Tim Wakefield No. 3 and Wilbur Wood No. 7? That's ridiculous.

Perhaps Wood may be No. 7, but if so there's no way Wakefield is No. 3.

Yeah the rankings are more than a little suspect. RA Dickey 5th, Joe Niekro 9th? The list reads like; first and second the obvious choices, third to fifth guys people probably have heard of, sixth to tenth guys probably better than the 3-5 guys but not as well known so we'll move them down.

Fun article. The rankings are suspect (obviously), so it would have been better as an unranked list.

The modern trio of Wakefield/Hough/Dickey appear to be ranked too high. Or the past trio of Cicotte/Wood/Leonard are too low.

Pitcher - bWAR/WAA
Phil Niekro - 97/51
Hoyt Wilhelm - 50/27
Wakefield - 35/4
Hough - 39/6
RA Dickey - 23.1/5
Cicotte - 58/28
Wilbur Wood - 52/26
Dutch Leonard - 37/17
Joe Niekro - 29/-2.5(!)
Tom Candiotti - 42/19

Where's Ted Lyons?

#5 Not sure how to count Lyons. By his own account, "In some games I'll pitch as many as many as 25 knucklers". And by the end of his career he said he didn't throw many. "I stick mostly to my so-called fast one and my slow curve, but I have a knuckle ball in reserve and it helps mostly as a threat."

My first strat season I owned was 1971. Wilbur Wood was amazing. Used him all the time and i wasn't even cheating. ;). 11.7 WAR . Cicotte actually pips him for greatest single season by a knuckleball I can find. 11.8 in 2017. Niekro had 10.0 in 1977.

#7 Not sure how much Cicotte counts. He used the knuckler primarily when starting out but by 1917 he was making heavy use of the "shine ball" and the "sailor" -- and nobody really knows what that was, though my guess would be a hard spitball. Ty Cobb said the sailor was his key pitch.

“Eddie Cicotte’s great success was due almost entirely to his ‘sailor.’ This ball would start out like an ordinary pitch and then would sail much in the same manner of a flat stone thrown by a small boy … When he was thrown out of organized baseball his secret went with him.” Source: Memoirs of Twenty Years in Baseball (Ty Cobb, Pages 65, 68)

much in the same manner of a flat stone thrown by a small boy

We had two tiers of kids in my neighborhood. My brother was four years older than me and in the older group, I was in the younger. The two groups didn't really mix, except at the ballfield. One day one my brother's friends was ragging on me. I can't remember what it was, but it must have been real ####### behavior because I ended up chasing him even though he was much faster and could have pulverized me. Realizing I couldn't catch him, I reached down and got a nice, flat but jaggedy stone which I hurled. I was very surprised when he grabbed the back of his head, and even more surprised when he didn't turn around and pulverize me. He showed up a couple days later with a shaved spot and a few stitches in his head. No repercussions at all - I guess he didn't want anyone to know that a ten year-old had sent him to the hospital.

#8, Thanks Ron for that info. And thanks for not calling out my typo on the year.

#9, When I was about 7 or 8 we had a dirtball fight at construction site in our neighborhood. There were two huge piles of dirt 50 feet apart. Made the perfect "trench warfare" setup. Anyway I got nailed by a clump that had a rock in it. It got me pretty good on the top back of my head, and my cousin said I better get home. I lived two doors over and went home holding my head. By the time I got home the blood was really flowing. I didn't realize how much but when I looked at my hands they were completely covered in blood and I freaked out...lol.

That was stitches episode number 4 out of the 8 times I had to get stitches before adulthood.

That was stitches episode number 4 out of the 8 times I had to get stitches before adulthood.

impressive!

I only had 3 sets of stitches in that span, but did break a finger on three separate occasions and also my collarbone (adding another broken finger plus 2 metacarpals as an adult. not sure of the stitches vs bones breakdown.

:)

one of the finger breaks occurred on the baseball field (bad hop at 1B), and the 2 metacarpals were the result of an OF collision in softball.

Two of my 3 most serious childhood injuries involved glass and one was baseball related. Slid into second base and ended up with second base stuck in me -- just below my knee. I can't remember why we thought using a broken bottle as second base was a good idea but I'm sure we had our reasons. Likely it was just in the right place so ...

Had a scar that was visible for decades though I don't remember being seriously hurt.

How did we last this long ?

#13 No idea.

I used to laugh at my sister (minor hovering mom) but never too hard because I could still think of some of the things that seemed reasonable to me as a kid.

How did we last this long ?

I grew up in a four-story apartment in the 60s. We lived on the top floor, so used the roof as a recreation area. There was wall of sorts around the outside - maybe three feet high - but we could get up there. So it's not just lasting this long, it's lasting this long with the same set of parents you started with.

ha ! the crap I put my parents through.