FanEloRater suffers from the same problems many fan-based populairty contests do; stuffing the ballot boxes with opinions of those who care more (and may not understand much), in disproportionate numbers. Is there much doubt that if fans voted on the equivalent of the "all century team" today that Jeter would be one of the top 2 shortstops?

Exhibit A: I submit to you the 1999 results of the all century team vote totals for second base.
1. Jackie Robinson, 788,116
2. Rogers Hornsby, 630,761
3. Joe Morgan, 608,660
4. Rod Carew, 430,267
5. Nap Lajoie, 90,402
6. Eddie Collins, 58,836

Let the moaning begin.

Let the moaning begin.

If you exclude Jackie (as he's getting votes for non-baseball reasons, I'd wager) that's not terrible. I'd go Morgan, Hornsby, Collins, Lajoie myself and, maybe Dihigo ahead of Lajoie if you want to classify him as a 2nd baseman. But for the results of voting from non-baseball geeks, that's pretty good.

I agree with Shooty. That's not a bad list. And Robinson is arguably in the top 3 if you give him credit for his years in the military and negro leagues. I'd probably rank them Morgan, Collins, Hornsby, Robinson, Lajoie.

I can't read Tom's mind, but I think the point of his list is to show that 1999 voters had largely forgotten about Collins and Lajoie, so the voting skewed heavily towards players who some people could remember seeing, and many more had seen on TV. The difference in votes between Jackie (1st) and Rod Carew (4th) is about 350,000 votes. The difference between Carew and Lajoie (#5) is about 340,000 votes, so Carew/Lajoie is the big dividing line. Eddie Collins has less than 1/10th the votes of Joe Morgan. The most interesting thing to me is that Hornsby's reputation had remained so high that he got votes like the modern guys, not Nap and Eddie. On the broader point, I think that it is generally true that if you let random modern baseball fans vote for all-timers, you'll get a mix of modern guys and a few "inner circle reputations" from the earlier days. The average modern baseball fan has absolutely no idea who Deacon White might have been or why he's going into the Hall of Fame. - Brock Hanke

FanEloRater suffers from the same problems many fan-based populairty contests do; stuffing the ballot boxes with opinions of those who care more (and may not understand much), in disproportionate numbers. Is there much doubt that if fans voted on the equivalent of the "all century team" today that Jeter would be one of the top 2 shortstops?

No question that Jeter and Ripken would be voted the top 2. Throw out the 2 platinum-level "icons" Babe Ruth and Jackie Robinson, and I'd bet there's an almost perfect correlation between the "best" players chosen in any fan poll and the average age of the responders.

And that FanEloRater list isn't much more than the flip side of polls that say that Nolan Ryan was better than Lefty Grove, or that the "best" movies by sheer coincidence all came out within living memory of today's core moviegoing demographic. Most people base their opinions on such a limited range of knowledge that it makes no sense for anyone but a marketer to take polls like these seriously. Which is pretty much what Brock is saying.

right, it's not the ordinal ranking, it is that given the opportunity to vote for the best two second basemen ever, less than 5% of voters picked Eddie Collins.

to the author's other point about Mantgle-era worship: What is the 20th-to-80th percentile age range of the BBWAA HOF voters? Given the 10-yr MINIMUM criterion, I would guess it is 45 to early 60s. Most of those guys didn't grow up reading Bill James. They read summer of 49. Glory of their Times, etc., and Joe Dimaggio was the greatest living player.

to the author's other point about Mantgle-era worship: What is the 20th-to-80th percentile age range of the BBWAA HOF voters? Given the 10-yr MINIMUM criterion, I would guess it is 45 to early 60s. Most of those guys didn't grow up reading Bill James. They read summer of 49. Glory of their Times, etc., and Joe Dimaggio was the greatest living player.

Which also explains the Jack Morris lovefest from those corners. They're enthralled by two eras of baseball - the heroes of their youths (Mantle, Dimaggio, etc) and the greats of the era they covered. Jack Morris is the last chance for someone from that era to be elected as a starting pitcher, and they know it.

