[the 'stache]

Originally Posted by CxG Voodoo Doll

This is so cool. It's like a "what if" moment in an athletes career.

What if...

Sosa/McGwire/Bonds/A - Rod etc never used Ped's?

What if...

Mantle was never addicted to alcohol?

Cool thread. Interesting stuff.

Thank you

Baseball fans have been playing the "what if" game ever since the game was first played. What if Candy Cummings hadn't started throwing that curveball in the 1870s? What if somebody like Branch Rickey had come along ten years earlier, and the color barrier was broken before Jackie Robinson? What if fans had a chance to see Josh Gibson, and Cool Papa Bell, and Satch while he was in his prime? What if the Dodgers hadn't moved to the west coast? It's fun to play the game, because fans can daydream about what might have been. I can dream about the Brewers being able to replay the 1982 World Series and actually having Rollie Fingers. He'd won the Cy Young and MVP the season before. Yet he was unable to play in the '82 series at all because of injuries. In a series that went to seven games, having him available could have meant the difference between winning and losing. Fingers had saved 29 games with a 2.60 ERA.

But while all that is pure fantasy, what we're doing here is an amalgamation of fantasy and fact. We know that if it weren't for war, these men we are talking about would have been playing baseball. All of them. And while they could have played better than, or worse than the numbers we are arriving at, and the possibility exists that they may have retired earlier if they don't miss years to military commitment, I feel that these adjustments create career numbers that are believable. Ted Williams missed more than 4.5 years of his career. We saw how good he was at the end of his career. Outside of the 1959 season when Williams battled through a neck injury suffered in the preseason, he was still a great ballplayer. In 1957, at the age of 38, he hit .388 to lead the American League. The next season, he again led the league with a .328 season. And, in 1960, his final season, with the neck injury a thing of the past, he bounced back to hit .316 with 29 HR and 72 RBI in 113 games-at age 41.

Is there anybody that couldn't see Ted Williams smashing close to another 200 home runs with almost 5 more seasons in his prime? Not this baseball fan