Most under rated - Yogi Berra or Jim Thome
 

Both Yogi Berra and Jim Thome don't receive the hobby love I feel they deserve and I think both are under valued and under rated for their accomplishments. I'm thinking Thome is under rated, even more so than Berra. What do you think? Who else is under rated - in pairs please.

Good call on both players. Thome in particular. Somehow it snuck up on everyone that he hit 600+ HR and had an OBP north of .400.

Nobody thought about him, suddenly realized it when he became eligible for the HOF and was a clear 1st ballot inductee, then we all went back to overlooking him.

Thome played during the juicer era, so for one his stats really didn't stand out among all the big-heads (he only won 1 HR title, 1 RBI title and 1 OPS title) and secondly, you can't really know 100% that he didn't juice too.

It's unfortunate that he is caught up in that a little bit, but it is what it is. Hopefully in 10-15 years things will be clearer and we will be better able to separate the real hitters from the druggies.

+1 about Thome's stats getting buried by the Roiders and the unfortunate fact that some might lump him in with the cheaters.

And I would say Berra gets lost in the shuffle with the Yankees superstars--1) Ruth 2) Mantle 3) Gehrig 4) Dimaggio 5) Jeter 6) ARod 7) Mariano Rivera and then maybe Berra

10th all time first baseman by JAWS. He would have had a lot more press on a high profile team. Some spectacular seasons too, you really can't call him an accumulator.

As I could imagine Yogi saying:

I wasn't under-rated; people just rated the other guys higher.

He wasn't underrated, the other guys were overrated.:cool:

Yogi won the MVP three times. He might be under appreciated today but was obviously not overlooked when he was playing.

Nice card.

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Under-rated pair:

Steve Carlton and Gaylord Perry

Combined, they have:

• 6 Cy Young Awards
• 7,500+ stirkeouts
• 640+ wins
• 15 All-Star selections
• Very little hobby respect

Part of it may be that he didn't hit a lot of home runs. And unlike other positions where the great players from the 50s on back seem to retain their hobby preeminence (look at any ATG list), a number of catchers seemed to supplant Yogi -- Bench in particular, but also Piazza and maybe Carter and Fisk.

I think the issue with Berra is too many people think WAR is the only thing that matters. They see 59 WAR and that tells them he wasn't a great player. Berra was regarded as a good defensive catcher who got the most out of the Yankees pitchers. The Yankees had Ford and a bunch of good pitchers, but Berra helped them to 14 AL Pennants in 17 years and 10 World Series Championships. His 3 MVPs in addition say he was one of the all time greats.

Amazingly, Yogi doesn't have any black ink on his entire career batting record. And anyway, nobody wants to be a top catcher any more, there are too many of them.

He's 4th all time for HR as a catcher. Only behind Piazza Fisk and Bench.

Need to show some love for a boy from the sandlots of St. Louis.

Agreed!

Can you imagine Yogi's response to only having 59 WAR?

"Only 59? Well, I guess my replacement was pretty good, then."

Those are beautiful. My two favorite of Berra’s.

Maybe I should have ask for under rated by position, so here are 2 others to consider:

How about Trevor Hoffman and Johnny Podres

Yes, I know Podres isn't in the HoF - maybe he should be.

My that's nice to see. I had a similar one back in 1979 and sold it in 1980. I didn't appreciate the rarity of that card.

Phil aka Tere1071

Thanks, I agree. The 1950 Bowman is my favorite card of Berra.

Love Yogis '59 yoo-hoo. Definitely my favorite of his.https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/202...1e910ff1b0.jpg

I don't know how you ended up lumping these two guys together but it makes for interesting conversation.

Being a Red Sox fan I have generally tried to avoid collecting Yankee cards, but Berra is unavoidable. His 1950 Bowman card is terrific and I have one of those in addition to his '73 Manager card, and I think that's about it.

You could say both Yogi and Roy Campanella are underrated I suppose, but they were huge figures in baseball's golden era and both quite loved.

Jim Thome was a slow pitch softball masher type from the 90s who ended up putting together a great career, although in the juice era so that hangs over him, fair or not. I have no idea what his card prices are like, but as a vintage guy I would equate him to Harmon Killebrew and that guy's cards are relatively modest priced.

Thanks for the take, and I totally agree with you on Killebrew.

I was sorting my 55 set yesterday and upgrading some cards - I was examining my Berra and thought "Why is Yogi's cards pale in comparison to those who he played with." For some reason, Thome popped into my mind. Why, I don't know. I just know that Thome gets Zero hobby love, and Yogi gets just a shade more. There are many others; Gwynn, Killebrew, Spahn, Podres, Hoffman, Maris (If not for the 61 homers his cards would be commons), - the list goes on and on.

Interesting how many replies have been about Yogi and very few about Thome. This gentleman is 8th all-time in-home runs, a first ballot Hall of Fame player, and survived the Roid era. Crazy.

I loved baseball growing up in the 1950's, and I watched the Yankees (and the other AL teams) play my beloved, but pathetic, Senators. IMHO, of all the very talented players on the Yankees team (including MM), Yogi Berra was the player the Yankees could least afford to be without.

I admit to a bias
 

When I was quite young -six or seven, I think, the Saturday game of the week featured the Yankees, and I sat about three feet from the old B&W TV with a terrible picture listening to an “interview” between Yogi and Dizzy Dean. I was fascinated by these two. So my first baseball hero was Berra and I could never figure out why Dizzy wasn’t on any longer...

Thome to me was a guy whose play was discounted because he was “just a power guy”. And he kept at it when others fell to the wayside. Two different careers by two class acts.

I don't know why Dizzy was taken off the broadcasts, but rumor had it when I was a kid that he said on the air "He's kissing her on the strikes and she's kissing him on the balls!". I seriously doubt that was true, but we always laughed when someone would say it.

I've heard that about Red Barber too, seems like an urban legend.