Baseball's Ten Greatest Players

by David Fleitz

All right, Sporting News. You asked for it.

This weekly newspaper, once known as the "Bible of Baseball", recently printed its ranking of the top 100 baseball players of all time, ranked from 1 to 100. If they hoped to stir up some controversy, they succeeded admirably. I simply couldn't resist putting in my two cents worth on this topic.

(Click here to see their rankings.)

Anyway, their top ten list appears as follows:

1.  Babe Ruth
2.  Willie Mays
3.  Ty Cobb
4.  Walter Johnson
5.  Hank Aaron
6.  Lou Gehrig
7.  Christy Mathewson
8.  Ted Williams
9.  Rogers Hornsby
10. Stan Musial     

1.  Babe Ruth
2.  Willie Mays
3.  Hank Aaron
4.  Walter Johnson
5.  Lou Gehrig
6.  Christy Mathewson
7.  Stan Musial
8.  Joe DiMaggio
9.  Honus Wagner
10. Ted Williams     

I know what you're saying right now. "That David, what a kidder. I'd better send him an E-mail to let him know that he left Ty Cobb off his list. Sheesh, what an omission. He must have made a typing mistake to leave Cobb and Hornsby out of the Top Ten."

Well, folks, it was no mistake. I'd take all of these thirteen players ahead of Ty Cobb.

I think that it's obvious from the Sporting News list that longevity was a highly important criterion for selection. In ranking the players I'd ask three questions:

1. Did he reach a high peak of performance?
2. Did he maintain excellence for a long period of time?
3. Was he a pain in the butt?

Ty Cobb and Rogers Hornsby fail on the third count.

Cobb owns the highest career batting average of all time, won 12 batting titles, set the record for hits that Pete Rose stretched his career out to break, held the stolen base record before Lou Brock, and probably has the most impressive collection of stats in the history of the game, possibly excluding Babe Ruth.

That said, Cobb quarreled with his teammates, left the team often when things weren't going well, held out for more money on a regular basis, attacked fans in the stands, and sometimes sat out of the lineup to protect his batting average late in the season. Cobb may have been the greatest player, as well as the most hated one, in history.

You can see the results of Cobb's selfishness. Cobb's Tigers won pennants in 1907, 1908, and 1909, though they lost the World Series each year. After 1909 Cobb played 17 more years in Detroit, and the Tigers never got close to another pennant. The constant turmoil caused by Cobb's personality ensured that the Tigers would always be an also-ran through the rest of Cobb's career with the team. He wasn't that great a fielder, either. I'd take Tris Speaker before Ty Cobb.

Hornsby, too, caused his share of headaches. He may have been the greatest hitter in National League history, but he bounced from team to team because his managers and clubowners couldn't stand him. He got himself fired as manager of the Cubs in August 1932 when his team was in first place! What does that say for him? He also wasn't much of a fielder. I'd put Eddie Collins or Joe Morgan at second base instead of Rogers Hornsby.

You'll also notice that I put Stan Musial ahead of Ted Williams. I almost dropped Ted out of the Top Ten. Ted could be a royal pain also, but he was the second greatest hitter of all time after Ruth. He wasn't a great fielder either, and his Red Sox won only one pennant from 1939 to 1960 when Ted played for them, but I just couldn't leave him off. I still think that both Musial and DiMaggio were greater players.

Check back in ten years. I may drop Williams out and put Ken Griffey Jr. or Derek Jeter, or maybe Alex Rodriguez, in my Top Ten list in the year 2009.