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Baseball Primer Newsblog— The Best News Links from the Baseball Newsstand
Thursday, February 26, 2009
It’s just…staggering.
Boston Red Sox
Ted Williams, Carl Yastrzemski, Pedro Martinez, David Ortiz
Rationale: A long roll call of options, including Cy Young, Tris Speaker, Wade Boggs, Nomar Garciaparra (before the fans turned on him) and ... some guy named Clemens. Sorry, Roger, but you’re still persona non grata in Beantown.
I didn’t think it was possible to read something dumber and more nonsensical than Reilly’s “Let’s arbitrarily reward the MVPs” article within the next month, much less within two days and on the same site.
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This is not dumber and more nonsensical than Reilly. Take that back.
Giant stone carvings of heads are the new market inefficiency.
Also, Derek Jeter over Lou Gehrig... nice.
Yeah, I noticed that too. The Yankees really need 5. Ruth, Gehrig, Dimaggio, Berra, and Mantle.
Someone should tell the numbnuts at ESPN that Young and Speaker went in the HOF with Cleveland caps.
what about TEH FEAR?
Jeter over Gehrig!?!? Gehrig is super-duper inner circle, best-starting 9 in history material.
As is Berra.
The Yankees have 4 guys you can argue are the best ever at their positions (Ruth, Gehrig, Mantle and Berra), and he leaves two of them off in favor of Jeter.
I can see DiMaggio over Berra. But either Gehrig or Berra need to be the 4th.
Edit:
The Yankees really need 5. Ruth, Gehrig, Dimaggio, Berra, and Mantle.
Concur!
("What? No Woodrow Wilson?")
ORIOLES: Ripken, Palmer, Robinson, Robinson
RED SOX: Williams, Yaz, Pedro, Boggs
RAYS: Kazmir, Upton, Longoria, Crawford
YANKEES: Jeter, O'Neill, Leyritz, Brosius
i would say that was the consensus at the time. remember it was completed in the mid-30s. teddy had a big reputation for a long time.
Well, they started carving it in 1927. As of 1927, you could make a pretty solid argument for Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and Roosevelt. Who's obviously missing? Jackson? Polk?
I think Ted Lilly has an argument over Higuera.
Red Sox: Pedro and Papi shouldn't be in that. Replace them with Pesky (not for his playing so much as the fact he is the quintessential Red Sock) and Cy Young-era type guys and maybe it'd be good.
Yankees (Ruth, DiMaggio, Mantle and Jeter): NO NO NO NO. Gehrig > Jeter.
Rays (Crawford, McGriff, Kazmir, Maddon): What, no Greg Vaughn!?! (I kid, I kid)
Blue Jays (Carlos Delgado, Dave Stieb, Roy Halladay, Pat Gillick): Needs more Tom Cheek.
White Sox (Frank Thomas, Luke Appling, Nellie Fox and Shoeless Joe): Good enough.
Indians (Bob Feller, Tris Speaker, Jim Thome, Nap Lajoie): Fine.
Tigers (Cobb, Greenberg, Kaline, Harwell): Perfect.
Royals (George Brett, Hal McRae, Frank White, Dan Quisenberry): Mike Sweeney is the only guy who I can truly say has even the slightest ability to say he was snubbed. Bo Jackson wasn't there long enough.
Twins (Puckett, Killebrew, Carew, Hrbek): Can Walter Johnson get a honorable mention here?
Angels (Nolan Ryan, Tim Salmon, Garret Anderson, Vlad): The Rally Monkey was snubbed.
A's (Reggie, McGwire, Rickey! and Billy Beane): I'm sorry, but when they didn't even change the nickname you should be allowed to use the KC and the Philly A's as well. Ergo, this list is crap.
Mariners (Edgar, Griffey, ICHIRO!, Dave Niehaus): No complaints.
Rangers (Ryan, Pudge, Palmeiro and Juan Gonzalez): Not much to work with with the Rangers, I guess.
They also have NL at this link.
Jefferson is actually the big miss. His greatness is all pre-Presidency. His Presidency was actually a huge failure.
If you're going for founding fathers, Jefferson doesn't have anything over Adams, or Madison.
ROYALS: Brett, White, Quiz, Saberhagen
TIGERS: Cobb, Gehringer, Greenberg, Kaline
WHITE SOX: Thomas, Fox, Aparicio, Fisk (Veeck, honorary)
TWINS: Killebrew, Puckett, Carew, Blyleven
Good point. If we are going to do this exercise properly, it should be three great players, and then one guy from the current team.
