
|
1921
|
Ruth
|
1941
|
??
|
1961
|
Mays
|
1981
|
??
|
2001
|
Bonds
|
1902
|
Wagner
|
1922
|
Ruth
|
1942
|
??
|
1962
|
Mays
|
1982
|
??
|
2002
|
Bonds
|
1903
|
Wagner
|
1923
|
Ruth
|
1943
|
??
|
1963
|
Mays
|
1983
|
??
|
2003
|
Bonds
|
1904
|
Wagner
|
1924
|
Ruth
|
1944
|
??
|
1964
|
Mays
|
1984
|
??
|
2004
|
Bonds
|
1905
|
Wagner
|
1925
|
Ruth
|
1945
|
??
|
1965
|
Mays
|
1985
|
??
|
2005
|
Bonds
|
1906
|
Wagner
|
1926
|
Ruth
|
1946
|
??
|
1966
|
Mays
|
1986
|
Bonds
|
2006
|
Bonds
|
1907
|
Wagner
|
1927
|
Ruth
|
1947
|
??
|
1967
|
Mays
|
1987
|
Bonds
|
2007
|
Bonds
|
1908
|
Wagner
|
1928
|
Ruth
|
1948
|
??
|
1968
|
Mays
|
1988
|
Bonds
|
2008
|
??
|
1909
|
Wagner
|
1929
|
Ruth
|
1949
|
??
|
1969
|
Mays
|
1989
|
Bonds
|
2009
|
??
|
1910
|
Wagner
|
1930
|
Ruth
|
1950
|
??
|
1970
|
Mays
|
1990
|
Bonds
|
2010
|
??
|
1911
|
Wagner
|
1931
|
Ruth
|
1951
|
Mays
|
1971
|
Mays
|
1991
|
Bonds
|
2011
|
??
|
1912
|
Wagner
|
1932
|
Ruth
|
1952
|
Mays
|
1972
|
Mays
|
1992
|
Bonds
|
2012
|
(Trout)
|
1913
|
Wagner
|
1933
|
Ruth
|
1953
|
Mays
|
1973
|
Mays
|
1993
|
Bonds
|
2013
|
(Trout)
|
1914
|
Ruth/Wag
|
1934
|
Ruth
|
1954
|
Mays
|
1974
|
??
|
1994
|
Bonds
|
2014
|
(Trout)
|
1915
|
Ruth/Wag
|
1935
|
Ruth
|
1955
|
Mays
|
1975
|
??
|
1995
|
Bonds
|
2015
|
(Trout)
|
1916
|
Ruth/Wag
|
1936
|
??
|
1956
|
Mays
|
1976
|
??
|
1996
|
Bonds
|
2016
|
(Trout)
|
We have two evident gaps: the years between 1936 and 1950, and the years between 1974 and 1985.
And with apologies to Schmidt, Morgan, Rose, Seaver, and Ryan, I think it makes more sense to cover the longer gap.
Joe DiMaggio fits the gap perfectly. His rookie year was 1936….and he played until 1951. DiMaggio was super-famous….he was the guy that baseball fans of that generation talked about. He has a fantastic nickname: The Yankee Clipper. He actually has two fantastic nicknames, if you count ‘Joltin’ Joe.’ He has a great story, a story that fits into the fabric of American history. He was the eighth child of nine, born to immigrant parents in California. His father was a fisherman; he wanted his sons to grow up to be fisherman with him. His sons wanted to play baseball. Three of them reached the majors.
DiMaggio might be the second most famous baseball player of all-time: he is likely the only challenger to Ruth. He’s referenced by Simon and Garfunkel and Billy Joel, imagined by Hemingway and Joyce Carol Oates (and Don DeLillo and Philip Roth must make a reference to him somewhere). He has a super-famous, super-weird record (the 56-gamer) that hasn’t ever had a real challenger to it. He was married to Marilyn Monroe…there’s a story that he got very upset during the shooting of Monroe’s most famous scene. He is one of the rare baseball players to fully transcend the game: it’s him and Koufax and Ruth.
But….there are a few knocks against Joltin’ Joe. We already have a few outfielders on our team, and we already have a New York Yankee outfielder.
More significantly, he was a very good player, but it wasn’t clear that he was the best player of his era, not after Williams and Musial showed up. He had a short career: even allowing the three years he lost to the war, he played sixteen seasons in the majors, retiring at 36. He does not come across, in biographies, as a particularly nice man…he doesn’t come across as particularly interesting. He led an interesting life certainly, but doesn’t it seem like a lot of the interesting parts stem from him being really famous? I don’t have a great sense of what, in his personality, captured the hearts and minds of so many people. I think he got trapped, to an extent, in his own mythology.
So that leaves us with the fifth spot.
And it’s going to Satchel Paige.
Satchel Paige absolutely belongs in the five. If we had a Hall-of-Fame of Two, I’d be tempted to pick him and Ruth, though their careers had some overlap.
Satchel is perfect. First, he’s a pitcher, and we need some pitching. He certainly belongs in the GOAT conversation: him and Walter Johnson and Grove and Clemens. He has a great nickname: Satchel. He got the name when he was just a kid, carrying bags at a train station. The story is that he rigged up some contraption to carry more bags. Someone else, seeing this, said that he looked like a satchel tree.
Just breaking that account apart a bit: there’s so much story hidden in the account. He was a kid, and he worked…he toted bags at the railway station. This would’ve been in Mobile, Alabama, which was a big city then. He was smart: if he was getting a dime a bag, he figured he could come up with a way to carry four bags. It reveals him as a showman, too, an individual who is attentive to the demands of audience. I imagine that his contraption netted him more bags and dimes than any of the other porters were making.
The point I’d make is that all of Paige’s life is filled with stories like this, stories that have enough contexts to show us a world.
Paige got into trouble as a kid: though he wasn’t an orphan like Ruth, he went to a reform school from thirteen to eighteen. Like Ruth, he came under the guidance of a teacher, who channeled his energies into baseball.
He played on two famous Negro League team: the Crawford Giants and the Kansas City Monarchs. He played against most of the famous players in that era, both in the majors and the Negro Leagues. One of the best stories is about young DiMaggio: in an exhibition game when DiMaggio was still in the minors, DiMaggio came up against Paige in a crucial at-bat, hitting a hard grounder that Paige deflected for a game-winning infield hit. The Yankees scout sent an enthusiastic telegraph to the Bronx saying: "DiMaggio everything we’d hoped he’d be. Hit Satch one for four."
His life, put into a biography, would require multiple volumes. The account of his defection to the D.R. (with a bunch of other stars) to play under armed guard for dictator Rafael Trujillo deserves its own book.
Paige is a central figure in the Negro Leagues, and he is a central figure in the movement to integrate professional baseball. Paige was well-known by baseball fans: he was more well-known than many of the stars in the major leagues. Paige was the rare person who was a myth within his time: he existed in the imagination of people who never saw him play.
This is pure speculation, but I think that Paige, more than any other player in the Negro Leagues, made professional baseball seem like it was missing something.
Integration happened because it had to happen: I don’t say that to denigrate the courage of Jackie Robinson, or Larry Doby…but sooner or later black players were going to be let back in the major leagues. I think Paige was absolutely central in pushing the line earlier: if you were a baseball fan in the 1940’s, you knew that you were missing something; that the other league had guys the major leagues didn’t.
The Negro Leagues, in a way, were the first (and so far only) challenge to the major leagues’ monopoly: they were a league that had players just as good as the ones in the majors, and they had a version of baseball that was a little more exciting. The majors had to give in: their authority as the best game in town was challenged by this other league. It was challenged, especially, by the legend of Satchel Paige.