But the voters still put three players from the teens and twenties in the top six, and no 2b from the 80s or 90s. It's actually amazing that Lajoie got 90,000 votes and that Alomar wasn't in the top five. I don't think fans of other sports would vote the same way. How many basketball fans would put guys from the 50s or 60s in a list of top players all time? How many football fans would put QBs from the 40s, 50s, and 60s in an all time list?

Of course, you could argue that this isn't a bad thing, and that baseball fans simply have a better understanding of the sport's history than fans of other sports.

How many basketball fans would put guys from the 50s or 60s in a list of top players all time?

I think quite a few would put Russell, Chamberlain, Robertson, and West in a greatest player list.

I don't think they'd go back any further than that. Mikan was a dominant player in his own time but viewed more as a pioneer who played a precurser to the modern game. Russell is the first great one who holds up.

Thing is in basketball if you go back about a generation before Russell, I think I could gather a team that could compete with what were considered pro teams right out of my office. I've got a 6'7 center, a 6'5 PF who benches 400, and a pair of 6'3 guys.

Question: For anyone in the broad age group of 80 and under, what former Major League players that they would have seen were considered truly "iconic"** pretty much all during their careers, as opposed to only towards the end when their careers began to be fully appreciated? If you use a fairly high bar, I can think of these, in the order of the ML debuts:

Dimaggio
Feller
Williams
Musial
Robinson
Mantle
Mays
Koufax***
Jackson
Bench
Ripken
Clemens
Griffey (a marginal choice due to late career fade)
Maddux
Randy Johnson***
Pedro

And that's about it, in terms of what I'm talking about. There were others who started out on the "icon" path (Eddie Mathews, Robin Roberts, Harmon Killebrew, just to name a few) but slipped below it fairly quickly, to the point where today it's hard to imagine just how "special" they seemed to be in their early 20's.

**I realize that it's very hard to agree on what that means, but Reggie Jackson was threatening Roger Maris's record at the age of 22, and fortified it with his postseason heroics, whereas Hank Aaron, a far greater player, wasn't really appreciated in that way until he was in his late 30's. The same thing applies to Barry Bonds, whose signature skill---home runs by the bushel---wasn't central to his image as a player until 2001. Before that it was mostly statheads who realized how much better he was than Ken Griffey Jr.

***Two exceptions to the "early appreciation" rule, but as soon as they put it all together, they were immediately being compared to the all-time greats.

Tom Seaver. Not Maddux.
Arod and Jeter.

Before that it was mostly statheads who realized how much better he was than Ken Griffey Jr.

There was the three MVPs, tying the record for most ever (til then). He wasn't exactly flying under the radar.

Thing is in basketball if you go back about a generation before Russell, I think I could gather a team that could compete with what were considered pro teams right out of my office. I've got a 6'7 center, a 6'5 PF who benches 400, and a pair of 6'3 guys.

True, but isn't that the case in all sports? It's probably far more pronounced in basketball and football because the level of athleticism has changed so much in the last 50 years,l but if you sent a AAA team back to the 20's in a delorean they'd be able to compete with any of the top teams of that era.

But the voters still put three players from the teens and twenties in the top six, and no 2b from the 80s or 90s. It's actually amazing that Lajoie got 90,000 votes and that Alomar wasn't in the top five. I don't think fans of other sports would vote the same way. How many basketball fans would put guys from the 50s or 60s in a list of top players all time? How many football fans would put QBs from the 40s, 50s, and 60s in an all time list?

That is because the ballot contained their names. Fans weren't given a blank ballot and told to vote for the best second basemen they could think of. "Experts" compiled a list of the top 100 players in baseball history and then let the fans vote who among that list they thought were best of their position.