I'm sick and tired of people like Esoteric and Albert Belle leaving Albert Belle off the Indians' Mt. Rushmore.
Sorry if there was another thread already for the NL.
MARINERS: Griffey, Ichiro, Edgar, Buhner (someday maybe Felix)
RANGERS: Ryan, maybe Howard, plus a bunch of steroid cheats (JuanGone, A-Rod, Palmeiro, etc.)
ANGELS: Vlad, Ryan (on two Rushmores!), Anderson (!), Autry
XX or Grove over Eck, definitely.
wait a minute--does this mean you wanna put Barack Hussein on the real Mt Rushmore?
I think Amos Otis was one of the top four Royals of All-Time, but I doubt many other Royals fans feel the same way. I'd take Quiz off, great as he was.
A's: Eddie Collins, Reggie Jackson, Lefty Grove, Jimmie Foxx
BoX: Ted Williams, Yaz, Joe Cronin, Wade Boggs
CWS: Frank Thomas, Ted Lyons, Luke Appling, Ed Walsh
CLE: Bob Feller, Tris Speaker, Albert Belle, Lou Boudreau
DET: Ty Cobb, Sam Crawford, Al Kaline, Alan Trammell
NYY: Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle
StB/Balt: Brooks Robinson, Jim Palmer,
Urban Shocker, George Sisler, Cal RipkenWash/MIN: Harmon Killebrew, Walter Johnson, Rod Carew, Kirby Puckett
Edited to change my honorary Brown.
If not Pedro, then Ortiz or Manny. But someone from the second-most successful era in Red Sox history is a given, I think.
Williams and Yaz, obviously. Then the fourth one is harder, for me. The Sox have had a lot of all-time greats who played a considerable amount of time elsewhere. If that's an issue, maybe go with lifer Johnny Pesky. If it's not, maybe Cy Young?
PS. I never liked Boggs. Plus he played for the Yankees.
Appling was way better than Aparicio.
You can argue that Ted Lyons or Eddie Collins belongs on over Fox or Fisk.
Finley, Rickey, Fingers, Dave Stewart. It's not the best 4, but it's representative, controversial and in Fingers' case, the 'stache looks good in stone. Maybe flip Eck for Stew if you want.
The question is, who'd be on it. The only guy I think EVERYONE can agree on is FDR. Who else? Going by a recent CSPAN poll of presidential historians, the 4 on a second Mt. Rushmore would be FDR, Harry Truman, JFK and Ike. But, sadly, there is no way in hell that in this day and age that a 3-1 Democrat advantage on Rushmore could occur (besides, Truman's awesomeness isn't something you can describe to a kid, which is essential in 1st grade history class). So Truman would be replaced with Reagan.
Arky Vaughn gets no respect. He's pretty clearly the second greatest shortstop in history. (Third if you count A-Rod as a shortstop)
I wouldn't agree with that. But then again, I'm not really a fan of any of the post-World War I presidents.
Agreed. I actually like Schoenfield's Red Sox list. If you want to take off one of the two modern guys for a Cronin or Boggs, I guess I see the case, but Pedro was TRANSCENDANT during his peak Boston years (moreso than Boggs ever was) and it seems like Ortiz has as many great Red Sox moments under his belt as every other member of the team ever combined.
You HAVE to have Pedro in there, though.
Okay, FDR is the only guy almost everyone can agree on.
NL EAST
EXPOS/NATIONALS: Raines, Dawson, Carter, Staub
METS: Seaver, Keith Hernandez, Wright (premature, perhaps?), and one of the many Metsfans here can tell me whether I should choose Strawberry or Gooden.
PHILLIES: Schmidt, Roberts, Carlton, Bunning
BRAVES: Aaron, Spahn, Maddux, Matthews (this one is so hard...Chipper? Smoltz? Niekro? Murphy?)
MARLINS: ???? Hanley, Livan (?), Sheffield (?), Dontrelle (?)
Actually, I'd choose Herb Score. Short playing career, but nobody is more synonymous with the Cleveland Indians of the latter half of the 20th century than Herb Score.
If you've gotta have someone from the '90s teams, Thome is the guy, but I don't like the idea of picking someone just because of when they played.
