Mike you absolutely can compare players from different eras, you just can't do it in the simplistic way that many people would like to. You can't compare their numbers against each other, but you can compare them to how they ranked with the rest of the league in their own time.
What I mean by that is that still using Jake Daubert as our example, he was very similar to other very good first basemen of his era, but he wasn't head and shoulders above them. He was a very good hitter for average, but his RBI totals were abysmal for a first baseman of any era. In his time, he was pretty much the same that Mark Grace, Will Clark and Norm Cash were in their time -- a top notch first baseman. But my question is this -- are those three men that I mentioned Hall of Fame material? Because their careers are still fresh in our minds, we can go beyond the statistics to make a judgment on them. If they are HOFers, then absolutely so is Jake Daubert.
It's become pretty clear now that HOF standards are stricter than they once were. Gil Hodges, Dave Parker, Tony Oliva and Dale Murphy (to name just a few) were much more dominant hitters in their time than Daubert was, and they can't get into the Hall (with the exception of Hodges, they can't even get close).
By the way, Dale Murphy to me has always been a huge HOF mystery. Talk about your dominant players -- he was a superstar, with back to back MVPs ( I think), and lots of amazing statistics. On top of that, he might be the best role model of any player in recent memory, yet he gets virtually no consideration. I'm not saying he definitely deserves to be in, but why is he given the cold shoulder?
Greg
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