ESPN's Top 100 MLB Players of All Time

I agree with that partially. I think Wagner, Ruth, Cobb, Gehrig, Dickey... would have faired just about the same, though there would have been a like number of African American ball players that would have compared favorably. But what Bonds did is enhance his ability to a geometric, if not exponential, degree.
He is different, like Lance Amrstrong. Even though many were doing it in baseball, Bonds was an expert-professional cheater in a land of amateurs and semi-pros. From 2001-2004 (age 36-39) Bonds played as if he were competing against D1 college kids.

 

Still laughing to the point of tears over Old Hoss' reviews.

 

Morgan seems way too high... I tried to guess the remaining 25 yesterday and I think he was the only one I missed. Great player, but way too high...

 

Joe Morgan was a great 2B, right behind Rogers Hornsby (and possibly Alomar), but no way he's No. 20 overall.

 

Joe Dimaggio doesn't crack the top 20? This list is bullshit.

 

Hilariously, Morgan, who rages on and on and on about the evils of sabermetrics, was probably the first player whose historical standing was dramatically boosted by it (them?).

 

I can see both sides of this. On one hand, he finished nearly 800 hits shy of 3,000. (He's 173th all time on the hits list.) He *only* hit 361 home runs. (74th all time.) If you're into WAR (/makes wanking motion) he's 66th all time in career WAR. His career average (.325) is 42nd all time.

Now, all that said, he's 12th all time in career OPS (.977). He's 10th all time in career slugging. (.577). He won 3 MVPs, and was an All-Star (back when that sort of meant something) every single year of his 13-year career. He was a very good center fielder. He played in 10 World Series and won nine of them.

There is a lot of myth-making that surrounds DiMaggio. Hemingway, Talese, Marilyn Monroe, Paul Simon, "The Yankee Clipper." All that is a factor in the way we view him. He was an all-time great player, no doubt. But I think as a baseball player, I think they've probably got him ranked about right.

 

But he was Mr Coffee. That alone should have gotten him into the top 10.

 

He also missed three years in the prime of his career serving in WWII. He's well over 400 homers and close to 3,000 hits otherwise.

And he's sure as shit more deserving of the Top 20 than Morgan, Pujols, ARod and Rickey.

 

Love that ESPN has set up site so you can quickly go through all 125 names on list fast. No need to roll over to a new page with each click.

 

I understand the WWII stuff, but the point of the list seems to be to look at what the players actually accomplished without any qualifiers. I'll give you Henderson, who simply wasn't the hitter DiMaggio was. Morgan wasn't (quite) the hitter DiMaggio was either, but he played second base, so it's kind of hard to say he doesn't deserve a bit of an extra boost in the rankings for being the best at a weak-hitting position.

If you take performance enhancers out of the equation (and that's the point of the list), I think it's pretty hard to say that DiMaggio was better than either Pujols or Rodriguez.