One fan's icon is another one's wouldn't-cross-the-street, but Andy poses an interesting question. I'm 54, so I only saw Mantle on TV when he was fading and I wasn't really much of a scout :) I don't remember Koufax as a player, though he was certainly iconic in the immediate past. Reggie Jackson was the first player I "saw" (again on TV) who very quickly became super-famous. Bench was phenomenal, but I don't know about "icon"; his personality didn't lend itself to that. Nolan Ryan, I obviously read back through a huge and continuing hype, but he was an extremely fast pitcher in his youth, and was setting strikeout records soon thereafter, and always conveyed a certain mystique. Seaver, yes. In latter years, maybe it's just because I wasn't a kid anymore, but I was slow to perceive iconicity among young players. Fernando Valenzuela was a candidate, but of course faded much faster than even Griffey. Mariano Rivera? AROD? Barry Bonds was unremarkable for a couple of years, but then was at the center of conversations soon and for the rest of his career. Ripken, OK. McGwire and Canseco broke in iconic: José became a joke, McGwire faded for a while, came back bigger than ever, and then acquired some tarnish and is busy polishing it away. Oddly enough the guys who do have a chance to be Mantle types – Trout, Harper – are well on track to do it already (thereby prompting stories like TFA).

So were those six 2b the only choices available to the voters?

No, there was a total of 8 second basemen on the ballot. Gehringer and Frisch were also on the ballot.

Of course, you could argue that this isn't a bad thing, and that baseball fans simply have a better understanding of the sport's history than fans of other sports.

This is certainly true. Just ask the most fervent football fan you know to name the top 5 players of the 1950's, or even the top teams of the 1950's, and you're likely to get at most a name or team or two. For football, it's almost like nothing before Super Bowl I even exists. Someone MIGHT remember Jim Brown. And NBA basketball history at most starts with Chamberlain, and for most fans even later than that - Magic, Bird, Jordan....

if you sent a AAA team back to the 20's in a delorean they'd be able to compete with any of the top teams of that era

I would say more than compete. They'd mop the floor with those old timers.

This is certainly true. Just ask the most fervent football fan you know to name the top 5 players of the 1950's, or even the top teams of the 1950's, and you're likely to get at most a name or team or two. For football, it's almost like nothing before Super Bowl I even exists. Someone MIGHT remember Jim Brown. And NBA basketball history at most starts with Chamberlain, and for most fans even later than that - Magic, Bird, Jordan....

I don't really know other sports well enough to answer this, but is part of it continuity?

Baseball certainly requires a degree of era adjustment, but since about Babe Ruth the game has been static enough that the average fan can conceptualize a comparison between a guy from the 1920s and a modern player. That combined with the added ability to translate stats. Again, there are era adjustments the casual fan probably isn't doing, but he can say to himself "hitting .300 is hitting .300" and only be wrong by degrees.

Whereas in other sports it seems like until recently the game being played was entirely different. To the point where comparing players across eras just isn't something the casual fan can do intelligibly.

EDIT: In other words, the 19th century (which I think a lot of fans just ignore when evaluating players because it seems like an entirely different game) lasted longer in those other sports.

I don't really know other sports well enough to answer this, but is part of it continuity?

Baseball certainly requires a degree of era adjustment, but since about Babe Ruth the game has been static enough that the average fan can conceptualize a comparison between a guy from the 1920s and a modern player. That combined with the added ability to translate stats. Again, there are era adjustments the casual fan probably isn't doing, but he can say to himself "hitting .300 is hitting .300" and only be wrong by degrees.

Whereas in other sports it seems like until recently the game being played was entirely different. To the point where comparing players across eras just isn't something the casual fan can do intelligibly.

I think the size component plays a big role (as well as the fact that other sports feature physical contact where that size comes into direct contact). We know how much size plays a role in the NBA and NFL, with guys getting bigger (and more athletic) all the time.

While the same is true in baseball, it's less so. Short guys or thin guys or fat guys can continue to achieve at very high levels. Thus, you can envision a guy from the 20s competing now a lot easier than it is to envision some 6-7, 210-pound center with limited athleticism matching up with a 7-1, 245-pound guy who can run the floor, or a 240-pound offensive lineman holding off a 310-pound defensive end with speed.