Going a little farther afield…one of the things that exciting about Mike Trout’s career, at this moment, is that we get to look ahead to the player he could become. We consider his major league record within the context of how we imagine his career will look like fifteen years down the track.
Satchel Paige is the exact opposite: we read his major league record and look backwards, trying to see what his career might’ve looked like, if he had played in the majors.
I hadn’t ever looked over Paige’s major league numbers until I started writing this article, but they are every bit as remarkable as the numbers that Mike Trout has put up in his brief career.
Paige, as a major leaguer, pitched mostly out of the bullpen. Just looking at his two longest seasons in the majors, 1952 and 1953:
Pitcher
|
Age
|
IP
|
rWAR
|
W-L
|
SV
|
ERA
|
ERA+
|
Satchel Paige
|
45-46
|
255.1
|
6.4
|
15-19
|
21
|
3.28
|
123
|
This is pretty good: he posted a strong ERA, despite a low strikeout rate (5.0) and a high walk rate (3.4). He was, I’ll reiterate, in his middle forties at the time. He had thrown many, many, many innings. He had had arm troubles and had come back from them. His arm wasn’t a young forty-five.
I’ve said ‘pretty good’….one way to understand how good it is, is to compare him to other great pitchers who were pitching effectively into their forties. I found a list of ten players:
Pitcher
|
Age
|
IP
|
rWAR
|
W-L
|
SV
|
ERA
|
ERA+
|
Phil Niekro
|
45-46
|
435.2
|
6.4
|
32-20
|
0
|
3.59
|
109
|
Gaylord Perry
|
43-44
|
403
|
3.5
|
17-26
|
0
|
4.51
|
94
|
Cy Young
|
43-44
|
289.2
|
3.2
|
14-19
|
0
|
3.08
|
100
|
R. Johnson
|
44-45
|
280
|
3.5
|
19-16
|
0
|
4.24
|
106
|
Satchel Paige
|
45-46
|
255.1
|
6.4
|
15-19
|
21
|
3.28
|
123
|
Tommy John
|
45-46
|
240
|
-0.1
|
11-15
|
0
|
4.84
|
81
|
Nolan Ryan
|
45-46
|
223.2
|
1.4
|
10-14
|
0
|
4.06
|
97
|
R. Clemens
|
43-44
|
212.2
|
5.0
|
13-12
|
0
|
3.18
|
141
|
Hoyt Wilhelm
|
45-46
|
171.2
|
5.4
|
11-11
|
26
|
1.84
|
172
|
Jim Kaat
|
43-44
|
109.2
|
-1.3
|
5-3
|
2
|
4.02
|
91
|
This is a good list: five Hall-of-Famers, plus Jim Kaat, Tommy John, Roger Clemens, and Randy Johnson. These are, as far as I could find, the ten best pitchers who lasted into their middle forties. There’s no dud in the bunch: they are all top-100 pitchers….most would be in the top-25.
And Satchel is either the best of the group, or the second-best, behind Hoyt Wilhelm. WAR credits Satchel as providing the same value as Niekro, over 180 fewer innings. His Adjusted ERA ranks behind Roger Clemens and Wilhelm, and is well ahead of everyone else. Paige is two years older than Clemens, and Paige didn’t have a lot of the medical (ahem) advantages that Clemens has.
This is only a fragment: there’s no way to look back and figure out how many games Paige would’ve won in the major leagues. This fragment only tells us that Paige, as a forty-six year old, was a better pitcher than just about anyone who has played professional baseball at that age. Looking backwards from that vantage, it’s not unreasonable to think that Satchel Paige, identified by DiMaggio and Williams and Feller and Dizzy Dean and Buck Leonard as the best pitcher they ever saw, might have actually been the best pitcher ever.
So that’s my five: Wagner, Ruth, Satchel, Mays, Bonds.
Dave Fleming is a writer living in Wellington, New Zealand. He welcomes comments, questions, and suggestions here and at dfleming1986@yahoo.com.