Quote:
Originally Posted by ls7plus
Bill James ranked Mantle as the 5th greatest player to play major league baseball, with thorough consideration of all the factors that entailed, in his last historical baseball abstract, which is a rating he beyond any reasonable dispute earned in the course of his career. Yes, others posted higher total numbers, but James and I are both talking primarily about quality of play over a substantial period of time, rather than quantity (does anyone really consider Craig Biggio on a par with numerous other HOF'er's simply because he got 3,000+ hits over a long career? Don't expect a run on Biggio cards anytime soon!).
Larry
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And I think that's also part of it. Until maybe the 70's -80's, there were players that were incredibly good, but for a few reasons didn't have long careers. Either from overuse, injury that nobody really knew how to recover from, or just getting tired of the grind and getting a better offer in business.
With the changes free agency brought for the financial end of things, came a change in how a career was viewed. Players and teams began taking a longer view, and eventually a more common view that the team they played for was just temporary until contract time or before if the team felt they could fill more lineup gaps with a trade.
So players actually took time to rehab injuries, with an eye to extending their career. Even at the now old fashioned 2-3 million a year why play hurt and shorten your career by even a couple years.
As a fan, it gets harder to really think of a player the way players in the past were viewed. When I was a kid, Yaz was always there, and the perhaps rose colored glasses kept him as a great player long past his prime. (Same for Rice) When the players move around more that just doesn't happen. I can only think of a couple recent players that even get close to that, Jeter and Ortiz.
Players aren't generally as flashy, and in some baseball ways that's not a bad thing. Would Mays famous catch happen today? With scouting and advanced video study he'd probably be playing deeper, and not have to make such a long run to get to the ball. Better for teams and players to be positioned better, maybe not as good for the fans.
Biggio fits that pretty well, 20 years without much in the way of injuries, a nice run of years well above average, stayed with the same team the whole time, and managed to average just barely over 150 hits a year.
So what we've ended up with are a lot (probably more than in the 50's) of players who are very good for a very long time, but aren't quite as electric as the top players back then.
It's hard to have someone become almost mythical like Mantle or Ruth without that flashiness, with loads of access, without the prolonged local adulation, and without as much press. NY players, even the merely above average get a lot more national press than almost anyone. Boston and Chicago would probably be a close second.