Wednesday, February 02, 2022

Top 100 All-Time

I am looking at the ESPN Top 100 baseball players of all time articles (1-25 comes out tomorrow, and I am not even going to bother). And it is ludicrous. I am not linking.  For a woke sports network, you have to wonder who in the world left all those Negro Leagues players off the list, and couldn't even get the easy ones right.  Josh Gibson - my personal pick for #1 all time - at #35, and Oscar Charleston, my #4 all-time, at #53. I have to figure that being ESPN, they don't actually care about real racial issues, they care about what looks like a racial issue to a modern 25 year-old. 

Not to mention not actually caring about who the best baseball players were.

Plus, when you look at Gibson at #35, you notice that Pete Rose is right above him at #34.  Rose should not even be on the list, and it has nothing to do with gambling or otherwise being a jerk. He was good and lasted a long time. That's it. People who don't understand baseball statistics get all all excited because he "was the greatest leadoff hitter of all time," which he wasn't.  Yet even if he was, that is no big deal. Until statistical understandings changed around twenty years ago, no one put their best hitter at leadoff.  You put a certain type of hitter at leadoff. But your best overall hitter you had in the third or fourth spot. Like Johnny Bench, just ahead of him in the rankings even though he played a far more important position, catcher. I compared Rose to a player of his own era who is not as highly regarded now, but has credentials which far outstrip his as a leadoff hitter, even though he wasn't one. He finished at 61 on the list, BTW. But Rose was Charley Hustle! And he had a long hitting streak once! (Those tend to be guys who don't draw walks.) And he has more hits than anyone! Yeah, but see my comparison.

It's worth reviving my post on the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City over this. It will include a lot of the players I think should have been on the list.

No comments: