Before I'm attacked for wasting anyone's time, allow me to admit that I use Keltner lists as conversation-starting MacGuffins as opposed to treating them as serious inquiries into Hall of Fame worthiness. Garvey is a no-brainer-no as far as Cooperstown goes, but I like talking about him for some reason, and that goes for most 1970s players in general.

Not a waste of time at all, Craig. To my mind the question Garvey does best on is "If this man were the best player on his team, would it be likely that the team could win the pennant?" and your analysis of that is sharp. His teams did win, and he was at least a star on them, if not usually the very best player in the cold light of analysis. Since they did win (five pennants!), Garvey got good press while he was active and still seems like a pretty valuable guy to have had around ...

I have no idea whether Garvey should be Keltnerized, but I do know that his hair was Simonized.

Cool piece, Craig. As a fan who started watching MLB in 1987, at the age of 11, I missed the Garvey generation. And in looking back, it doesn't make a lot of sense for him to be so highly regarded. But it is very telling in looking at the generation of sportswriters who were in their late 20s-early 40s, since the Garvey type player would be seen as a model of excellence to them. Garvey is in many respects the ultimate gritty gamer: plays every day, has nice shiny batting averages, tries hard, says the right things at the right times, provides veteran leadership, etc... Could Garvey be the key to understanding why a guy like Tim Raines is overlooked completely by a generation of sportswriters?

I don't think it's a waste of time, Craig. The guy was one of the most famous players when I first became aware of baseball.

I like talking about him for some reason, and that goes for most 1970s players in general.

So does the one and olney childhood buddy Josh Wilker.

Between the ages of 9 and 12 I thought these guys would be HOFers that aren't actually HOFers:

Garvey, Rice, Lynn, Dawson, Quisenberry, and Jack Morris.

What about Ted Simmons? What was his rep back then?

So does the one and olney childhood buddy Josh Wilker.

That's probably why I read his stuff so much. He's about five years older than me, so he has a much clearer focus than I did on many of the 70s guys whose careers, because I was so young, I really didn't notice until they were in decline. They still loomed large, though, because baseball card collecting and the passive fandom of a child creates some time lag.

Re: Garvey specifically, Mark Armour noted in a comment on my site that my reliance on OPS+ (something I do because I'm a lazy and rather inept analyst) works to take away one of Garvey's principal strengths, and that was that he played every single day. Quoting Mark (who, if he's lurking, I ask retroactive permission -- granted? Gee, thanks Mark!):

When you are building a team, this matters. Sure Reggie Smith was better, but if you had Reggie you needed someone else to play the 30 games he misses.

If you use Win Shares, and you also use James' own suggestion that differences of 3 WS are meaningless, Garvey has a case as the best player on the Dodgers several times--because you couldn't get him out of the lineup. He had 25 WS a year like a clock--a solid All-Star level season.

The Dodgers won every year in that era in part because they knew that their star first baseman was going to play 160 games. You can not quantify what that means to building and maintaing a team.

Would I vote for him? Maybe not, but it would not be because of the Keltner Test.

I think that's a really good point that I hadn't ever considered. Again, I'm not advocating for Garvey as a Hall of Famer, but it's possible that maybe I shouldn't be so dismissive about his value and apologetic for undertaking the Keltner analysis.

No problem, OPS+ Dude.

FTR, I am not Mark.

What about Ted Simmons? What was his rep back then?

1. His defense was bad-mouthed. To some extent this is the blowback that happens many who play at a defense-first position but can hit. The automatic assumption is often that such a person must be a lousy defender. And the standard of excellence for a catcher at the time was Johnny Bench - not an easy mark to live up to, especially on defense.

2. He was outspoken, intelligent, egotistical, maybe a little manipulative, and a team leader. There wasn't room in one clubhouse to contain both him and Whitey Herzog, largely because of Whitey's need to be in charge. This lead to the monster trade before the '81 season.

3. The team he was a leader of - the late 70's Cardinals - were regarded as talented but underperforming. That didn't help his reputation.

4. Compared to expectations, his years in Milwaukee were a disappointment: in two of the five years he was there, including his first year, his offense tanked. That didn't help his reputation either.

What was his rep back then?

That he couldn't catch.

Seriously, Simmons was as under-rated as Garvey was over-rated.

Simmons' career overlapped this guy's. Who in his prime was kind of a combination of Piazza's offense with IRod's defense.

That meant Simmons was never ever going to be regarded as the best catcher.

His defensive woes, like Piazza's, were exaggerated.

The highest he got in MVP voting was 1975, 6th, he hit .332/.396/.491 (OPS+ 142) with 18 homers and 100 ribbies. Bench finished 4th, .283/.359/.519, 28 homers 110 ribbies (OPS+ 140)- by virtue of defense, Bench WAS a better player than Simmons that year.

Bench picked up much more MVP support in his decline years than Simmons did too.

Simmons: 9685 PAs, 117 OPS+ (1771 games caught), isn't in the Hall.
Fisk 9853 PAs, 117 OPS+ (2226 games caught) IN
Carter 9019 PAs, 115 OPS+ (2056 games caught) IN
IRod 9152 PAs, 111 OPS+ (2139 games caught) will get IN

Those 3 were all better defensive players than Simmons- I have trouble quantifying how much that was worth. I really don't know where Simmons should rate.
One of the main arguments against him was his arm was weak and it encouraged people to run on him- 1188 opponent SBs... but he caught 611- that's close to break even- opp running game was really a wash (look at Piazza, 1400 SB, 423 CS)

Bench who had a friggin cannon was 610-469, IRod is at 670-597- running on guys like that was/is dumb

I sat in between Steve Perry (of Journey) and Steve Garvey at the Dodgers home plate club before a game. I wanted to inspect whether both were having white bread with mayonnaise as the entree and vanilla pudding for dessert.

Historically, Garvey was hands down the most famous, lauded athlete on the west coast between Sandy Koufax and Magic Johnson. He is no Hall-of-Famer but he easily passses the old test of "When his team came to your town, did you buy a ticket to see him play so you could say you saw him play."

he easily passses the old test of "When his team came to your town, did you buy a ticket to see him play so you could say you saw him play."

I dunno, on the East Coast he was always seen as at least somewhat overrated (not like he was when the Sabr revolution hit)...

To me, those Dodgers were always, uniquely, a TEAM, the team and all that Dodger Blue nonesense overriding the individuals, Garvey included. Sure the Reds were the Big Red Machine, but from time to time individual players, Bench, Rose, Morgan, Foster, seemed to rise above it. To me, except fro Valenzuela in 1981 (at the extreme tail end of that Dodger team) none of the individual players (Garvey included) rose above it.

IRod is at 670-597

Wow. That is some impressive ratio... can't believe managers kept sending their baserunners into that meat grinder.

Simmons had really long hair, too. I doubt that helped his rep much with the old-guard sportswriters of the 1970s.

Simmons had really long hair, too.

wasn't that just one year? I mean the "Simba" nickname didn't last too long

To me, those Dodgers were always, uniquely, a TEAM, the team and all that Dodger Blue nonesense overriding the individuals, Garvey included. Sure the Reds were the Big Red Machine, but from time to time individual players, Bench, Rose, Morgan, Foster, seemed to rise above it. To me, except fro Valenzuela in 1981 (at the extreme tail end of that Dodger team) none of the individual players (Garvey included) rose above it.

Good observation.

That era was the height of the O'Malley organization's self-conscious image-making of itself, and it was extraordinary in its no-one-is-bigger-than-the-corporation culture. In Roger Angell's New Yorker piece examining the 1977 World Series, he made a number of great points about the way that so many of the Dodger players (Garvey included) went out of their way to make self-righteous comments to the press about how much they disdained the Yankee big-city rough-and-tumble ethos, and considered themselves the morally superior organization.

For all of that organization's obvious and genuine strengths, there was a peculiar insecurity, a defensivenes, about it as well. No one better exemplified any of it than Garvey.

Simmons had really long hair, too.