Oh, and we better appreciate the sport's history because we're better fans. That probably goes without saying.

Many of you may disagree, but I think Mariano Rivera and his career has been treated like an All-Time Immortals.

(Whether that is warranted or whether relievers are all that valuable is not the point. The point is that even though relievers - let alone closers - are a fairly new development in the history of baseball, Mariano is treated as being on a different plane from his peers).

Tom Seaver. Not Maddux.

That's a grey area. I probably should've included Seaver, and maybe George Brett, but I wouldn't drop Maddux.

Arod and Jeter.

Sure, but I said former players, not those still active like those two and Rivera, Pujols, etc.

And of course Trout and Harper are on track. IMO Harper had the buildup that's been the closest to the one Mantle got in Phoenix in 1951, a total five tool Mr. Natural. Trout's got the baseball kavorkanow, but when he came up he was much more under the radar than Harper.

Before that it was mostly statheads who realized how much better he was than Ken Griffey Jr.

There was the three MVPs, tying the record for most ever (til then). [Bonds] wasn't exactly flying under the radar.

I realize that, but he still wasn't discussed in the same semi-worshipful terms that Griffey was. This isn't about sabermetric value or black ink points or even current opinion. It's about how he was perceived for his entire career, and in terms of full appreciation Bonds was more like Aaron rather than the ones on that list.

--------------------------------------

And Bob, I would've added McGwire, except during those down years in Oakland he wasn't seen as much of anything beyond the latest incarnation of Dave Kingman. With the two noted exceptions, the above list consists of players who were perceived as something transcendent almost as soon as they'd completed their first full season. If I'd gone beyond that, then obviously the list would have been much, much bigger.

Many of you may disagree, but I think Mariano Rivera and his career has been treated like an All-Time Immortals.

I agree with this.

if you sent a AAA team back to the 20's in a delorean they'd be able to compete with any of the top teams of that era


I would say more than compete. They'd mop the floor with those old timers.

I'm having trouble with the degree of timelining it takes for a modern AAA team to mop the floor with the 1927 Yankees.

I'm comfortable with it in basketball or football because of the degree to which the jaw-dropping athleticism of modern players would overwhelm the Mikans or Starrs of the world.

That's a grey area. I probably should've included Seaver, and maybe George Brett, but I wouldn't drop Maddux.

I don't know why Maddux would possibly fit. He was a good pitcher, no doubt, but he won his first Cy in his seventh season (fifth full). He was by no means iconic before that, and probably not until he won Cy No. 3.

Sure, but I said former players, not those still active like those two and Rivera, Pujols, etc.

I can see making a distinction between Harper and Strasburg, who have the makings of icons but must follow up with careers to support the status. But by this point, there's nothing that Jeter and Arod (and Pujols and Rivera) can do to remove themselves from the list.

I realize that, but he still wasn't discussed in the same semi-worshipful terms that Griffey was. This isn't about sabermetric value or black ink points or even current opinion. It's about how he was perceived for his entire career, and in terms of full appreciation Bonds was more like Aaron rather than the ones on that list.

True, to an extent. At the same time, he was the son of a very good player, had a great college career, was expected to be great and was great pretty early. I wasn't really championing him for the list (I could go either way), but I'd say he's a lot closer to belonging than Maddux. He wasn't as pedastaled as Griffey on this list, but few of those guys you named actually were. If Griffey's the standard, then your list is significantly shorter.

I'm having trouble with the degree of timelining it takes for a modern AAA team to mop the floor with the 1927 Yankees.

Agreed. And to be at all fair, we have to take away the weight training and nutritional supplements from the AAA guys (or give them to the oldsters).

24 - Fine, not the 27 Yankees, who mopped the floor themselves with the rest of the league. I'll revise. They'd mop the floor with any non-Yankee team, and hold their own with most Yankee teams.

we have to take away the weight training and nutritional supplements from the AAA guys

And we'd have to do this with the other sports too, meaning we have a lot fewer 240 lb O-lineman going up against the modern guys.