Four consecutive presidents were the best? Really? And what is great about Truman? Yeah, he dropped the bomb, but he wrote the Truman Doctrine, a philosophy that lead to needless and unjustified involvement in Korea and later Vietnam. And Ike? He of the McCarthism and Korea War involvement? Put up Reagan and Clinton.
Also, for the Indians, I'll say Feller, Lajoie, Doby, Belle. Aside from Feller, though, that's a tough one - Speaker, Manny and Thome are are all logical choices, too.
Gehrig over Jeter is a no-brainer. Yankees: Ruth, Gehrig, DiMaggio, Mantle. Berra really should be there, too, but if you're limiting this to four, those seem like obvious choices. The Yankees really have a five, or even six (with Berra and Jeter) man Mt. Rushmore.
Didn't look at the NL, but the Mets: Seaver, Straw, Piazza, Tug McGraw. Wright or Reyes will be on there soon - hell, you could put them on now, and I won't argue the point. A lot of people would probably put Doc ahead of McGraw, but I feel like having both Doc and Darryl is kinda repetitive, seeing as they basically represent the same thing and often mentioned in the same breath. Maybe you could do a two-headed hydra called DocDarryl, with a vial of cocaine stuck up its nose. Anyway, I'll just go with McGraw, mostly on account of the whole "You Gotta Believe!" thing, even though there's a number of Mets who were more valuable players.
PIRATES: Clemente, Wagner, Stargell, Vaughan
REDS: Bench, Morgan, Larkin, Rose
CUBS: Banks, Williams, Santo, Sandberg
CARDINALS: Musial, Hornsby, Gibson, Ozzie
BREWERS: Yount, Molitor, Fingers, Uecker
ASTROS: Biggio, Bagwell, Wynn, Cruz
I also blame Ike for not using the time machine hidden in the Washington Monument to go back and not get involved in Korea.
The last month of Yaz's 1967 is well known. Here are some other highlights...
1967 World Series: .400 AVG, .500 OBP, .840 (in low-offense era)
last two weeks of 1972 season: .255 AVG, .339 OBP, .569 SLG
1975 ALCS: .455 AVG, .500 OBP, .818 SLG
last two weeks of 1978 season: .250 AVG, .379 OBP, .521 SLG
And he homered in the 1978 playoff game.
These memories may not stand out as much as Ortiz's heroics in part because they happened longer ago (we forget), in part because baseball didn't do as much "OMG Teh Clutch!!!111!!!", in part because the raw numbers aren't as impressive (thanks to their occurring in lower offensive eras), and in part because, ultimately, the Red Sox didn't win in those seasons. That's a lot of the reason why Ortiz appears to be more of a human highlight reel, why Yaz's and Dwight Evans's heroics recede in our memory.
Oh, I don't know. The Louisiana Purchase was pretty sweet, right? The embargo was silly, but not legacy-killing silly.
The four on Rushmore are all universally liked, three for their qualities and one for half-quality, half-personality (that'd be TR, folks). And he rolled back the Alien & Sedition Acts, so that's cool. It's a pretty good selection.
As for modern day...FDR is in; liberals love the New Deal and conservatives like his foresight on the war; Truman might get more support from conservatives than liberals right now; JFK is...well, JFK has Camelot and the whole assassination thing (though so does Garfield, so that probably shouldn't be a prime criterion), so he'd probably make it on personality but accomplishment seems difficult; Ike is warmly regarded as a grandfatherly patron through the quiet 50s...Reagan's got great numbers with conservatives, good numbers with independents, and still draws okay with Democrats (conservative wing, obviously).
I guess if Democrats had to pick two it'd be FDR & JFK and Republicans would take Reagan & Ike.
The real travesty is James K. missing the original cut. What more do you want from the man?!
GIANTS: Mays, Ott, Marichal, Bonds (*sigh*)
DIAMONDBACKS: RJ (I put him here instead of the Mariners, but it's a close one), Schilling, Luis Gonzalez (I'm not saying it's right, I'm saying it's true), Finley (?)
DODGERS: Robinson, Snider, Koufax, Sutton
PADRES: Gwynn, Winfield, Garvey, Randy Jones (too early for Peavy)
ROCKIES: Helton, Walker, Bichette (?), Holliday (?)
Ummm... what? Granted, he completely disregarded his own principles (radicals usually do) - but the Louisiana Purchase is probably somewhere in the top 5 of most important events in American history. You can argue that the US would have inevitably inherited or otherwise taken the territory, but TJ pulled the trigger requiring no bloodshed at an amazing price.