Until that time it caught on fire and then he went short again.

Well, Simmons had the long hair when I first became aware of him, sometime in the mid-70s, so as far as I was concerned, he always had it.

Between the ages of 9 and 12 I thought these guys would be HOFers that aren't actually HOFers:

Garvey, Rice, Lynn, Dawson, Quisenberry, and Jack Morris.

One'll go in next year, another a year or two after that, and a third will get in via the VC in about a decade.

Is there some insider plot to get me banned by feeding the FP a steady diet of Garvey articles?

Historically, Garvey was hands down the most famous, lauded athlete on the west coast between Sandy Koufax and Magic Johnson. He is no Hall-of-Famer but he easily passses the old test of "When his team came to your town, did you buy a ticket to see him play so you could say you saw him play."

Kareem? He predates Magic by a few years.

Kareem was certainly respected for his skills, and was fairly popular to boot, but I don't think he ever saw anything like the adulation that Magic got, or I imagine Koufax did.

Kareem? He predates Magic by a few years.

A good chunk of Jerry West's career is between Koufax and Magic too, and several years of Elgin Baylor's and all of Wilt Chamberlain's L.A. period.

But he was probably the top L.A. athlete of the mid-to-late '70s, personality wise. Kareem was more obviously an all-time, all-time great, but he was aloof. Garvey was a baby-kisser. My mom knew who Kareem was. She knew all about Garvey.

Sorry but I disagree.

Waste of time.

Are the 70's and 80's really thought of as one of the most talent-loaded eras in baseball history? Because as far as all time greats go, I've always thought of those two decades as the LEAST stacked decades since the deadball era (except for possibly the war diluted 40's).

Other than stolen bases and Nolan Ryan, it seems no one was making any serious runs at single season or career records in the 70's or 80's.

Those 3 were all better defensive players than Simmons- I have trouble quantifying how much that was worth. I really don't know where Simmons should rate.

Also, Simmons didn't stay behind the plate as long as they did. He had close to 3 fewer "catcher seasons". That matters, too.

Wow. That is some impressive ratio... can't believe managers kept sending their baserunners into that meat grinder.

What is also amazing is that, at age 36, after 18 seasons behind the plate, almost exclusively as a catcher (60 games total at other positions), I-Rod is 3rd in the majors this season in caught stealing percentage. And, he is putting up a 99 OPS+, which is not too shabby for a catcher. Some time next year, if he avoids injury, he will break Fisk's record of 2,226 games behind the plate.


To me, those Dodgers were always, uniquely, a TEAM,

And in particular, the Dodgers had that incredibly stable infield, with Cey, Russell, Lopes, and Garvey. The Dodgers infield, as a unit, was famous in its own right.

Those 3 were all better defensive players than Simmons- I have trouble quantifying how much that was worth. I really don't know where Simmons should rate.
One of the main arguments against him was his arm was weak and it encouraged people to run on him- 1188 opponent SBs... but he caught 611- that's close to break even- opp running game was really a wash (look at Piazza, 1400 SB, 423 CS)

Simmons gave up a pretty godawful number of passed balls. If there's a solid statistical knock against him that's it. Note however that only a passed 3rd strike will lead to a new baserunner, so even that's probably not hugely significant. He still got jobbed, IOW.

As for Garvey, he hit .300-.320 with 20-30 home runs for about 7 years, in a park where it wasn't all that easy to do that. If he walked more he'd have an argument (and I hate the essobee).

Note however that only a passed 3rd strike will lead to a new baserunner, so even that's probably not hugely significant.

By definition, you don't get a passed ball unless a runner advances. So it is not entirely harmless, either.

But I was young in the late '60s and '70s, as were many current sportwriters. They write that the baseball of their youth, and the stars of that time, were awesome, the greatest ever, and it strikes a chord in me, and I believe them. The '80s? A bunch of cokeheads. Now, if I had had the disposable income of, say, Keith Hernandez. . .

