Quote:
Originally Posted by Snowman
Never in my life have I ever heard or been part of a debate about who the greatest pitcher of all time was where Sandy Koufax was not at least discussed. And he's often the front-runner for a lot of people. As for Cy Young, I've never once heard anyone argue that he was the greatest.
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For me, longevity plays a significant role if you are going to call someone The Greatest. Yes, Koufax was incredible for that decade, but that's not enough for me. It can be enough for you, and we can both be content in our opinions. My comparison to Mike Bossy comes nicely into play again. He's often mentioned as "one of the greats", but never in the same "The Greatest" breath as Gretzky, Howe or Hull. At his prime, he was either just as good or better than any of those guys! And, like Sandy, his "prime" consisted of his entire career before both were tragically cut short by failing bodies.
I think the reason you don't hear Cy Young's name thrown into these conversations (anymore) can squarely be blamed on the passage of time. There's simply no one alive who saw him pitch at any point in his MLB career. True, the same can now pretty much be said about Cobb and Johnson, but we're still just bascailly a generation or two removed from those who saw that era of ball. Heck, I'm just in early middle age, and I had friends who played both with and against Cobb and Johnson. So, while both men have been dead for a very long time, first-hand memories of them as players (rather than as older gentlemen) are still living on today in people like me, who heard them directly from these players' contemporaries. I don't think the same can be said about 19th century greats; therefore, we're just not hearing their names tossed into the ring when it's time for these debates.
Today, "The Greatest" argument really seems to start with the Cobb/Johnson era and ascend chronologically from there (yes, I'm including Honus and Matty in with this generation, as they seemed to straddle two). It's as if anybody who hit their peak in baseball generations prior to those guys didn't even exist for the purpose of these conversations. By the time Cobb and Johnson started, Cy was pushing 40. It didn't stop him from notching successive 20-game seasons, but that was nothing compared to past showings by him.
Most of Cy's numbers are monstrous and speak for themselves. When they went to name the award, it wasn't the Walter Johnson Award or the Christy Mathewson Award. That has to speak volumes, unless there is something more to the reason Cy's name is on the award of which I am not aware. In the late 1940's, there were still many men alive who saw Young pitch, and it was him for whom the award was named.