Quote:
Originally Posted by tedzan
Hi Bob
My gauge of the "greatness" of a BB player is his World Series performance. Ruth (and I include Mantle). Two significant s factors...... first, the fact that the Yankees played in 10 World Series while Ruth was on the team tells you a lot. He was an inspiration to his team which got them there. And his .326 BA, 15 HR's, and 33 RBI's stats far exceed what Cobb did in his three World Series appearances.
Incidentally,
I got a chuckle out of your "Cobb Triple Crown" comment. In 1923 Ruth batted .393....41 HRs....130 RBI's. Numbers much greater than Cobb's. But, Heilmann led the AL with .403 BA.
that prevented Ruth from being the Triple Crown winner in the AL in 1923.
TED Z
T206 Reference
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All due respect, the World Series alone is a nominal factor, at best, in determining how good an individual player is. Baseball is a team sport, and regardless of how good an individual is, they cannot single-handedly propel a team all by themself to always win. Now if you want to talk golf, tennis, or boxing, that's different. The teams that Ruth played on were stacked with other great players, so pitchers couldn't get by just pitching around Ruth all the time. They didn't nickname the Yankee's lineup back then as Murderer's Row for nothing. In fact, what other pre-war lineups can you name that were considered so good that they got their own nickname like that? Certainly none of Cobb's teams to my knowledge ever got anywhere near that kind of credit or acclaim.
Also, baseball has always been known as a grind, where players have to go through the long, hard season to even get to the playoffs or World Series. Not downplaying how important it is when a ballplayer does exceedingly well during a World Series, but to base one's opinion as to how great of a player they are largely on that factor seems quite disrespectful to all the other great ballplayers who have ever played, but were not fortunate enough to play alongside enough other great ballplayers to achieve overall team success. Plus, Ruth played for New York, the largest city and and arguably the biggest market at the time. The hype and exposure he received was unparralleled. Think about this, what if Ruth had ended up playing for a different team like Cleveland, and still hit all the home runs he did, but never went to and won all the World Series championships he did with the Yankees. Would he still be the mythical figure he is today and credited with supposedly saving baseball single-handedly after the Black Sox scandal? Or was at least some of that legend not also due to him being lucky enough to play on a team loaded with other great players and also being hyped by a media and market that were pretty much unequalled at the time?
In today's game, Mike Trout often gets called the best player of his time. His cards have sold for record amounts, and the media loves him, but he is not overly quirky or has any strange or unusual habits or stories that make him exceptionally memorable. Say Trout finishes out his career with the Angels and no major surprises or scandals, and ends up in several top 10 offensive categories all-time. Yet what has all that baseball ability gotten him while playing for the Angels, certainly no significant playoff or World Series exposure, and likely none in the future if he stays with them. Also, he's now got a new teammate with a much better story and hype than Trout ever had. So even if Trout continues putting up great numbers for several more years, is he possibly going to be overshadowed on his own team by Ohtani? And how will that be reflected in the way Trout is looked at and remembered by the general public 25, 50, 100 years after he's done playing? I'm not talking about SABR nerds or collector geeks like myself, but the general public. Chances are he may not be so well remembered, and largely forgotten, lacking any special story or circumstances that make him larger than life. I bring this up because it may help to further explain the difficulty in trying to not just compare players from different eras, but even compare contemporary players from similar times long past when we have no one with any first hand knowledge or observation of them still around today to give an honest, first hand comparison of how they really stacked up to each other. That is why I wonder if as an earlier poster already put forth, we should go with who many respected and knowledgable baseball people of that time time felt was the best player then.
And glad I gave you a laugh, but in all seriousness, that Cobb actually led the majors in home runs one season was the salient point I was most trying to get across. The fact that it was known he was not trying to hit home runs, as you aptly pointed out by his use of a choked-up batting grip, yet he still was able to lead the majors in that category one season during the height of the deadball era, points to Cobb having an ability that was ahead of most all others of his contemporaries. At least till the end of the deadball era. And again, look at the teammates Ruth had around him most of his career versus who Cobb, Wagner, and others were surrounded with. Aside from hitting a lot of solo home runs, you need other players to be on base when a player is up to bat if they really want to get their RBI totals among league leaders. Ruth's easiest categories to lead in the Triple Crown were HRs and RBIs, as no one else was trying (and able) to hit home runs like he was initially when the deadball era ended. And since RBIs are a direct by-product of HRs, it is a given that Ruth would normally be among the league's RBI leaders, year in and year out. Now the fact that he couldn't also get the top average one year to win the Triple Crown does not disparage Ruth in any way. There were a lot of great hitters back then to contend with, and Heilman was a great player in his own right, and very deserving of winning the AL batting average crown that year. But the manner in which you phrased your comment and made it a point to specifically compare Ruth's 1923 Triple Crown stats to those of Cobb in his Triple Crown season in a disparaging manner is disrespectful not only to Cobb, but to every other AL player during Cobb's Triple Crown season. Regardless of the fact that the two seasons you are comparing are only 14 years apart, the changes to how the game was being played, especially in terms of things like the banning of spitballs and the deadball era being over during Ruth's 1923 season, make the direct correlation you are hinting at less than appropriate and comparable. Instead of pointing to how Cobb only had 9 HRs in his 1909 Triple Crown season while Ruth had so many more as he hit 41 in 1923, perhaps a better question would be how come no one else hit as many as Cobb that year he won the Triple Crown? And not only did Cobb win the AL Triple Crown in 1909, which is a rare achievement unto itself, he is one of I believe only 5 or 6 others to have won the Triple Crown where his stats bested everyone in majors, and not just in the AL or NL. So that means Cobb was going against, and bested, the likes of Wagner, Lajoie, Speaker, and others considered as possibly the all-time best pre-war player, in their prime. By the time Ruth got to the Yankees, those players were already entering their mid to late thirties, and Joe Jackson was getting banned, yet he stll couldn't get that elusive batting average title when he needed it. So bottom line, what Cobb did is no mean feat, regardless of the gross numbers he put up compared to numbers Ruth put up years later, after banning spitballs, juicing up the formerly "dead" balls, and who knows what other little tweaks and rule changes to the game to squeeze more offense out of it so the owners could make more money.
Quite frankly Ted, I've read and followed your posts and marveled at your knowledge on this forum over many years, but was never so disappointed in you to see you make such a disparaging remark about Cobb, and by extension, every other player during the 1909 season. Obviously your comment that my mentioning Cobb's Triple Crown when Ruth did not ever win one caused you to chuckle implies you found that to be some type of humorous or funny comparison, or in other words, some type of joke. I was actually mentioning Cobb's Triple Crown season not so much for the fact that Ruth didn't win one, but to illustrate how even though he wasn't into hitting HRs, Cobb still managed to lead the entire majors in HRs at least one year during his career, a feat which Ruth accomplished numerous times.
I am not disparaging Ruth in the slightest, but neither am I discounting Cobb, Wagner, and others simply because the rules and equipment were much different when they played the bulk of their careers. Time and the media have played such a huge factor over all these years as to what players are remembered and revered for, and can easily distort modern opinions and thinking. Think about what i was saying before about Mike Trout, and HONESTLY ask yourself how he may be viewed 100 years from now, and keep that perspective in mind when trying to compare past players against each other today.