Just ask the most fervent football fan you know to name the top 5 players of the 1950's, or even the top teams of the 1950's, and you're likely to get at most a name or team or two.

I can probably name many of the entire starting backfields of the 50's, but in terms of the game on the field it's like night and day in a way that even baseball isn't---and baseball itself is a lot more "night and day" in terms of talent than most sportswriters from that era like to admit. I watched every NFL championship game from 1952 to 1963, and I saw more unbelievably athletic catches in any given game last weekend than I saw in the entire 1950's decade. In spite of the multiple expansions and increased roster size, I doubt if more than half a dozen ends from then could have even found a spot on an NFL roster today, and maybe at most 2 or 3 of them (Elroy Hirsch, R.C. Owens, Ray Berry) might have been able to start for one of the lesser teams. And as for running backs, Jim Brown, Ollie Matson, Hugh McElhenny and maybe Jim Taylor and Joe Perry. And that's it.

Agreed. And to be at all fair, we have to take away the weight training and nutritional supplements from the AAA guys (or give them to the oldsters).

I'm willing to give the modern players the weight training and nutritional supplements and withhold them from the 1927 Yankees, and I still don't see it making that kind of a difference. Again, unlike football, where if you were to send Adrian Peterson back 60 years, he'd be worshipped as some sort of minor deity.

Agreed. And to be at all fair, we have to take away the weight training and nutritional supplements from the AAA guys (or give them to the oldsters).

My point was the opposite -- that the AAA team would be as good as the 1927 yankees because of modern nutrition and weight training. Just as a bench player on Duke's basketball team would be a superstar in the NBA of the 1950s.

EDIT: And maybe the 1927 yankees is a stretch, but I have no doubt that a AAA team would be as good as most of the other teams of that era.

And we'd have to do this with the other sports too, meaning we have a lot fewer 240 lb O-lineman going up against the modern guys.

Right. It's absurd to think that greats of the past wouldn't have played at much higher weights and been much stronger if they had modern techniques and "supplements". Hell, the Yankees actively prevented Babe Ruth from working out in Spring Training.

I can see making a distinction between Harper and Strasburg, who have the makings of icons but must follow up with careers to support the status. But by this point, there's nothing that Jeter and Arod (and Pujols and Rivera) can do to remove themselves from the list.

I don't disagree, and you could add Pujols and possibly a few others, but I'd already said I was listing former players only.

I don't know why Maddux would possibly fit. He was a good pitcher, no doubt, but he won his first Cy in his seventh season (fifth full). He was by no means iconic before that, and probably not until he won Cy No. 3.

I think I'd agree with that. Maddux wasn't Maddux around roughly 1990-1991. By which time he had thrown over 1000 innings in the majors. He was actually my favourite player because A) his name was Greg, and B) he was quietly good rather than a great player like all my brother's favourites.

Imagine my horror when he actually turned out pretty great soon after. I instead turned my affections to a catcher in Houston who had a name that sounded close to mine. Then he moved to 2B and it happened all over again!

Since then I've played it safe with favourite players...Craig Grebeck, Gregg Zaun. The kind of guys you can rely on never being stars. Though now that I think of it I haven't replaced Zaun since his retirement. Here's hoping Didi Gregorius is worthy of the name!

Okay, strike Maddux. As an AL fan, I never really noticed him until he jumped to the Braves.

And maybe the 1927 yankees is a stretch, but I have no doubt that a AAA team would be as good as most of the other teams of that era.

On this point, you're probably right. While I think Ruth, Gehrig, Lazzeri, etc. could step right out of a time machine from the late 1920s and be stars today, I do think a modern AAA team could hold its own against an average team of that era. The most reasonable form of timelining in a sport like baseball is probably to assume that the talents to the extreme right of the curve would likely be at the extreme right of the curve in any era, but that with systematic instruction, a minor league system focused on developing major leaguers, and a much more efficient talent identification system in place, the left and middle of the talent curve have shifted rightward.