#30- Well, I grew up in the 80's, but even as a kid I looked at the numbers of my current heroes (my favs were Mattingly, Murphy, Boggs, Puckett, and Gwynn) and noticed that they didn't compare to the numbers put up by my Dad's (Mays, Aaron, Mantle, F.Robby, etc) and Grandpa's (Gehrig, Foxx, Williams, DiMaggio, Musial) generation of heroes.

I was very excited as a teenager when the 90's rolled around and guys like Bonds, Griffey, Thomas, McGwire, etc, started to do things that finally put my generation on equal ground...

Well, I grew up in the 80's, but even as a kid I looked at the numbers of my current heroes (my favs were Mattingly, Murphy, Boggs, Puckett, and Gwynn) and noticed that they didn't compare to the numbers put up by my Dad's (Mays, Aaron, Mantle, F.Robby, etc) and Grandpa's (Gehrig, Foxx, Williams, DiMaggio, Musial) generation of heroes.

At this point you do understand that raw numbers and records are vastly more a function of conditions than talent, yes? And that moreover, the lack of exceptional individual performances against league norms is sensibly seen as an indication of high rather than low quality of overall play, yes?

Steve, even so --

Mays, Aaron, Mantle, F. Robby, Gehrig, Williams, Dimaggio, Foxx and Musial are, in fact, either inner circle or next tier.

Boggs, Puckett, Gwynn, Murphy and Mattingly -- not so much.

Mays, Aaron, Mantle, F. Robby, Gehrig, Williams, Dimaggio, Foxx and Musial are, in fact, either inner circle or next tier.

Boggs, Puckett, Gwynn, Murphy and Mattingly -- not so much.

Yes, but that isn't quite an apples-to-apples comparison; the time frames that include the older guys are broader than any single decade.

If you include the '70s along with the '80s (which is appropriate in the consideration of Garvey), you get quite a number of inner-circle-or-next-tier talents: Schmidt, Morgan, Seaver, Carlton, Bench, Jackson, Henderson.

Steve, I was like, eight years old when I first started following baseball and coming up with my favorite players list, so no, I didn't know much about different playing conditions or era adjustments.

And of course my Dad and Grandpa had a much bigger time frame to pick their favorites from than I did. They were a lot older than me!

But I stand by my original point - I think the 70's and 80's had perhaps the lowest number of no-brainer HOFers of any two decade span since the deadball era (again, excepting the war years).

What about Ted Simmons? What was his rep back then?

I have a vivid memory from when I was a kid in the mid 1970s, watching NBC's Game of the Week. The Cardinals were on and Tony Kubek, prompted by Joe Garagiola, was talking about how Simmons was playing out his option year without a contract. There were closeups of his long hair -- he was indeed nicknamed "Simba," and he had hair down near his collar. His defense was talked about in the mode of "it's not as bad as people say." I think he was also the Cardinals' player rep. And he was doing all this on (to?) poor old Gussie Busch's team. All in all, the press of the time made him out to be, if only by implication, a rebel, one of the new breed of soft, selfish, modern ballplayers. You know the drill. The impression this created on me was such that I could never quite reconcile this image of Simmons with the fact that he later became a GM.

And in particular, the Dodgers had that incredibly stable infield, with Cey, Russell, Lopes, and Garvey. The Dodgers infield, as a unit, was famous in its own right.

IIRC, 8 opening days in a row with that infield. And three of the four players above average. Ironically, the least of the four (Russell) was the one who ended up becoming (briefly) the guy who replaced Lasorda as manager, after a full career in the organization. The plus players all were traded or left as free agents.

I said this in another thread, but while Garvey isn't deserving of the Hall, he was a very good player. As others have noted, he stayed in the lineup, he hit for solid power in a pitchers' era in a pitchers' park, he hit for a good average, and while he wasn't Keith Hernandez defensively, he was actually well above average at digging out errant throws. Shame he is such an arschloch. But in terms of his performance, he was a consistently plus player on teams that regularly made the playoffs - first the Dodgers, then the Padres. Five pennants in 11 years, one WS championship, and two of the years that his teams didn't win they finished second in the division to the great Big Red Machine teams. In terms of his playing and his team's success, there's certainly nothing to be ashamed about, and I can understand why some people might think he belongs in the HoF, even though Garvey's inclusion would imply a massive HoF.

