Top 3 — Most Important
 

Who are the top 3 most important baseball players (in your opinion) of all time and why?

Ruth, Jackie, the Third I don’t know 🤷*♂️

I'd argue Anson, Ruth and Jackie.

Anson was the first star to make the game marketable. He was the draw, he popularized the idea of a pitching rotation, and using signs as a means to communicate with players.

Ruth and Jackie because they ushered in new eras for baseball. It is ironic though that if it wasn't for Anson's extreme prejudice towards Black Americans, and the subsequent "gentlemen's agreement" that baseball should be segregated, then Jackie's impact would've been lessened, as their would've been no color barrier to break.

Babe Ruth
Jackie Robinson
Curt Flood

Cobb - first superstar
Ruth - the ultimate superstar
Jackie - broke color barrier

+1

IMHO…Ruth-grew baseball internationally, Jackie-broke the color barrier, McGwire/Sosa-reinvigorated fan’s love of the game with the Home Run chase of ‘98.

Ruth, Jackie and Branch Rickey. I'll give Rickey a spot since he was a player years before. He deserves it. Find me three men who changed the game more than these.

Creighton
Ruth
Rickey

Well said. These would be my three also

Ruth, Robinson and Tommy John!

Cobb, Ruth, Jackie

That’s easy
Anson
Cobb
Ruth

Side note
Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa brought me back in to collecting

John Ward
Babe Ruth
Joe DiMaggio

Babe Ruth
Jackie Robinson
Curt Flood/Al Spalding (tie)

Honorable Mention: Clemente

How about pitchers:
1. Young
2. Matty
3. Johnson

As many have said, it's gotta be Ruth and Jackie Robinson - but I would add Rube Foster as the third

Two pitchers come to mind that caused MLB to change the rules while they were still playing.

Amos Rosie threw so hard that the league moved the pitchers box farther back in 1893, to its current 60' 6".

Bob Gibson was so dominant that the league lowered the mound in 1969 from 15 inches to 10 inches.

Neither rule change affected their subsequent performance.

Wally Joyner
Matt Nokes
Brien Taylor

Ruth
Jackie Robinson
Roberto Clemente

Tinker
Evers
Chance

All the other good ones were taken. Thought I’d be different…. :D

These were the 3 I thought of before I opened the thread. Tommy John, already said above, is another good one.

I had to read Rickey a few times before I realized you didn't mean Henderson.

For cards...

Wagner
Titus
Bartirome

I agree with these 3


But flood was a game changer

I think we're cutting hairs asking about generational game-changers. All of the following are exceptional choices for top three most impactful individuals:
1) Anson....for good and bad.
2) Ruth.... popularized the game around the world and helped keep interest after 1919 cheating scandal.
3) Rickey & Jackie should be a pair honored together.
4) Curt Flood for his free agent lawsuit.
5) McGwire and Sosa should also be considered as a trio with Bud Selig. Their choices and opportunities for good and bad changed baseball.
6) Rob Manfred...I think he's an idiot, he can't censor himself, but he's trying to modernize the game to attract younger viewers and in 20 years he might be revered for his actions.

Sent from my SM-G9900 using Tapatalk

In 20 years Manfred may also be known as the first commissioner to allow gambling to infiltrate MLB.

+1 Hard to argue with that, but it is tempting to put Willie Mays into the mix. Nobody drew fans like Willie, the most exciting player of his generation.

And the guy who permanently ruined extra inning baseball during the regular season

I would argue with it, as King Kelly was the game's first superstar, not Cobb

.......
 

Gehrig
Jackie
Hodges

You will not find any better gentleman of the diamond.

Ambassadors who embodied the purity of the game and played it the way it was meant to be played.

Matty begs to be on this list so he is tied with Hodges. :)

Christy Mathewson

Babe Ruth

Jackie Robinson


Babe and Jackie, for obvious reasons. Matty broadened the appeal beyond where it had been; he brought an air of respectability to the baseball player as a professional.

Yeah, its hard to pin down one original superstar.

There was Ross Barnes, George Wright, Jim Creighton, King Kelly, and Dan Brouthers among other early stars of the game.

Quite a few well thought out responses...

1 Cap Anson
2 Babe Ruth
3 Jackie Robinson


4 AG Spalding
5 Curt Flood
6 Ty Cobb
7 Christy Mathewson (people would go to see the college boy pitch)
8 John Montgomery Ward
9 Lou Gehrig
10 John McGraw

Lefty O'Doul should be on the list somewhere for fostering professional baseball in Japan.