My point was the opposite -- that the AAA team would be as good as the 1927 yankees because of modern nutrition and weight training. Just as a bench player on Duke's basketball team would be a superstar in the NBA of the 1950s.

But what does that say? Give the 20's guys the same nutrition and training, and they'd be a lot better. If anything that says today's players really aren't much better.

You can't run Jesse Owens against Carl Lewis and make Owens run on cinders, with leather shoes, and no starting blocks. What's the point to that comparison?

One thing to keep in mind when sending teams forwards and backwards in time: there are pitches today that did not exist in the 1920s (the split-finger fastball, for example), and there are pitches from the 1920s that are hardly used today (the screwball, for example).

I would tend to think that a modern team would have the advantage here (because there are more new pitches than old forgotten/hardly used pitches), but who knows.

Just ask the most fervent football fan you know to name the top 5 players of the 1950's, or even the top teams of the 1950's, and you're likely to get at most a name or team or two.

I would say that the MOST fervent football fans might be able to mention Jim Brown plus players for the team they root for, since football teams tend to celebrate their own tradition as opposed to the league. So if you root for a team that was around before the 1960s, you might come up with a Red Grange or Sid Luckman, or a Sammy Baugh.

Between expansion and the AFL, though, a lot of teams didn't exist before 1960--there were only 12 teams in 1959. Many of the iconic NFL franchises don't have a through-line that predates the 1960s--there are no old-time Patriots, or Cowboys, or Raiders. Most of baseball's expansion teams still feel newer in some way--not just the Rays and the Marlins, but also the Mets and the Angels. I am not at all a Yankee fan, but the homage that the Yankees pay to their own tradition contributes a lot to baseball's linkage to its past.

Pretty much every major NFL record has been broken since 1980, which means there is no inherent reason to bring up old-time players. Baseball still has old .400 hitters, Old Hoss Radbourn, Jack Chesbro, Chief Wilson, Earl Webb, Joe DiMaggio, and Cy Young, so you inevitably get some media coverage about whether this could be the year that a given record is broken, or how insurmountable a record is.

Thinking about the other major sports, what are the old-time records that really get talked about? I think it's pretty limited, and highly concentrated in Wilt Chamberlain (100 points, 55 boards, 50 PPG, 20K women). Jim Brown's rushing yards/game. Bill Mosienko's 3 goals in 21 seconds.

One thing to keep in mind when sending teams forwards and backwards in time: there are pitches today that did not exist in the 1920s (the split-finger fastball, for example), and there are pitches from the 1920s that are hardly used today (the screwball, for example).

I would tend to think that a modern team would have the advantage here (because there are more new pitches than old forgotten/hardly used pitches), but who knows.

Are we letting the oldtimers use the spitball/shineball?

What's the point to that comparison?

I think this gets at the heart of this discussion (which has been bandied about many times here).

Is the point of it to remove each player from his historical context and assign him a era-neutral value that encapsulates his "true" ability as a player? [Edit] Or is it simply to argue that in the modern game balls are thrown faster and with more bite, hit harder, fielders and batters run faster, make more athletic catches (and whether this is because of some innate quality the modern player has that the older ones didn't, or because of historical context, is irrelevant)?

One claim is that players of today aren't better than players of yesterday because they have modern advances helping them. But the other claim is that players of today are better than players of yesterday because they have modern advances helping them. They're not really opposing claims so much as each one assumes a different answer to the question, "What's the point?"

39, pick your poison.

but I have no doubt that a AAA team would be as good as most of the other teams of that era

I'm trying to find something even resembling a cite, this will take a while, but I seem to recall that B-Pro tried to compare Ruth to Bonds, and found that the natural increase in talent in MLB (that is since more of the talented people want to join than leave, we'll almost always be improving as we kick out the flotsam) and increasing population pools (Ruth competed against white American citizens while Bonds had to go up against a culturally diverse international group) led them to believe that Ruth would have been roughly the equivalent of Tino Martinez.