But I stand by my original point - I think the 70's and 80's had perhaps the lowest number of no-brainer HOFers of any two decade span since the deadball era (again, excepting the war years).

But we're no longer eight years old; at this point we have the capacity to better comprehend events and accomplishments in context. And the issue remains that the relative absence of record-setting or otherwise exceptional individual stats is not necessarily an indication of inferior talent, and in fact might well be an indication of an unusually high quality of play.

#38 - Maybe, but even with the ever increasing quality of play and an expanded talent pool to choose from (Latin America, Asia), the 90's and 2000's DID see a lot of exceptional individual performances, even after adjusting for era.

Who was the best hitter of the 70's and 80's? I'd say it's almost certainly Schmidt - he led the league in OPS+ six times, including five in a row. But his career number of 147 places him in a six way tie for 42nd. Pretty much every other era has a few - if not several - guys higher than that (we're talking pure hitting here, not overall value). And remember, this is comparing him to his own peers. He wouldn't crack the top five if he had played in the 90's/00's (Bonds, McGwire, Thomas, Pujols, Manny). He'd fit in snugly with the next level of hitters from this era - Bagwell, Thome, Berkman, Chipper, Giambi, Edgar, Sheffield, Vlad, etc. And while all of these guys are legitimately great hitters, none of them are the type you'd tell your grandkids you saw play.

Who from the 70's and 80's had a run where you thought at the time that this was the best it's ever going to get, and you may never see another performance like this again? I remember thinking that about Thomas in the early to mid nineties, McGwire in the late nineties, and Bonds in the early 2000's. Schmidt was the best hitter of this era because he lasted the longest, but his peak seasons didn't look much better than those of his closest contemporaries, guys like Stargell, Rice, Jackson, Murphy, etc.

Who was the best hitter of the 70's and 80's? I'd say it's almost certainly Schmidt - he led the league in OPS+ six times, including five in a row. But his career number of 147 places him in a six way tie for 42nd. Pretty much every other era has a few - if not several - guys higher than that (we're talking pure hitting here, not overall value). And remember, this is comparing him to his own peers. He wouldn't crack the top five if he had played in the 90's/00's (Bonds, McGwire, Thomas, Pujols, Manny). He'd fit in snugly with the next level of hitters from this era - Bagwell, Thome, Berkman, Chipper, Giambi, Edgar, Sheffield, Vlad, etc. And while all of these guys are legitimately great hitters, none of them are the type you'd tell your grandkids you saw play.

But that phenomenon might very well be an exposure of the weakness of OPS+ (or any other league-normalized metric) when using it as a comparison of players across eras. While I'm intuitively inclined to agree that with the increased pool of talent MLB draws upon in the modern era the quality of play is higher than ever despite the continued expansion, a valid evidence-based argument against that is precisely the explosion of outlier individual performances, by both hitters and pitchers, that has taken place since the 1993 expansion.

Who from the 70's and 80's had a run where you thought at the time that this was the best it's ever going to get, and you may never see another performance like this again?

I felt that way about Joe Morgan's all-around performance in the mid-1970s. I also felt that way about Ozzie Smith's fielding, and Rickey Henderson's excellence as a leadoff hitter.

There is no guarantee, of course, that all-time elite performers will come along at a steady rate in every decade. Indeed, it's a near-certainty that they won't. But it's also inadequate to look simply at outlier statistical achievements as the single indicator of all-time best performance; the system is too complex for that.

Steve - Did you really think that about Morgan for an extended period when it was actually happening? I'm too young to remember him, but it seems to me that he's one of those players that gets more recognition as an all time great NOW than he did when he was actually playing. Some of his best numbers - runs scored rather than rbi's, walks, on base percentage, high stolen base percentage rather than total stolen bases - simply weren't given the credit they deserved until recently. Hell, they STILL aren't to the casual, non-sabermetric fans. Other than 1975-1976 when you didn't NEED adjustments to see that Morgan was simply otherworldly, did he ever really get talked about as one of the best ever before Bill James and other statheads came around?