1) Doc Adams: wrote the “Rules of Baseball”, invented the shortstop position, advocated for the 9 man and 9 inning game, set the base paths 90 feet apart. Should be in the HOF.
2) Babe Ruth
3) Jackie Robinson

Harry Wright
Ruth
Jackie
=====
Ruth and Jackie are undeniable....I also thought about Spalding and Ward instead of Harry Wright for the 19th Century slot..... Others who come to mind are Rube Foster (the father of the first Negro Leagues and a great pitcher), Cal Ripken (for reinvigorating the game post-strike), John McGraw for strategic impact, Ned Hanlon for his "managerial tree" (which included McGraw !); Amos Rusie and Bob Gibson both semed to bring about rule changes; Ted Williams (not just for his singular excellence as a hitter but for speaking out for including the Negro Leaguers in the HOF); Roberto Clemente; and, projecting out a little, I think Ichiro Suzuki will be considered very important.

Other players were truly great but I'm not sure how "important" they really were: Nichols, Young, Cobb, Speaker, Gehrig, Hornsby, Ott, DiMaggio, Mantle, McGwire, Barry Bonds, Pujols and ARod...

Ruth & Jackie are obvious.

Curt Flood is an interesting choice though, ultimately, he failed. Andy Messersmith and Dave McNally were the ones who ended the reserve clause.

Maybe Barry Bonds - his destruction of the record book brought us steroid testing.

Baseball was a much more popular game when Cobb came along, as a result, I believe his influence was much greater on the general public. Just look at the popularity of baseball cards in 1909-1910 compared to earlier years or the rise of the Sporting Life and other publications that really took off after Kelly was big. Cobb was in every newspaper, he had a nickname, he was in plays, people loved and hated him and showed up in huge numbers when he played to see him or boo him. He held out and negotiated his contract, something nobody ever did before and he made being a "ball player" a more respectable career, whereas before ball players were bums who couldn't get real jobs. And, his face was all over trading tobacco, confectionary, and candy cards.

Maybe Kelley or Anson, or Lajoie or Wagner for that matter, were superstars on the field/to the people who played. To the general public, Cobb was the first superstar baseball player - which to me means he transcended the sport and thus did more for it than anyone prior.

I came here to say that, though more in the context of Anson than Cobb. King Kelly was a fasciating player in that he was the first to transcend baseball and be a full blown celebrity.

However, Anson was a renown racist and an influential one who probably was the MLB figure most responsible for delaying integration until Jackie Robinson finally broke that barrier.

I think racism in baseball has been addressed, the more relevant question is how we avoid creeps like Wander Franco from having sex with minors.

I would have to list six. The first answer to almost any baseball question is Ruth. Jackie, for obvious reasons. Cobb, for obvious reasons. One not mentioned, yet, or not mentioned much, Mantle.. The personification of baseball in one of its greatest decades. An American folk hero. Clemente. Not the first Latin player, but the first great one. And finally, same concept, Ichiro.

To me that’s like saying: “We’ve discussed that already but wasn’t John Wilkes Booth a hell of an actor”?

I'm sure my comment would be taken that way. Is there a point where racism is not the only narrative? Racisim is a horrible thing and should never be tolerated. We should recognize Anson's racism and the general Southern racism that is thanfulliy dying out. That being said, let's not be lazy and rely on old racist memes. Shouldn't we be more concerned with the bad behavior of our current sports stars no matter the color of their skin?

Agree. In no way am I minimizing racism, but actual violent criminal behavior is, to me, worse than the most vile words. My mom used to say, "Actions speak louder than words..." Beating up a woman is worse than calling her a racist name.

My Grandad
My Dad
My Son

This would be my three.

Chad

This is a sincere question for the Anson people:

King Kelly's career overlaps almost entirely with Cap Anson. Did baseball need Cap Anson while it also had King Kelly?

I'm not buying into this idea that Anson was unusually important to the sport's early popularity. I think King Kelly was doing the exact same thing at the exact same time and was probably far more famous while he was alive.

But was he the inspiration for Casey at the Bat?

Perhaps.

I'll tell you who wasn't: Cap Anson.

The idea Anson's good outweighed the bad is not something I can ever get on board with. No one hurt baseball more than Anson when he championed segregation. No one robbed baseball of more until Landis reaffirmed it.

Doc Adams
Jackie Robinson
Curt Flood

It's safe to assume that the accomplishments of the latter two would have been accomplished by two other people if Jackie and Curt had never been born but not that baseball as we know it today would exist if Doc Adams hadn't, so I'll put him first.