Dem
47
GOP
53
Oops. The "no politics questions" weekend snuck up on us, and we forgot to solicit questions. But then, we wrote an answer to one question that ended up being 5,000+ words. So, we'll end up with fewer answers than usual this week, but about the same amount of words. And, as you can see, we've decided to do some history questions and some gallimaufry, which both count as "not politics" (though that's debatable with some of this history questions, we admit). We're going to hold off on resuming the "Reader of the Week" Star Trek answers to next week, because this post is already 10,000+ words, and it's late in the day.
And if you're still working on the headline theme, you should really pay attention to the 5,000+ word answer.
M.M. in San Diego, CA, asks: I was surprised when I read that the concept of historical consciousness in Europe was first described in the 1690s by a Scot or English scholar. Is that correct, and when did the general public come to understand that the past was considerably different from the present?
(Z) answers: This is not exactly my bailiwick. I am not a historian of Europe, nor an intellectual history specialist. So, consider my answer in that light.
That said, for thousands of years, people have very clearly understood the past was different from the present. All you have to do to prove that is to think of any work of literature that was set in the past, from The Iliad to Robin Hood to Julius Caesar. All of these predate the 1690s by a century or more.
When speaking of "historical consciousness," then, it means something more specific. Actually, it can basically refer to three different, semi-related phenomena. The first is the notion that humans are a product of a long and interconnected chain of events, and that chain of events can be studied to gain insight as to the present and the future. This is something that took hold in the late Renaissance/early modern eras.
The second is the notion that the members of a nation-state have a shared history, and that shared history makes them into a distinct and somehow cohesive body politic. This is something that took hold in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries (though it did not reach full flower in Europe until the mid-to-late nineteenth). Before this, people saw themselves as part of their culture, and/or their local community, and/or their family, but not so much as part of a larger nation-state.
The third is the notion that the historical record can be interrogated, with some evidence given more credence, and some evidence given less credence, in support of a (social) scientific argument about what it all means. This is something that took hold in the mid-19th century.
I have no doubt that there are intellectual historians out there who try to put a much finer point on these sorts of ideological changes, and who throw around specific years or decades, like the 1690s. This is why I am not enamored of a lot of intellectual history, as the ebb and flow of ideas is squishy, and doesn't actually lend itself to this kind of precision, most of the time.
W.H. in San Jose, CA, asks: I've been reading text and watching videos that compare our current era of American history to the Gilded Age, along with drawing parallels between Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and William Jennings Bryan. What do you think of these comparisons? Does it hold merit, or is it just people seeing patterns that are just coincidence?
(Z) answers: I will start by pointing out the Bryan was a Populist, not a Progressive. While both movements were concerned with the deleterious effects of entrenched political and economic power, they drew from very different political bases. In particular, Bryan was a devout evangelical Christian who couched his ideas in Biblical language, and he was also someone who had to pander to significant racist elements in his movement (even though Bryan himself was not especially racist by the standards of his day). Sanders is not an evangelical Christian, and in fact does not use religious language at all, and he doesn't pander to racists. So, I would be leery of lumping them together, excepting that the original Populists and the original Progressives confronted a world beset by an unusual number of problems, and modern-day populists and progressives seem to be facing the same thing.
And that pretty much gives you my answer to your question: Yes, as I have written before, I believe that the U.S. is in a New Gilded Age. In particular, the Gilded Age was characterized by a significant uptick in racism and racial violence, which we are certainly seeing today. The Gilded Age was characterized by an increasingly imperialist foreign policy, which we are certainly seeing today. The Gilded Age was characterized by an imbalance in power between business owners and laborers, with the former having nearly all the power and the latter having very little. This is something we are certainly seeing today. And, most importantly, the Gilded Age was characterized by a wealth gap, with many rich people, and many poor people, and a shrinking middle class. That is most certainly happening today, as well. In 1890, which is basically the climax of the Gilded Age, the top 1% of Americans owned 25% of the wealth. Today, the top 1% own... 31%.
M.T. in St. Paul, MN, asks: It seems the U.S. is in decline. I'm very much an amateur when it comes to understanding why past empires declined but know there are multiple reasons, depending on which empire and which era. I don't believe Donald Trump is responsible for America's decline, though he is accelerating it. I'm curious if you agree America is in decline, if so what is the most important reason for that decline, and where America comes out in the end, assuming the lunacy of Trump and MAGA eventually fade away. As an example, as an amateur, I believe Britain's decline was due to overreach, trying to control a massive empire when it could no longer do so.
Just as an FYI, the article that triggered this question is New York Times article written by Carlos Lozada, headlined "America Has Become a Dangerous Nation," and beginning with the observation: "We had a good run—some eight decades or so—but it is clear by now that the United States has ceased to be the leader of the free world."(Z) answers: I think that there is no question the U.S. is in decline, and has been so for at least 30-40 years.
As to the reason, my answer is "unsophisticated thinking," which has manifest in two very important ways. The first is that, over the course of the era of plenty (the latter half of the 20th century), many Americans eventually shifted to a way of thinking that amounts to "I've got mine, who cares if they've got theirs." There was a time, particularly right after World War II, when the majority accepted that everyone benefits if the roads and bridges are kept in good repair, that everyone benefits if the nation has a large number of college-educated people, that everyone benefits if it's plausible to make a good wage and to afford to own a home and raise a family and become a productive member of your community. Now, selfishness is more common than interest in the common good (maybe because World War II, the last time this nation truly rallied, was so long ago?). The result is a society that has been hollowed out from within, and where many people are not especially interested in the overall health and strength of the nation, while others are looking for convenient scapegoats to blame for their troubles.
The second, which is something of a variant of the first, is that America's empire-like power since World War II has always been much more about its soft power (alliances, cooperation, diplomacy) and much less about its hard power (military). However, particularly recently, and on the instigation of people who aren't very sophisticated thinkers, the nation has lavished money on the military, and has neglected its soft power. There was most certainly a time when having the biggest guns and the most soldiers was all you needed to impose your will on the planet, or a large portion of it, but that time has long passed. And the U.S. might well have done enough to damage its soft power, at this point, that it cannot be fixed. Meanwhile, this spending of $1 trillion/year on the military is not sustainable, long-term. So, the U.S. is likely to recede further and further in terms of both types of power.
You are right that Donald Trump was not the cause of all this, but he certainly harnessed it in his rise to power, and he has certainly accelerated the trends (and note that I initially typed that as "accelerated the trans," which may or may not be a Freudian slip). As a historian, I am more about understanding the past rather than predicting the future, but I would say that absent a sea-change event like World War II, the U.S. is not likely to regain its hegemonic status. It will settle in as one of the next-tier powers, along with the U.K., Russia, France, etc., with all looking up at China. And this is going to be painful for the American people, as the country won't be as safe, and goods will not be as available or as cheap, with the result being that quality of life will degrade.
There are, I will note, three presidents that really serve as the main drivers of all of this, with Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush joining the list, in addition to Trump. However, I think that if you managed to revive any of the pre-Reagan Republican presidents, particularly Dwight D. Eisenhower and Richard Nixon, they would agree with every word I have written here.
J.D. in Arundel, England, UK, asks: I have, over the years, seen the name of Louis Brandeis come up in discussions on US politics—not just from you, but in newspaper articles, TV documentaries, and so on. He seems to have been an interesting, thoughtful man, and an eloquent advocate for the broad area of political views which I inhabit. Brandeis's profile is not high on this side of the Atlantic, but I'd like to get to know about him in more detail. Is there a good, extant biography of him that I could track down? I'd ideally like something that would cover his career, politics, writing, etc.
(Z) answers: If you want "magisterial"—in other words, the kind of book Robert Caro would write if he decided to write about Brandeis—then get a copy of Louis D. Brandeis: A Life (2012) by Melvin I. Urofsky. That one will tell you everything you want to know, and more.
However, the Urofsky book is almost 1,000 pages. If you want something more manageable, then get Louis D. Brandeis: American Prophet (2017) by Jeffrey Rosen, which is fewer than 300 pages. However, note that the Rosen book leans a little hagiographic. Also, because it is part of the "Jewish Lives" series, it gives a lot of the book over to Brandeis' Jewishness (he wasn't especially religious) and his Zionism (he was VERY Zionist).
J.L. in Baltimore, MD, asks: I know the current occupant of the Oval Office must hold the record from his first term for firing Cabinet members, but is there any information available on how common this is with normal presidents? When a Cabinet official leaves office there's usually an official story about leaving for a different career or health reasons or something else reasonable, and some of those may actually have been firings. But how many times has a president openly fired a Cabinet official?
(Z) answers: It is very uncommon, because it is both decent and politically wise to allow a Cabinet member to leave under some sort of cover story, rather than to humiliate them with an outright termination. In some cases, even the people involved don't quite know how to characterize what happened. For example, Robert McNamara and Lyndon B. Johnson both agreed that while they could no longer work together, it was unclear if McNamara's departure from the Secretaryship of Defense was a termination or a resignation.
There are pretty much only two circumstances in which a Cabinet officer is fired, and it's made very clear it was a firing. The first is if they behaved so badly, it is necessary for the president to make clear their disapproval, and to distance themselves as aggressively as is possible. Abraham Lincoln most certainly fired the corrupt Secretary of War Simon Cameron. Warren Harding most certainly fired the corrupt Secretary of the Interior Albert Fall. Gerald Ford most certainly fired the racist Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz (though Butz tried to claim he resigned before he could be fired).
The other circumstance in which a Cabinet officer is fired is when there's an alpha male thing going on, and the sitting president feels a need to show that he's dominant and the terminated person is not. The only president who fits comfortably in this category is Donald Trump, who likes to twist the knife on the way out the door, particularly with generals like Jim Mattis and John Kelly. I struggle to think of another president I can even mention here. Maybe Harry S. Truman. He did not fire any Cabinet officials in this way, but he did fire Douglas MacArthur as NATO Supreme Commander in Korea. And a major dynamic of that was Truman reiterating (appropriately, I should add) that the president is commander-in-chief, and the Supreme Commander is not.
F.S. in Cologne, Germany, asks: Who are the 10 best players in MLB history?
(Z) answers: (NB: F.S. in Cologne actually asked this question about all four of the "Big Four" sports. I answered the NBA version a few weeks ago. Today, at much greater length, it's the MLB version. Next week, it will be the easiest of the four, namely the NHL. And the week after, it will be—maybe—the hardest of the four, the NFL.)
There are numerous challenges when it comes to ranking the Top 10 baseball players of all time. Here are the six biggest, I would say:
- Changes in the Game: Baseball has been around long enough that the way the game is played today would be close to unrecognizable to those who played it in its early days, 150 years ago. You almost can't put any players from before 1900 on a Top 10 list, since the 19th century rules were so different. And even for the early 20th century, the approach to pitching was so radically different (four-man rotations, very limited use of relievers) that it was much more plausible for really good pitchers to put up insane stats, and much more plausible for really good hitters to do the same (since they often got to face the same pitcher 4/5/6 times a game, with that pitcher getting more tired each time). Also, before April 15, 1947, the players did not have to face any non-white athletes. On the other hand, they had much worse equipment, no access to modern medicine and/or nutrition, and they traveled to away games via long and arduous train trips.
- Negro Leagues: In a very related point, the Negro Leaguers are very hard to evaluate. Starting in 2020, Major League Baseball has considered the various Negro Leagues to be major leagues. However, because Negro Leagues teams combined formal, organized league play with barnstorming in order to make ends meet, the quality of competition was inconsistent, and a team like the Homestead Grays might regularly face a team that was major-league quality, followed by a team that was single-A quality (low minor leagues), followed by a team that was triple-A quality (high minor leagues), followed by another major-league quality team. Also, in part due to this, the record-keeping for the Negro Leagues is very spotty and incomplete.
- Military Service/Segregation: If a player is affected by, or loses playing time to, injuries, that's just part of the game, and they don't get extra brownie points for what they would have done but for their physical setbacks. However—and this is largely not true of the other major sports—there are superstar-level MLB players who lost significant playing time to either military service (mostly in World War II) or to the color line. Those things are most certainly NOT the players' faults, and usually they ARE given some extra credit for what they might have done on the field, but for these externalities. How much extra credit is open to discussion.
- Pitchers vs. Hitter: Because pitching and hitting are so different, it is hard to compare pitchers to hitters. It gets even harder when you consider that, per the above discussion, early 20th century pitchers put up numbers that are absolutely inconceivable today. For example, Cy Young had 749 complete games in his career. These days, starting pitchers almost never finish games. There were only 29 in all of baseball last year, and 28 the year before that. If you average that out, then it means it would take the entire league 26 years to catch Cy Young. There are only two pitchers in league history who hava pitched for 26 years (Nolan Ryan and Tommy John), and they certainly didn't come close to averaging 28.5 CG/season. Point is, nobody is ever going to come close to Young, barring radical changes in the game. And the larger point is it's pretty hard to compare Cy Young to, say, Greg Maddux.
- Steroids: There are many people who take the view that if a player took steroids, their career and their records basically don't count. While this may be satisfying, it quickly becomes difficult to defend, and to apply in a manner that is anything other than haphazard. To start with, we don't know exactly how much steroids actually help. There are plenty of players who have been popped for juicing, and who were very modest producers, so it's clear that steroids by themselves will not turn an average player into Babe Ruth. We also don't know, outside of players who got caught with their hands in the anabolics jar (e.g., failed drug test, ratted out by their suppliers, etc.), who was/is actually using. Given how many people in other sports have evaded detection for a long time (ahem, Lance Armstrong) or have evaded detection forever (ahem, who knows?), there is no question that there are/were many more 'roiders in baseball than is publicly known. Yet another issue is that, at the ostensible height of baseball's steroids era, a lot of juiced hitters were facing juiced pitchers. Did they cancel each other out?
And then, beyond all this, you also have to consider other forms of cheating. In the 1950s/1960s/1970s, players took greenies (amphetamines) like they were candy. Most stars of that era, including Willie Mays, Hank Aaron and Mickey Mantle, have admitted to using them. And, as someone who has played a lot of baseball, I can assure you that more energy is more valuable than more strength. So, how can we punish steroid users and not greenie users? Similarly, there were a number of Hall of Fame pitchers who illegally doctored the baseball, and barely bothered to try to hide it (Gaylord Perry, Phil Niekro, Don Sutton, etc.). Heck, Perry's autobiography, published while he was still playing, was entitled Me and the Spitter: An Autobiographical Confession. And the publication date wasn't, say, 2 months before he retired—he played another 10 seasons. How can one look the other way at the ball doctoring and the greenies, but come down hard on the 'roids? Oh, and note that Bud Selig, the commissioner who led baseball in the steroids era, and who most certainly buried his head in the sand because all those home runs brought fans back after the 1994 World Series was canceled, is in the Hall.- Game Changers: When I did basketball, I noted that a sizable number of all-time greats were players who permanently changed the game. That is much less true of baseball, where key innovations, more often than not, came from players who were average, or maybe very good, but not all-time greats. For example, the curveball was allegedly invented by Candy Cummings, who would not make anyone's list of the Top 100 pitchers of all time. Probably not even the Top 500. So, "he changed the game" is largely not a part of this particular conversation, beyond a couple of very clear exceptions.
And with all of those qualifiers, let's start the way I started the basketball answer, with the no-doubters, the baseball players who have a strong claim to being the greatest in the history of the game:
Babe Ruth: He is one of the two "exceptions" I note immediately above, and in addition to being in contention for "greatest player in MLB history" is also in contention for "most important player in MLB history." Ruth started off as an elite pitcher, and then became an elite hitter; many of his batting records still stand, despite the fact that he played his last game more than 90 years ago. On top of that, he made the home run a key part of the game; there were several years in the otherwise-small-ball 1910s and 1920s where he hit more homers than some of the other teams in the league. He also brought fans back to baseball after the Black Sox scandal of 1919.
Barry Bonds: Barry Bonds is the only player to put up career numbers to rival Ruth's (and he is one of only two players, along with Hank Aaron, to have more HRs than Ruth). Not everyone loves wins above replacement (WAR), which is an effort to quantify players' total contributions to their teams, but Bonds is second to Ruth among hitters (182.6 for the Babe, 162.8 for Bonds), and Bonds played in a much tougher environment. The big demerit against Bonds is steroid use. The smaller demerit is that he did not have a great throwing arm. The extent to which someone subtracts for those things dictates how highly they rate Bonds.
Willie Mays: Willie Mays lacks the liabilities of the other two players listed here. Unlike Ruth, he had to play against Black players and against relievers. Unlike Bonds, he did not take steroids (though again, he did take greenies). He is also a true "five tool" player—he could hit, could hit for power, could run, could play defense, and could throw. Bonds lacked "throw," Ruth lacked "throw" and, for the latter part of his career, "run" as well. However, Mays did not produce quite as much as the other two players did. He is third among hitters all-time, by WAR, with 156.2.In contrast to the basketball answer, I would say there is another tier of players who are not in contention for the honor of being the greatest in the history of the game, but who are nonetheless near-locks for the Top 10:
Josh Gibson: It is improbable that there are no Negro Leaguers in the 10 best players in the history of the Major Leagues. And Gibson, a catcher who hit like Babe Ruth, is generally considered the greatest of the Negro Leaguers. So, by transitive property, he's surely a Top 10 player, all-time. That said, his record speaks to the difficulties of documenting the Negro Leagues. There are claims that he hit 700, 800, 900, maybe 1,000 home runs in his career. These are probably exaggerations, but probably not complete fantasies. However, his official, documented career home run total is... 166.
Hank Aaron: Aaron is the poster child for "solid and steady." He was one of the five or ten best players in baseball every season for at least 15 years. But he was rarely the best player in baseball, or even in the top three. Put another way: "fairly low peak, insanely high floor."
Jackie Robinson: As the fellow who broke the color line, he is the other contender for "most important player in baseball history" and he is the second player (in addition to Ruth) who was great AND who changed the game. He was an incredible athlete, and largely only played baseball because there was no good way for a Black man to make a living at the sports where he was more skilled (track, basketball and football). But he only played 11 seasons in the majors, due to a late start caused by both military service and the color line. In those seasons, he put up 63.9 WAR. One can reasonably give Robinson enough extra credit to put him in the Top 10, particularly considering his impact on the game. But one cannot reasonably give Robinson enough extra credit to put him in Ruth/Bonds/Mays territory in terms of production.
Ted Williams: He famously said he wanted to be the greatest hitter in the history of the game, and maybe he was. Or, maybe he wasn't; it depends heavily on exactly how many bonus points you give him for missing parts of five seasons to war service. What keeps him out of the running for "greatest player of all time" is that he was an average defensive player at best, despite drawing one of the easiest assignments in all of baseball (playing left field in front of Fenway's Green Monster).That leaves us with three more spots. Here are some contenders for those spots, with brief comments:
Johnny Bench: The greatest catcher in the history of the game, and a key cog in the famous Big Red Machine of the 1970s.
Lou Gehrig: He put up video game numbers. Hitting behind Babe Ruth certainly helped, but it wasn't all the Babe, by any stretch of the imagination.
Albert Pujols: The greatest first baseman since World War II, with numbers that aren't too far off Gehrig's.
Rogers Hornsby: The greatest hitting second baseman ever; only OK on defense, though.
Joe Morgan: Maybe the greatest second baseman ever (his all-around game makes him something like the Willie Mays of second basemen), and another key cog in the Big Red Machine.
Honus Wagner: He so outpaced his contemporaries, and was so productive, he is still almost universally regarded as the greatest shortstop of all time, despite having played in the dead ball era, and despite having taken the field for the last time well over 100 years ago.
Álex Rodríguez: If Rodríguez had stayed on short (he moved to third base for the second half of his career) and off the juice, he would have had a shot at entering the "greatest player of all time" conversation.
Mike Schmidt: The greatest third baseman of all time; solid on defense, stellar as a hitter.
Adrian Beltré: The greatest third baseman other than Schmidt; stellar on defense, solid as a hitter.
Ty Cobb: One of two players with 4,000-plus hits, and far, far better than the other one (Pete Rose). If this was 1926, instead of 2026, we might be describing him as the greatest player in the history of the game.
Tris Speaker: Outside of Cobb, greatest of the dead-ball-era outfielders.
Stan Musial: Might be the most overlooked superstar in the history of American professional sports.
Rickey Henderson: When he was alive, Rickey would have been happy to tell you (correctly) that Rickey was the greatest leadoff hitter of all time because Rickey could hit for power, and Rickey could hit for average, and Rickey could steal bases.
Mickey Mantle: The poster child for what might have been, sans injuries.
Mike Trout: Trout could be on that poster, too.
Shohei Ohtani: There is a very clear line of thought that goes "Babe Ruth pitched AND batted at an elite leve, and he's probably the best player in the game's history. Ohtani is the only other player who pitched and batted at an elite level, and he's doing it up against all races of players, and modern relief pitchers, etc. so maybe HE is the best player in the game's history." This is crazy talk. First, Ohtani is not quite as good a pitcher as Ruth was and he's nowhere near as productive a hitter. Further, he's only been doing it for half a dozen seasons. Check back at the end of his 10-year Dodgers contract, and Ohtani might be in line for Top 10 All Time status. It is improbable that he will outpace Ruth/Bonds/Mays, however.
Walter Johnson: Sorry, Cy, The Big Train is the best of the dead-ball-era pitchers.
Roger Clemens: And Clemens, with his seven Cy Young awards, is the best of the modern-era pitchers. Apologies to Randy Johnson, Pedro Martinez, Tom Seaver, Steve Carlton, Pedro Martinez and Maddux.When it comes to evaluating baseball players, these are the factors that baseball historians and writers and fans tend to focus upon:
3,000 Hits (Hits): This used to be an automatic entry for the Hall of Fame. Not anymore, primarily because several members of the 3,000 hits club took steroids.
500 Home Runs (HR): This also used to be automatic entry, but is not anymore, for the same reason. Note that 3,000 hits and 500 HRs are both still very doable for modern players, in contrast to the pitching benchmarks.
Defense (Def): Defense is hard to judge, particularly before the heavy-duty data collection of the modern era. That said, players who play well-above-average to elite defense at a key defensive position (particularly catcher, center field, shortstop and second base, and then third base and the other two outfield positions, to a lesser extent) most certainly get credit for that.
300 Wins (W): This was also automatic, back in the day. There is only one 300-game winner who is not in the Hall of Fame, and that is Roger Clemens, who has not been inducted because he juiced. Today, it is recognized that wins are a team accomplishment, and that judging a pitcher on this basis is problematic, because he might benefit unfairly from having a great team behind him, or might be penalized unfairly for having a lousy team behind him. That said, if a player made it to 300 wins without juicing, he'd probably sail in. The problem is that because relief pitchers are now an integral part of the game, there might never be another 300-game winner. The current active leader is Justin Verlander, who has 266 wins, and is 42 years old. He won 4, 5, 7 and 6 games in the past four seasons, is likely playing his final season, and has no hope of making it. Next up is Max Scherzer, who's at 221 and is 40 years old, and is also very nearly at the end of the line. No other active pitcher has even reached 150.
3,000 Strikeouts (K): This one was never quite automatic (Bert Blyleven had 3,701 career Ks, and had to wait a long time), but it was close to automatic. But as with wins, pitchers basically don't pitch enough anymore to make it to 3,000. Actually, Clayton Kershaw just sneaked across the line (3,052) but now he's retired. The active leader is Chris Sale, who is 36, and has struck out 2,579 batters. He might make it, if he holds on for 4 more years. After that, there are only three more active pitchers who have even reached 2,000 Ks, and they are Gerrit Cole (2,251 Ks, age 34), Charlie Morton (2,196, 41) and Yu Darvish (2,075, 38). Clearly, 3,000 Ks is more doable today than 300 Ws, but not a LOT more doable. And the days of 4,000 K pitchers (Nolan Ryan, R. Johnson, Carlton and Clemens) are over.
Statistic Dominance (Stats): The stats above are the ones that baseball fans, writers, historians etc. used to look at first, second, third, and so on. However, players did, and still do, get credit if they were truly outstanding in some other statistical category.
MVPs: In all sports leagues, MVP awards are sometimes wonky, because they tend to be driven by narrative, and because they are often awarded to someone who is not the best player to keep the actual best player from winning too much. In baseball, there was a sorta MVP award for several years in the 1910s (the Chalmers award, which is widely counted as an MVP), then the modern MVP award was introduced in 1923 (though for a decade, there was a lifetime limit of one, which is why Ruth has only one, as opposed to the 10 or so he should have won).
Cy Youngs (CY): Pitchers can win, and have won, the MVP award. However, because pitchers generally play only 1-2 times a week, they rarely do. As a corrective, the league introduced the Cy Young award in 1956. For a decade, they only gave out one of them; thereafter, it was one for the National League and one for the American league (which is also how the MVP award works).
World Series Titles (WST): In basketball, one player can maybe lift his team to a title (think LeBron James with the Cavaliers, or Hakeem Olajuwon with the Rockets). In football, it can maybe happen as well (think Tom Brady with the Buccaneers, or Aaron Rodgers with the Packers). It simply cannot happen in baseball. Even a superstar hitter only covers 1/9 of the field, at most, and gets only 1/9 of the at bats (well, maybe slightly more than that, but not much more). And a superstar pitcher only pitches one game in five, or maybe one game in four (or, in the postseason, possibly one game in three). The point is, you can't really blame a player if his team does not win a bunch of titles (ask Ernie Banks or Mike Trout about that). That said, some baseball fans/analysts do give extra credit (often too much extra credit) for World Series victories, and extra demerits for not winning.
WAR: As we note above, this is the modern metric used to try to convert a player's overall contributions (hitting, defense, pitching, baserunning) into a single number for comparison purposes. Note that we are using the Baseball-Reference version of the stat (sometimes abbreviated as bWAR) instead of the Fangraphs version (fWAR).And now, here's a chart, just like with the basketball answer, incorporating all the players and measurements we've just named:
Player Hits HR Def W K Stats MVPs CY WST WAR Babe Ruth 2,873 714 No 94 488 Yes (HR, SLG, RBI) 1 0 7 182.6 Barry Bonds 2,935 762 No 0 0 Yes (HR, Walks) 7 0 0 162.8 Willie Mays 3,293 660 Yes 0 0 Yes (Runs) 2 0 1 156.2 Josh Gibson 808 166 Yes 0 0 Yes (OPS+) 0 0 2 (NL WS) 38.1 Hank Aaron 3,771 755 No 0 0 Yes (HR, RBI) 1 0 1 143.2 Jackie Robinson 1,563 141 Yes 0 0 No 1 0 1 63.9 Ted Williams 2,654 521 No 0 0 Yes (Avg.) 3 0 0 121.8 Johnny Bench 2,048 389 Yes 0 0 No 2 0 2 75.1 Lou Gehrig 2,721 493 No 0 0 Yes (Consecutive GP) 2 0 7 113.7 Albert Pujols 3,384 703 No 0 0 Yes (HR, RBI) 3 0 2 101.2 Rogers Hornsby 2,930 301 No 0 0 Yes (Avg.) 2 0 1 127.3 Joe Morgan 2,517 268 Yes 0 0 No 2 0 2 100.6 Honus Wagner 3,420 101 Yes 0 0 No 0 0 1 131.1 Álex Rodríguez 3,115 696 Yes 0 0 Yes (HR, RBI) 3 0 1 117.4 Mike Schmidt 2,234 548 Yes 0 0 No 3 0 1 106.9 Adrian Beltré 3,166 477 Yes 0 0 No 0 0 0 93.7 Ty Cobb 4,189 117 Yes 0 0 Yes (Hits, Avg.) 1 0 0 151.4 Tris Speaker 3,514 117 Yes 0 0 Yes (OF assists) 1 0 3 134.9 Stan Musial 3,630 475 No 0 0 Yes (RBI) 3 0 3 128.6 Rickey Henderson 3,055 297 No 0 0 Yes (Steals, Lead-off HRs) 1 0 2 111.2 Mickey Mantle 2,415 536 Yes 0 0 No 3 0 7 110.3 Mike Trout 1,754 404 Yes 0 0 No 3 0 0 87.5 Shohei Ohtani 1,050 280 No 39 670 Sorta (Being a pitcher-hitter) 4 0 2 51.5 Walter Johnson 547 24 No 417 3,509 Yes (Wins) 2 0 1 167.8 Roger Clemens 31 0 No 354 4,672 Yes (K) 1 7 2 139.2
Note that Johnson pitched well before the Cy Young era, while Honus Wagner's prime came before the MVP era (even counting the Chalmers award), and there was no MVP in the Negro Leagues for Josh Gibson to win.
With all of this laid out, my personal Top 10 is: Ruth, Bonds, Mays, Gibson, Aaron, J. Robinson, Williams, Clemens, Gehrig and Cobb. It is difficult, in particular, to exclude Musial, W. Johnson, Bench, Schmidt and Wagner, but choices must be made.
I will end by addressing three "omissions," and explaining, briefly, why they do not appear in the chart. First, Sandy Koufax was great for 5-6 years, but that's his whole contribution. There are too many other pitchers who were also great for 5-6 years (or more) and who also put up value outside their peak years. Plus, Koufax benefited more from his home park and his era than perhaps any player in baseball history. If I WAS going to include a Dodger pitcher, Clayton Kershaw is actually in line ahead of Koufax.
Second, Nolan Ryan produced a lot of value with all those strikeouts. But he gave a lot of it back with all of the walks he gave up because of his lack of control. And his dominance in career walks (bad) is considerably greater than his career dominance in strikeouts (good). Also, those seven no-hitters are cool, but seven regular-season games do not an all-time-great make. Even if you add in the 12 one-hitters, well, 19 regular-season games also do not an all-time-great make.
Third, Derek Jeter was a very good offensive shortstop. But he was a very bad defensive shortstop, who should never have won one Gold Glove award, much less five of them. In fact, by the numbers, there is a strong case that he's the biggest defensive liability in the history of the game. He did field nearly every ball he got to; the problem is that he got to FAR fewer balls than nearly any other shortstop of his (or really any) era. In particular, he had about as much range to his right as I do, and I am most certainly not trying to play shortstop for the New York Yankees. The fact that Gold Gloves are so often given to laughable candidates (ahem, Rafael Palmeiro) is why I did not bother to include them in the table above.
I did not expect this answer to check in at 5,000+ words when I started writing it, but that is how it goes, sometimes.
C.P. in Silver Spring, MD, asks: In last month's fun mailbag, you wrote about the greatest second baseman in baseball, declaring that the list "...begins with, in some order, Joe Morgan, Eddie Collins, Nap Lajoie and Rogers Hornsby". I'm curious where you would rate Bobby Grich on that list, and would you put him in the Hall of Fame?
(Z) answers: Grich is without question one of the ten best second basemen in the history of the game.
Putting aside players who are being kept out due to externalities like steroids (Bonds, Clemens, etc.), gambling (Rose) or vile politics (Curt Schilling), Grich and Lou Whitaker (another second baseman) are the two worthiest candidates who are not actually in the Hall of Fame. They have fallen victim to two problems that Hall of Fame voters struggle with. The first is evaluating second basemen properly; it is tough at that position (and at third base) to grasp what combination of defensive and offensive output makes a player a Hall of Famer.
The second is that it is tough to evaluate players who do many things well, as opposed to one thing VERY well. So, second basemen who are extreme on the offensive end of the spectrum but play poor defense (Jeff Kent) get in, and second basemen who are extreme on the defensive end of the spectrum but produce middling offense (Bill Mazeroski) get in, but not players who are well-above-average at both, but not extreme at either.
M.C.A in San Francisco, CA, asks: With the start of a new baseball season upon us, I was just wondering about how football and basketball have become the most popular sports in the country and what it would take for baseball to regain the top spot as America's favorite sport. Have the new rule changes helped or hurt interest in the game? Would moving marquee events like the Hall of Fame ceremony and draft to the offseason help keep baseball in the spotlight year-round? The NFL does a much better job of maintaining its visibility all year long, and even though baseball season is just getting underway, my local sports talk radio still devotes lots of time to NFL free agency, the upcoming draft, etc. Or is the issue deeper than rule tweaks and event scheduling? Would love to get your thoughts on this.
(Z) answers: Baseball has a version of the Fox "News" problem, wherein its audience skews older than the other sports. The rules changes are an effort to try to mitigate that, and make the game more exciting to younger people who might have shorter attention spans.
That said, the larger dynamic, and one that is not reversible, is that baseball is no longer a "national" sport. In the 1950s, when baseball was the only major professional sport, and there were only 16 teams, it was plausible to get tens of millions of people excited about the "Saturday Game of the Week," no matter who was playing. Some viewers took an interest in any matchup, because while they might be a Cardinals fan, there were, for their team, playoff implications of a Dodgers-Giants game. Others took interest because they were hungry to watch ANY baseball and/or to see the stars of that era play live.
Baseball cannot command national attention in that way anymore, because there are way more baseball teams these days and way, way, way more opportunities for TV viewers to scratch the sports itch (including the baseball itch). And so, long ago, baseball stopped trying. They have shifted their business model to a focus on regional/local revenue. In other words, NFL teams make the lion's share of their money off of national TV broadcast deals. MLB teams make the lion's share of THEIR money off of local TV broadcast deals and ticket sales. That means that, say, Packers-Cowboys tends to be of interest across the country, while Brewers-Rangers tends to be of interest only in Wisconsin and the Dallas metro area.
The NBA is somewhere in the middle of these two extremes. NBA teams depends more on national TV revenue than MLB teams do, but they also depend more on ticket sales/local TV than NFL teams do. That said, the NBA still has a very large national footprint. It also has broader appeal among young people, and internationally, than either MLB or NFL. So, that keeps the NBA very much in the conversation.
L.H. in Chicago, IL, asks: I don't want to appear to stupid, nor is this a sarcastic question. I'm really asking.
Could you please explain what that whole item about the two Sam Malones had to do with film noir?(Z) answers: Well we always write a headline for the "I Read the News Today" item that includes a valid reference for the previous headline theme, and a valid reference for the current one. Sometimes, that can be done fairly easily. For example, if last week was Beatles songs, and this week is homonyms for animals, then the headline might be: "I Read the News Today, Oh Boy: Let It Be," with "Let it Be" being a Beatles song, and "Be" being a homonym for "Bee."
Sometimes, to make that work, we have to create a headline whose meaning is not immediately evident. For example, "I Read the News Today, Oh Boy: Sam Malone Starred in Sinners... Really." In that case, it had a film noir (Sinners) for the previous week's theme, and a member of the Dream Team (Malone) for what was then the current week's theme. When the headline's meaning is not immediately evident, as in this case, we usually write a paragraph explaining it.
Now, it is possible that what you are really asking is "Is Sinners really film noir?" Certainly, "film noir" is a term that is often debated. In any event, Wikipedia says it's film noir and so does IMDB, and that was enough for us. One could say it's really neo-noir, but even if so, we had already included The Grifters, so that bridge had already been crossed.
T.G. in Raleigh, NC, asks: While I realize there's no "rush" to get back to the potential Democratic candidates for president in 2028, it feels like it's been months since you published a new entry on your 50 rated people. Wasn't that originally a weekly item? Thanks for the great work.
(Z) answers: We are going to re-start that soon. We're just trying to hammer out a couple of things we want to do, in order for it to make sense.