There just didn't seem to be the consistency back then that there is now (or that there was in previous eras). There were a few SEASONS in this span where it would have been hard to believe anyone could have been better; George Brett 1980, Robin Yount 1982, Rickey Henderson 1990 (yeah, that's technically part of the 90's, but I consider the current era to have started in '93), probably a few more - but there wasn't a stretch of several years in a row where I would have thought that. Certainly nothing like Thomas 1990-1997, McGwire 1995-2000, or Bonds 2001-2004.

Steve - Did you really think that about Morgan for an extended period when it was actually happening? I'm too young to remember him, but it seems to me that he's one of those players that gets more recognition as an all time great NOW than he did when he was actually playing.

He was underrated until he hit .320/27 homers and played on the back-to-back WS winners as the #3 hitter. The Reds were considered, at the time, to be a great, great team and Morgan was at the center of that team so his perception changed northward.

He was underrated until he hit .320/27 homers ...

But doing .320/27 once is nothing compared to Hornsby's unadjusted stats. I don't think that the thought that he should be very seriously considered in the argument for greatest second baseman ever came up until the 80's - until Bill James, that is.

Steve - Did you really think that about Morgan for an extended period when it was actually happening?

I was a near teen when Morgan won those back to back MVPs - and I was impressed as all get out, even though he played for the hated Reds. His earlier contributions weren't fully recognized at the time, but this was a guy who was the best player on a talent laden team. I didn't really think about inner circle hall of fame at the time - but it was obvious that Morgan was something really special - a guy who could do everything at a high level

Maybe it was just all the time I spent organizing and reorganizing my Topps cards, and noticing that no other second baseman came close to Morgan, especially if you paid attention to things like caught stealings (not on Topps cards) - as a Dodgers fan, with Lopes' streak of successful steals, I paid attention to stolen base success rates.

He was underrated until he hit .320/27 homers and played on the back-to-back WS winners as the #3 hitter. The Reds were considered, at the time, to be a great, great team and Morgan was at the center of that team so his perception changed northward.

I don't know about that. In the three seasons preceding his .320/27 HR season, he finished fourth, fourth and eighth in the MVP voting. The voters of the day, those most responsible for whatever rating he would have, semeed to have a pretty good idea of how good he was.

But that phenomenon might very well be an exposure of the weakness of OPS+ (or any other league-normalized metric) when using it as a comparison of players across eras. While I'm intuitively inclined to agree that with the increased pool of talent MLB draws upon in the modern era the quality of play is higher than ever despite the continued expansion, a valid evidence-based argument against that is precisely the explosion of outlier individual performances, by both hitters and pitchers, that has taken place since the 1993 expansion.

Right. OPS+ adjusts for mean performance, but it doesn't adjust for standard deviations. Look at the AL in 1960:

Adjusted OPS+
Mantle-NYY 164
Maris-NYY 161
Sievers-CHW 150
Killebrew-WSH 143
Skowron-NYY 142

Now look at it in 1961 (an expansion year):

Adjusted OPS+
Mantle-NYY 206
Cash-DET 201
Gentile-BAL 187
Maris-NYY 167
Killebrew-MIN 161

1976

Adjusted OPS+
Jackson-BAL 155
McRae-KCR 153
Tenace-OAK 149
Carew-MIN 148
Brett-KCR 144

vs. 1977

Adjusted OPS+
Carew-MIN 178
Singleton-BAL 165
Page-OAK 154
Jackson-NYY 150
Thornton-CLE 149

BTW, there was a Mike Schmidt billboard in The Wall. He should get bonus points for that.

Did you really think that about Morgan for an extended period when it was actually happening?

Absolutely. It was stunning. Here was a player who not only didn't have a weakness; here was a player who was excellent at everything. He was a .300-hitting power hitter drawing well over 100 walks a year while rarely striking out, while stealing 60 bases a year while rarely being thrown out, and he was a Gold Glove-winning middle infielder.