I'd replace Sandberg or Santo with Hartnett...
SERIOUSLY. KEEP IT THE F*CK OUT.
Good point, though I wonder why you refer to TR as only "half-quality." You could make a pretty reasonable case that he was the fourth-best president, after Lincoln, Washington and FDR.
I can't help but wonder if Thomas Jefferson has joined the likes of Nirvana and batting average in the halls of the so-overrated-they're-underrated. Yeah, he did some dumb stuff, and I definitely come down on the Hamilton side of the Hamilton/Jefferson debate, but he was hardly a huge failure or anything.
Good sir. SIR! I say good sir! to you, sir! GOOD SIR!
The Marlins must include Jeff Conine. For the love of Sad King Billy (the Marlin) he is called "Mr. Marlin!"
It'd be Jeff Conine, Mike Lowell, Miguel Cabrera, and Dontrelle Willis for pure "face of the franchise-ness". Hanley would supplant Cabrera or Willis in a few years.
Coors Field has to be on there somewhere
Which is why, for your Cardinals entry, I'd 86 Hornsby (peerless as he was) and put in Pujols or Ken Boyer.
Yeah, I just figured it was too early for Pujols. But he was at the top of my mind.
To be fair, Eisenhower despised McCarthy, and he inherited the Korean War.
The most questionable one to me is Kennedy. What did he do, besides die?
he porked Marilyn--that's gotta count for sumpin
Additionally, I would say Ike had pretty decent foresight.
AL:
O's: Brooks, Cal, Earl, Frank
Sox: Ted, Yaz, Pedro, Looie
Yanks: Babe, Lou, Joe, Mick
White Sox: Thomas, Minoso, Appling, Veeck
Indians: Feller, Boudreau, Veeck, Thome
Tigers: Cobb, Greenberg, Kaline, Harwell
Nats / Twins: Johnson, Killebrew, Puckett, Hrbek
A's: Mack, Grove, Rickey, Collins
NL:
Dodgers: Robinson, Campanella, Reese, Koufax
Giants: Matty, Ott, Mays, Bonds
Cards: Rickey, Musial, Gibson, Pujols
Phils: Alexander, Roberts, Ashburn, Schmidt
Cubs: Banks, Santo, Sandberg, Unknown Bleacher Bum
Reds: Rose, Morgan, Bench, Kluszewski
Braves: Aaron, Mathews, Spahn, Maddox
Pirates: Wagner, Vaughan, Clemente, Maz
Expansion teams are all too diluted, and their players move around too much to be identified with just one team. Come back in 50 years.
What I'm saying is that T.R. gets on Rushmore half because of his accomplishments as president and half because of how colorful a character he was. If T.R. does everything T.R. did but with the vivaciousness of a Coolidge, he doesn't make it.
Or maybe he does, but it's certainly more difficult.
Coolidge. There's a man who should be on a mountain somewhere. But Coolidge would never approve of such a public expenditure, nor such grandiose exaltation of a public servant.
I didn't say it was worse, per se, but it's dumber and much more nonsensical. Really, Shoeless Joe Jackson? Ortiz over Manny, much less Boggs? If Shoeless Joe, how the #### not Clemens? It has no internal logic, it has no point, and it's just...wrong. Somehow he is objectively wrong on a subjective matter. Reilly was bitter and silly, but you didn't see him arguing that 2 of Bonds' MVPs should have gone to Craig Counsell and Quinton McCracken.
This is laying aside the point that Schoenfield thieved from a Primate blatantly and then derisively dismissed the reaction here. David, I don't know if you still come around, but if you do, you're still a dillweed. (I'm trying to build a comeback for that term.)
That he did:
This is about the fifth or so tribute to Coolidge I have seen here in the past month.
Damn liberal circle jerks.
Ahh.
.....Indians: Feller, Boudreau, Veeck, Thome
then my boy Rocky has to be on there
.....Indians: Feller, Boudreau, Veeck, Thome
then my boy Rocky has to be on there
Yeah, you're right. But damn, it's tough to know which one to scratch. I think I'll just squeeze all five in there and say who's gonna stop me?
Padres: Gwynn, Hoffman, RJones, San Diego Famous Chicken
Yeah, you're right. But damn, it's tough to know which one to scratch. I think I'll just squeeze all five in there and say who's gonna stop me?
I like your style--think outside of the mountain
I think Colavito has to move Thome. If Thome had been a career Indian, then you move Veeck, but Thome went FA.
