I think the reason for the disparity is that Ewing’s statistics do not jump off the page the way some others do. So, ranking him highly depends a lot on taking into consideration the opinion of his peers and on the difficulty and importance of his position. He has essentially the same statistics as Kelly, but I put Ewing in my top 10 because he was the best catcher of the 19th century and I do not put Kelly in because as an outfielder, I am considering mainly his offensive statistics, and in my view they don’t measure up to the players I included.
(The other reason is that this is just people’s opinions, so there is never going to be a list that everyone agrees on.)
Here is my alphabetical list. I would pick Nichols as the best pitcher and Brouthers as the most dominant batter (although in terms of overall stats, Anson ranks higher).
Anson
Brouthers
Clarkson
Connor
Delahanty
Ewing
Hamilton
Keefe
Nichols
Radbourne
Davis and Young were pretty equally split between the 19th and 20th century, so I did not include them.
Kelly is an interesting case. Statistically, he is in the next tier of players in my mind. But in terms of popularity, he may be the top player.
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