Yes, it blew me away. I was in high school/college, and a precocious baseball history nerd, and I was distinctly aware that nothing like this had ever been presented before. Morgan's back-to-back MVP awards suggests that I wasn't the only one whose jaw was dropped.

I don't think that the thought that he should be very seriously considered in the argument for greatest second baseman ever came up until the 80's - until Bill James, that is.

There were actually some of us in the world who thought seriously about things "BBJ."

#48 - Steve, Morgan did NOT make the All Century Team, and in the Sporting News Top 100 list published in 1999 he finished 60th, right behind "legends" Lou Brock and Bill Terry. Outside of the sabermetric world, I don't think Morgan is considered an all time great or a serious contender for "best ever" at his position even now.

Steve, Morgan did NOT make the All Century Team, and in the Sporting News Top 100 list published in 1999 he finished 60th, right behind "legends" Lou Brock and Bill Terry. Outside of the sabermetric world, I don't think Morgan is considered an all time great or a serious contender for "best ever" at his position even now.

Well then I guess we need to recalibrate exactly what it is we're discussing. I thought we were talking about whether the best players of the 1970s/80s were actually comparable in ability to the best players of other eras, not whether such an arbiter as the All Century team believes they were.

Look, when I was a little kid, Pie Traynor was the consensus pick as the greatest third baseman of all time, and Bill Dickey was the greatest catcher. It takes little insight for us to recognize that that was nonsense; hell, I'd figured it out by the time I was about twelve. I thought the whole issue we were addressing was the degree to which raw numbers and mass-market popularity contests can present a distorted interpretation of the truth.

Steve - You're right, we WERE discussing how great players REALLY were and not how great they were perceived to be. My mention of Morgan and the All Century/Sporting News fiasco's was in response to your claim that you felt that Morgan was an all time great way back in the 70's. It's cool if you did - because you'd have been right - it just wasn't a common belief back then as far as I could tell. It seems that most of the "veteran" (anyone born before 1979 is a veteran to me...) baseball fans I've talked to regarded Morgan as a superstar and an obvious HOF, but other than 75-76 none of them had ever really considered him on par with old time second base greats like Collins, LaJoie, and certainly not Hornsby.

But if you did even back then, kudos (I'm not being sarcastic). You were ahead of the curve.

I think you have to remember the context of the time....in the 1970s, there weren't many standout first basemen. You could easily have a half-dozen or more first basemen from the past 15 years get in the HOF, but in the mid-late 1970s you had McCovey in his long decline and Stargell entering his decline...other than that, you had guys like Garvey and Hernandez and a bunch of guys like Chris Chambliss or Richie Hebner playing first for perennial contenders.

The only real clearcut Hall of Famer from that era is Eddie Murray.

So Garvey was a guy who was regarded as a star and not without good reason. He got his 200 hits a year and hit .300 and drove in 95-100 runs at a time when that meant something. He made the All-STar team every year and was in the World Series all the time. He hardly ever made an error and was the living embodiment of "golly gee" All-American goodness (lolz).

your claim that you felt that Morgan was an all time great way back in the 70's. It's cool if you did

Look, dude. I'm not making this up.

But regardless, what the hell difference does it make what the mainstream impression was or wasn't at the time, or whether I was ahead of the curve or behind it? That has utterly nothing to do with the issue of whether Morgan actually was an all-time great player, and with the larger issue of how it is we should interpret the relative excellence of all the best players of the 1970s/80s versus those of earlier and later eras. Things such as All-Century Team voting add nothing to our understanding of that question; they're heat with no light.

Steve - C'mon, buddy. I'm not accusing you of making anything up. I'm just saying that I think you were in the minority by thinking Morgan was one of the best ever during his career. I haven't read anything written before the 80's that even suggested this as a possibility.

