RIP Hank Aaron

Manky votes for Jeets.

 

Mays is now the most clear-cut Greatest Living Player since Babe Ruth.

(After Babe died, it was probably Honus Wagner and then Ty Cobb. When Cobb kicked off, the "mantle" probably passed to Ted/Joe D, then Mays/Aaron. But really with all those guys you could argue for a couple different candidates-- with Aaron gone Mays has the honor to himself.)

Bench and Schmidt are arguably the GOATs at their positions.

Depending how much you want to discount the roid boys, ARod, Bonds and Clemens are in the discussion.

 

Frank Howard has to be one of the very few left from that era.

 

Bonds.

 

Bonds is the pick if you accept all his steroid stats at 100 percent value. I don't think many people will go that far.

 

Yaz, Brooks, Rose.

 

I'm glad Aaron lived long enough to see a Biden administration. Can you imagine Trump sending out something like this?
Statement of President Joe Biden on the Passing of Henry Louis “Hank” Aaron | The White House

No way Trump would have bothered. It would have angered his klan. The Braves fans in his klan disproportionately think Chipper Jones was the greatest Brave of all time.

 

The games either count or they don't. And if they don't, fine. But they don't for anyone from that era then.

 

Bonds, Clemens and ARod, I discount about the final third of their careers. All three would have made the HOF in a breeze anyway; the roids put them up in "top ten of all time" territory. (Probably throw Pudge Rodriguez in this group too.)

McGwire and Sosa; I throw out about half their careers. Without those seasons, they don't make it.

 

Gotta throw out the bulk of A-Rod’s career. He came up in 1994 and said he started using when he went to the Rangers (2001). He retired 15 years later.

 

Starman-

I will check later, but I am thinking of still-living players who were active in the 1950s.