Just for fun, and not to try to convince anyone.

Martinez's per-162 career line pumped into a MLE calculator suggests a .317/.408/.574 line in the International League. Great, but well short of Ruth. If the B-Pro study and MLE calculators are to be believed, Ruth faced competition lower than current AAA-ers.

I do think a modern AAA team could hold its own against an average team of that era

Of course, a modern AAA team could hold its own against some modern major-league teams: if by "holding one's own" one means winning a short series, or going, I dunno, 30-132 over a full season. That's inherent in the sport. (In football, we can be pretty sure that Alabama would go 0-16 over a full NFL season, seeing lots of non-starters in second halves.)

The problem a modern AAA team would have against, say, the 1927 Reds, who were the closest thing to a .500 team that year, is in matching up against the pitching. Those Reds had Red Lucas, Dolf Luque, and Eppa Rixey in the starting rotation. They happen to have been pitching-heavy, of course, but take some team that wasn't, like the 1929 Dodgers, and they've got Watty Clark and Dazzy Vance at the top of an otherwise poor rotation. Even bad major-league teams of 80 years ago would have one or two pitchers who were tough, professional starters. (Whether those starters could adapt to the modern game is one of those have-to-guess-at time-machine questions.)

There are a couple of different issues here that are getting conflated. The first is simply about changes in athleticism. I was responding to an earlier point about the changes in basketball from the 40's to today -- in many ways it's a completely different game because the players are so much bigger and more athletic, and so it's hard for fans to relate to players from earlier eras. That doesn't mean a player from today is inherently better than a player from the 40's, and the players would probably be comparable if raised in similar environments. My point was that this phenomenon applies to baseball as well, but it's less extreme and less obvious.

The other issue is timelining: adjusting for the increased level of competition in the modern game. Performances from 80 years ago have to be discounted somewhat because the leagues weren't integrated and the quality of competition just wasn't as good. So it was easier for a guy like Ruth to dominate than it is for a modern player.

On the other subthread here, I think that baseball has always, often quite intentionally, cultivated links to its own past. There was a period in the 1970s when the idea was to build ballparks and design uniforms sharply unlike those of 1910-1968, but even then there was lots of continuity. Football and basketball have by contrast changed looks (as well as rules and styles) every few years. The marketing of those sports has stressed how silly the old guys looked even pretty recently. (With some exceptions: Dick Butkus is still an icon of kicking your butt; Bill Russell has never looked silly.) There's no real parallel in baseball. It was the 1970s guys who looked silly. Or when they looked cool, it was because they were trying to look like guys from the 1890s.

Question: For anyone in the broad age group of 80 and under, what former Major League players that they would have seen were considered truly "iconic"** pretty much all during their careers, as opposed to only towards the end when their careers began to be fully appreciated? If you use a fairly high bar, I can think of these, in the order of the ML debuts:

I'd add Rod Carew. Rookie of the Year. Batting titles after batting titles pretty much right from the start and during an era when, like Ivory soap, 99.44% of us thought BA was the bee's knees. Annually was the highest vote getting in the All Star game.

I think a good AAA team could beat the 1927 Yankees. Something out of the Rays farm system perhaps or maybe the Brewers at the beginning of the 21st century.

Question: For anyone in the broad age group of 80 and under, what former Major League players that they would have seen were considered truly "iconic"** pretty much all during their careers, as opposed to only towards the end when their careers began to be fully appreciated? If you use a fairly high bar, I can think of these, in the order of the ML debuts:

Not to blow up the thread (and I'm not entirely sure he fits anyway - he seems on his way to putting together 4-5 pretty meh seasons on his way out the door), but...

Ichiro?

EDIT: And of course ignoring Andy's "retired players" rule. But hey, the first rookie I can clearly remember coming up was...Chipper Jones maybe? So the list of retired players I've followed for their entire careers is pretty short.

Ichiro?

Without question.

Correction: John Olerud is the first rookie I can recall coming up and following.