Career road OPS:

Mantle .958

Mays .931

And Mays hit more of his HRs at his home park(s), despite more than 400 fewer plate appearances than on the road

The OPS is a bit misleading when you consider Mays had McCovey hitting right behind him for over a decade. Putting Willie on base was more dangerous than working around Mantle.

Mays had over twice as many SB as Mantle.

Mays also had two healthy Knees. That's not a knock to either of them but at a Minimum Mantle was playing with a Torn ACL for the entirety of his career. I tend to put heavy value on Weighted Runs Created Plus, a park neutral stat created to quantify how good a player is at "Creating Runs" on the offensive side of the game. Mantle put up a 170 for his career, his peak being 217, Mays put up a 154 for his career with his peak being a 186.

To no ones surprise Williams trounces both of them, a 188 for his career, with a 223 being his highest mark. We can have this argument till the cows come home, I don't think any of us will change our respective opinions :D

Defense? Sure. Speed? If Mays was faster, it wasn't by such a margin that it's "not close". Mickey was really, really fast. AFTER his knee injury, he was timed home to 1st in 3.1 seconds as a lefty. That's basically an average of 15mph starting from a dead stop.

That made things much better for Mays' power numbers. Probably even more of a benefit than fewer walks hurt his OPS.

But despite that huge advantage of having the '60s most feared hitter batting behind him, Mays' lifetime slugging % was the same as Mantle's

And Mays didn't walk more before McCovey than he did with him.

True. Although bringing up postseason numbers can't hurt. We haven't even gotten to that yet :)

And, on average, it takes AT LEAST 30 seconds per person to take selfies with people.

Autograph takes less than 10 seconds each, assuming you write your full name, which most stars do not do.

Mantle took an extra base 54% of the time, which is exceptional. Mays took an extra base 63% of the time, which is the most ever.

Great discussion of Mantle v. Mays. I never saw either play live (except maybe Mays on the 73 Mets). Opened my eyes to Mantle a bit. Always just thought of him as some Mark McGwire bruiser type, but clearly he was much more than that.

Correction - er, maybe. I just found where Wikipedia insinuates the 3.1 timing was in 1959(?!) I had always read it was from his rookie season. If true and not just legend, that's really remarkable - after the knee surgeries as you mention, and at age 27? Does anyone know for sure when the 3.1 timing was taken?

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The 3.1 timings were from the spring of '51 - which would have been before the knee injury in the World Series with the drain pipe. He was certainly fast afterward, but not that fast.

I don't value it at all. It is a fantasy stat which over values walks. Saying Mantle had a higher OPS+ or wRC+ is just repeating that Mantle walked more. None of these "advanced metrics" consider strike outs which don't advance runners or score runs. Hits are better than walks. Putting the ball in play is better than striking out. They had about the same home run rate and slugging percentage despite Mays playing in a pitchers park. At worst Mays was Mantle's equal as a hitter with a longer peak.

It doesn't matter who was better. This thread has already established that skill does not equate to high priced cards. Doesn't seem like it's a point that can be defended in this thread.

McCovey was the most feared hitter from 1968-70 when Mays was in his decline. McCovey was a .270 lifetime hitter with the 74th highest slugging percentage. It is not like the Yankees didn't have talented hitters. Berra was in the lineup for most of Mantle's peak. Howard was good enough to win a MVP. Skowron had some strong years.

Can argue stats all day, and I find it fascinating, but the bottom line is a 1952 Topps Mantle PSA 8 sells for basically ten times what a 1952 Topps Mays PSA 8 sells for.

Psa pop for 8s
Mantle 35
Mays 59

Do you really think that Koufax’ cards are somewhat undervalued for as good as he was because he’s Jewish??

No. If he's dinged because he's jewish, then Gibson is dinged below that because he's black? (His cards on the whole are worth less than Koufax's). At some point that logic doesn't make sense. The memorabilia world values Mantle very lopsidedly in comparison to how regular history in this country views sports superstars. At least from that lens in the 1960's - Koufax is a god.

I agree. I was surprised to see that someone had suggested that.

I think Pitchers in general are undervalued. None of the Tobacco issues of Young, Mathewson, or Johnson are particularly high priced. You can get respectable copies of any of them for 1K, correct me If I'm wrong. The only one whose price is through the rough is Plank, Correct? Due to the limited number of copies.

Feller isn't priced too high, neither is Hubbell, or Gomez, or Grove. As we venture more into post War, Koufax is under 1k for a PSA 4, the same for Gibson I believe.

The vast majority of Feller cards are unbelievably reasonable in comparison to how lights out that guy was. Always been puzzled why he's not held in higher regard generally.

In the modern market, where people think nothing of dropping $50,000 on a Jason Dominguez refractor card, a rare Jacob DeGrom rookie card will set you back about $3,000-$5,000.

Both of those numbers are just so unsettling. I think Dominguez will be a good big leaguer, but 50k on an unproven 17 year old is just madness in my mind. None of my business how people spend their money, but it's just pure insanity to me. 50K could buy you a beautiful vintage collection.

Even the Degrom Card. He's one of the best in the game right now. Would I rather own his rookie for 4K or one of Cobbs tobacco cards? I'll take The Georgia Peach any day of the week!

I can tell you living in Los Angeles as a Dodgers fan, that's absolutely how he's treated here.