Here's a question: Who would go on an MLB Mt. Rushmore?
Babe Ruth
Jackie Robinson
Alexander Cartwright?
Landis?
Branch Rickey?
Two authors and two ballplayers. Good call. My take:
PILOTS: Bouton, Schultz, Oyler, Selig
?
Ruth and Robinson, I think, are inarguable. I might go with ...
Ruth, Robinson, William Hulbert, Marvin Miller
Budweiser
Paging MS Word spellchecker. Spellchecker to the white courtesy phone, please.
But actually, I think the four up there are the right ones. I've got FDR at #5.
How did it happen that Walter Johnson went from being near-universally acknowledged as the top SP in history to being an afterthought in little more than a generation?
I mean, I'm not saying he is/was the greatest of all time - when you combine both peak and career - but he ought to be in the discussion. I wasn't a kid that long ago, but in the 70s and 80s, he was just the other side of Cobb/Ruth/Wagner as a no-brainer on the all-time best team discussions. 3509 used to mean something, dammit.
He's even got an all-time great nickname!
A ####### fastball, you #####.
Lincoln, Washington, FDR, Teddy
Truman comes in #5, Jefferson finishes #7.
So, when people are talking about removing one from the real Rushmore and adding a 4th, it's the removal of Jefferson not Teddy.
Bull Moose forever!!!
Barney?
shame Walter Johnson never met Lionel James
Lincoln, Washington, FDR, Teddy
Truman comes in #5, Jefferson finishes #7.
Number 6 was Kennedy -- a truly bizarre choice, if you ask me. I am a supporter, but he is being ranked more on potential than accomplishments.
Since they started work in 1927, FDR, Truman and JFK would not have been choices. So by that standard, they got it right!
Piazza's #2 after only Seaver.
agree. i'd drop hornsby too, put in pujols and try to squeeze in red schoendienst. i forgot about ozzie earlier, he makes it a tough call. well, who says it has to be 4?
in about 5 or 6 yrs if we do this exercise agin, somebody will want TLR.
Truman is a terrible choice. He was temperamentally unfit to be president, plus he gave us the Viet Nam paradigm: stupid wars of attrition with nations who have nothing to lose and are willing to sacrifice their citizenry to the last man, while you fight with one arm tied behind your back and urge your citizens on with promises that pawns in geopolitical gamesmanship go to their eternal Valhalla. Piss on Truman. He was LBJ’s daddy in foreign affairs, and at least LBJ was successful on a grand scale domestically. Truman was a boob there, too. His popularity is due to the mentality of many who like presidents who pretend that they have a “pair of ‘em.” Uh oh, look for a resurgency in the popularity of the ######## who just so gracelessly exited stage left.
Glad to see so many consider Eisenhower as underrated. It's hard to judge presidents who keep things from happening. Ike kept his head in a time when all too many were losing theirs. Which was his great attribute in war, too, besides being a master preparer (administrator/organizer).A brilliant man in many ways, but who is underrated because he didn't have oratorical flourish (his speeches are just brilliant policy statements). He not only despised McCarthyism, he administered the coup de grace to Tailgunner Joe. He pretty much bluff the Chinese into negotiating a lasting truce by showing iron hand within a velvet glove. (He sub rosa hinted at adopting some of Douglas MacArthur’s proposals for pursuing the conflict—this had to scare the #### out of them.)
Jefferson is a great president for the reasons given, but also for what his election represented. A neverending rolling thunder dynamism. Moreover, like Lincoln (and Jackson, too, probably) he understood that separation of powers meant that there is a point when the institutions of government could be at irreconcilable loggerheads--and this was good. We have a tendency to think that somehow the government should workd. Not necessarily. Immediately, and ever since, there are attempts to resolve the contradictions of the doctrine by having one branch supervene over the others. John Marshall was savvy enough to find for Jefferson and Madison in Marbury. Otherwise, methinks (and methinks Marshall thought) if he had not, Jefferson would have told him to roll the sacred constitutional parchment and attempt to do the rolling donut thing.
Jefferson wrote the epitaph on his tombstone and didn't even mention he'd been the 3rd President of the US.
This whole Mt. Rushmore thing is fun. How about... Simpsons characters who aren't members of the Simpson family? I nominate Comic Book Guy/Mr. Burns/Disco Stu/Mrs. Krabapple
Lenny, Barney, George H. W. Bush, and Mr. Burns.
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