We're discussing two different questions here, and I think you may be confusing the two. As for my original statement - that there weren't as many true greats from this era as there were in others - yes, Morgan would certainly qualify and you're right that it doesn't matter whether or not anyone else realized it at the time. My SECOND question was whether or not you ever felt that you were seeing something you may never see again by watching anyone from the 70's and 80's. THAT'S the question I was interested in when I was talking about the overall perception of Morgan. I certainly didn't think anyone I was watching in the 80's were amongst the best ever (although Henderson and Ripken actually were. Brett and especially Schmidt were winding down before I was old enough to pay attention).

But still, I never said there weren't ANY all time greats from this time period - it's my opinion that Schmidt is somewhere in the top 12-15 players ever, actually - I said there weren't AS MANY as some other eras. Look at the 90's and 00's; in addition to Thomas, McGwire, and Bonds that I've already mentioned, do you ever expect to see another shortstop do what A-Rod did from 1996-2003? Or what about Piazza? How long before you think we'll witness another hitting display from a catcher like he did from 1993-2002? And we haven't even mentioned pitchers yet...Seaver was fantastic, but did he ever have a stretch like Maddux 1992-1997? Pedro 1997-2002? Johnson 1995-2002? It's like Steve Carlton '72, Ron Guidry '78, or Doc Gooden '85...but for five or six years in a row.

My SECOND question was whether or not you ever felt that you were seeing something you may never see again by watching anyone from the 70's and 80's.

And as I've stated multiple times, yes. And nothing in subsequent decades has caused me to doubt that my perception was valid.

Look at the 90's and 00's; in addition to Thomas, McGwire, and Bonds that I've already mentioned, do you ever expect to see another shortstop do what A-Rod did from 1996-2003? Or what about Piazza? How long before you think we'll witness another hitting display from a catcher like he did from 1993-2002? And we haven't even mentioned pitchers yet...Seaver was fantastic, but did he ever have a stretch like Maddux 1992-1997? Pedro 1997-2002? Johnson 1995-2002?

Not to say that any of those players and performances weren't truly all-time great. But I would ask you once again: on what basis beyond raw numbers and/or league-normalized stats such as OPS+ and ERA+ are you basing your confident assessment that this flood of post-mid-1990s performances has been genuinely great on an historical scale?

And we haven't even mentioned pitchers yet...Seaver was fantastic, but did he ever have a stretch like Maddux 1992-1997? Pedro 1997-2002? Johnson 1995-2002?

Pedro, 1997-2002: 624 PRAR (104/yr)
Maddux, 1992-1997: 610 PRAR (102/yr)
Johnson, 1995-2002: 822 PRAR (117/yr)*
Seaver, 1969-1975: 729 PRAR (104/yr)

*excepting 1996

Now, granted, Maddux gets somewhat screwed by the strike, and PRAR isn't a perfect stat or anything, but standard deviation really masks the greatness of certain 70s and 80s players.

One season that gets really lost in the shuffle is Mike Schmidt in 1981. He had a 199 OPS+ with the next best being Andre Dawson with a 157. That's an incredible, incredible year.

Steve - What should we use to determine greatness, if not league normalized stats? They're not perfect, but right now they're about the best we've got. I've seen no contradicting evidence yet that would lead me to believe that the peaks of the 90's players I've mentioned weren't amongst the very best ever for their positions.

Samourai - Yes, Schmidt was fantastic, as I did mention earlier. I've always thought of him as the best player of his era, and the best ever at his position. His 1981 campaign (and his 1980, as well) certainly do rank amongst the best seasons of that time, right alongside Brett's 1980, Gooden's 1985, etc. But I was looking for stretches of dominance - maybe four or five years in a row, at least - and not just single seasons.

And it doesn't really further the discussion to keep harping on two guys (Morgan and Schmidt) that I've already conceded WERE true greats. I've listed eight guys from the 90's/early 2000's with historically great peaks (and I didn't even mention Clemens yet). I'm still a long way off from being convinced that the 70's/80's had as many stand out greats as the 90's/00's. Since talent distribution always has and always will be random, some decade has to be at the bottom, right? What would be your picks for the least talented decade of the 20th/21st centuries (and no fair picking the deadball era, or the war torn 40's, since I already mentioned those)?