Within the Hall of Fame, these guys reside in my “pantheon of the immortals”. I might forget a player or two-getting old and senile is the suck-but this should be pretty close:
Babe Ruth
Walter Johnson
Ty Cobb
Honus Wagner
Christy Mathewson
Rogers Hornsby
Lou Gehrig
Lefty Grove
Stan Musial
Jackie Robinson
Joe DiMaggio
Yogi Berra
Ted Williams
Mickey Mantle
Hank Aaron
Roberto Clemente
Willie Mays
Bob Gibson
Tom Seaver
Johnny Bench
Joe Morgan
Mike Schmidt
Pedro Martinez
Greg Maddux
Randy Johnson
Just as an aside, anybody compiling a list without #42 needs to go back to the beginning again, and re-think who they’re putting on it, and who is being excluded. Respectfully, Jackie Robinson is an all-time great. Beyond the unquantifiable levels of grace and courage he exhibited in being confronted by the most repugnant form of racism imaginable, turning the other cheek and maintaining his promise of silence to Branch Rickey, enduring taunts, slurs, and physical abuse from opposing players (I’m looking at you, Enos Slaughter), Robinson was a transformative talent. So much is made about how Babe Ruth transformed the game-and he did. Ruth was smart enough, and physically gifted, to recognize and take advantage of the changes made to the game, when the ball started getting changed out, when the spitball was outlawed, etc. Ruth would have been an all-time great in any era. But so would Jackie. Jackie’s play, representative of what was going on in the Negro Leagues for so long, completely changed the Major League games. He was a runaway train that couldn’t be stopped. He was a monster offensive player, and a plus defender. The man reached the Majors at age 28, retired after his age 37 season, playing a comparatively short time in the Majors (1,416 games and 5,949 plate appearances), and he still put up 63.9 bWAR. A single season of 7-8 WAR is considered MVP caliber. Robinson was a top 2-3 player in baseball.
1951, 9.7 WAR
1949, 9.3 WAR
1952, 8.4 WAR
1950, 7.3 WAR
1953, 6.9 WAR
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