My dad grew up a Brooklyn Dodger fan and always read spring training stories about Vero Beach in the Daily News as a kid. He said as a kid he always wanted to get to this place, which to a kid in Brooklyn growing up in a small apartment seemed like some mythical fantasy land. Decades later he and my mom bought a condo in Vero and occasionally would go to the Dodgertown area and walk around. The very first time I ever went down to see their place was early February and got my dad to drive my over to see what it looked like. As it was early February and spring training had not officially opened, there was almost nothing going on. Stars hadn't even reported yet. We walked around and spotted a few guys on a practice field in uniform and walked over. Amazingly, we just walked out onto the field and up to the pitchers mound where some kind of meeting was taking place. When we got close enough to stand directly behind a player (zero security!) it took me 5 seconds to figure out it was Sandy Koufax holding a baseball showing different pitch grips to a bunch of spellbound greenhorn players. He was wearing the typical Florida retiree tan slacks and polo shirt. Slim and sharp looking as he always is. I looked at my father who hadn't made the connection and said to him "yeah, that's Sandy Koufax." Pretty cool little moment.

I absolutely loved Dodgertown in Vero. My grandmother lives there and we'd go down every year to visit and check out spring training. Dodgertown was hands down the best facility I ever went to. All that separated you from the players there was a yellow rope. It seemed like everyone on the team would stop to sign too. Sad to see it go.

Those two might have been able to cover enough ground to play without a third outfielder.

No, McCovey wasn't. Read what Casey Stengel and others said about him (well before 1968). The reputation just went to a whole new level for the second half of the '60s.

I love Yogi to death, and he was definitely a clutch hitter who managers didn't want to deal with. But I doubt it instilled the fear of a 6'4 guy who hit absolute missiles all over the park. And as far as those other guys: they were great players, but any comparison to how much McCovey produced or was feared/pitched around is comical. Even in Howard's MVP season, he walked 35 times and hit .287/28/85 with an OPS of .869. It was just a run of the mill very good year at the plate.

I think the "cheapest" pitcher (and maybe overall player) is Jim Palmer.

Third best lifetime ERA of all live-ball retired starting pitchers, behind a guy who admitting cheating for years and one who retired at age 30 . Even though he lived in a pitchers' park, that still ain't bad.

Nor is 1970-1978 when, if you throw out the year that his arm was falling off for awhile, he won 20 games w/ a sub 3.00 ERA eight consecutive times. And a couple World Series rings and top notch postseason numbers through a ton of playoff starts.

His rookie card (raw in about grade 2 but very presentable), just cost me $15. As part of a lot with half a dozen other '66 cards in the same grade, including Joe Morgan's second year. A PSA 7 is less than 200 bucks. In this market.

Unreal

Totally agree. Palmer won 20 games 8 times and 3 CYA's in 4 years. But today pretty much all people want to talk about from that era in terms of pitchers is Nolan Ryan. Kind of hard to believe.

Steve Carlton in in the same boat. Ask any baseball fan in 1980 who was the greater pitcher, Carlton, Palmer, or Ryan? And I guarantee you the answer would not have been Ryan from most people. But just like you were saying about Palmer - I got a nice '65 Topps Carlton rookie last year, I think it was a PSA 4.5 - for only about a hundred bucks. Nutso.

Yep. Palmer's rookie was in here like it's barely above a common.

Plus as a rabid Pirate fan growing up, a bucco belter with Willie doesn't hurt :)

https://www.ebay.com/itm/1966-TOPPS-...-/363170442888

Don't forget Seaver.

Seaver, Gibson, Carlton, Marichal, Palmer, Perry, Jenkins...others? No disrespect but in their primes they were all better pitchers than Nolan Ryan. This is just an observation, nothing personal. Nolan was my favorite player growing up and he's one of the few players I PC specifically today.

To put today's madness in perspective, what if there was a limited Bowman Chrome Auto refractor of this top-rated kid named Gregg Jeffries? Can't miss for 50k.

I don't even know what that means LOL....

Back to Cobb, Gehrig, a guy named Ruth and old Cy Young...

https://luckeycards.com/young2.jpg

I actually think Kofax is more valuable because he was a member of the tribe. The high holidays story is one of baseball’s great legends

That Cy Young Guy, must have been named after the award! Wonder if he'll turn into anything good!

Actually, there are now pretty good statistics available for the Negro Leagues, thanks to the researchers for the Seamheads Negro Leagues Database. They show Paige in a close competition with Smokey Joe Williams as the greatest pitcher in Negro Leagues history.

https://www.seamheads.com/NegroLgs/p...rID=paige01sat

https://www.seamheads.com/NegroLgs/h...tab=metrics_at

Just a little late on the Dominguez comment and the title of the thread. Jeffries was a can't miss prospect and would probably be a $50k card for some of the higher-end stuff. Consider what happened. And now a token Young

You're spot on with that comment. I remember the late-80s hype surrounding Jeffries. Fielding ground balls - that were wrapped in electrical tape - on an asphalt surface / taking BP swings while standing in a swimming pool. These things would have "gone viral" on YouTube and "broken the Internet" back then.

Too bad we only had network TV, and maybe cable. Maybe that's why we were only paying $4 for Jeffries' rookie. :)