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Posted By: Mark L

During the era of inside baseball (the so-called "dead ball era), defense, speed, strategy, situational hitting, outright trickery, and other fine things that are hard to measure played a bigger role than they did in the 20's or thereafter. And from what I understand, a shortstop was a heck of a lot more important to the outcome of a game than he has been during the era of the home run. So I tend to give a lot of weight to those oldtimers who favor Wagner and try to measure that against Cobb's amazing record and Ruth's, too. As far as I'm concerned, trying to choose among the Big Three is like looking up at the Alps and trying to figure out which one of the peaks is highest. It's just hard to tell from here.