Greatest All-Time Dodgers question

[hawaiian bam bam]

Hello,I am working on an All-time dodgers greats project and i was wondering in YOUR opinion, when you hear their name, you automatically think of dodger greats for the top 25 players (+ or-) below is my list, who would you add/delete to this list? (no specific order) I will update/adjust this list as we go.

All Time Dodger Greats
Sandy Koufax
Clayton Kershaw
Orel Hershiser
Fernando Valenzuela
Steve Garvey
Davey Lopes
Bill Russell
Ron Cey
Maury Wills
Don Sutton
Mike Piazza
Don Newcombe
Kirk Gibson
Mike Scisocia
Pedro Guerrero
Dusty Baker
Tommy Davis
Eric Gagne
Reggie Smith (Switch out Reggie Smith for Carl Furillo)
Ron Perranoski
Claude Osteen
Mike Marshall-(pitcher) (Switch out Mike Marshall for Carl Erskine)
Manny Mota
Eric Karros
Ramon Martinez
Dave Hansen
Jackie Robinson
Don Drysdale
Roy Campanella
Duke Snider
Pee Wee Reese
Gil Hodges
Jim Gilliam
Willie Davis
Tommy Lasorda
Vin Scully
Walt Alston

Updates:

Switch out Reggie Smith for Carl Furillo
Switch out Mike Marshall (Pitcher) for Carl Erskine

[Bravesfanjd]

Koufax
Drysdale
Gil hodges
Campanella
Duke snider
Pee wee Reese
Jackie
Lasorda
Sutton
Scully
Garvey
Lopes
Cey
Russell
Hershiser
Maury willis
Gibson
Piazza
Karros
Kershaw
Fernando
Scioscia
Rick monday
Tommy Davis
Gilliam
Alston

[howard38]

It seems that you've left off all of the pre-1950s players such as Wheat, Vance, Camilli, etc. Dave Hansen has no business on the list and a few others are debatable. I'd suggest you do a roster check of the Dodgers teams from about 1950 on back. You'll definitely find a ton of players that should be included.

[glenv]

Here's a list of HOFers that have played on the Dodgers: http://https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki...l_Hall_of_Fame

[hawaiian bam bam]

thank you for your post. i think ill revise the question how about the greatest LOS ANGELES dodgers, ill still include the brooklyn dodger HOFers, but i dont want to add players from hundreds of years ago that no one really knows unless they are baseball buffs like us! but looking more for a greatest team that most people will know for example the average fan might not know who wheat or camilli are but i think everyone knows who jackie robinson, reese, snider, campy hodges are.

so now with the new clarification, who is your LOS ANGELES dodgers all time greats list/team?

also, i picked dave hansen because i believe he is the dodgers all time pinch hit king

[Topps206]

How about some love for Burleigh Grimes?

[the 'stache]

Originally Posted by hawaiian bam bam

thank you for your post. i think ill revise the question how about the greatest LOS ANGELES dodgers, ill still include the brooklyn dodger HOFers, but i dont want to add players from hundreds of years ago that no one really knows unless they are baseball buffs like us! but looking more for a greatest team that most people will know for example the average fan might not know who wheat or camilli are but i think everyone knows who jackie robinson, reese, snider, campy hodges are.

so now with the new clarification, who is your LOS ANGELES dodgers all time greats list/team?

also, i picked dave hansen because i believe he is the dodgers all time pinch hit king

Jackie Robinson never played for the Los Angeles Dodgers, and Pee Wee Reese played a grand total of 59 games in Los Angeles. If you are making it "only" Los Angeles players, that's fine, as it's your narrative. But you're excluding many of the greatest players the franchise ever had by doing so.

Any all-time Dodgers list without Wheat, Robinson or Reese isn't worth doing.

[KCRfan1]

Originally Posted by howard38

It seems that you've left off all of the pre-1950s players such as Wheat, Vance, Camilli, etc. Dave Hansen has no business on the list and a few others are debatable. I'd suggest you do a roster check of the Dodgers teams from about 1950 on back. You'll definitely find a ton of players that should be included.

+1

[jason.1969]

I would keep Russell if only to keep the "record setting infield" intact. Dropping Russell would be like making a Cubs team with only two guys from Tinker/Evers/Chance.

[hawaiian bam bam]

Very true I think ill Leto for just that reason because I don't think he is a dodgers legend but it would be weird to have Garvey, Cey and lopes and not him. So he will make the team but barely and only by a technicality! As without the infield record he would be of the team!

[hawaiian bam bam]

Pete reiser was great and deserving of a spot on the team but with so many great dodgers they can't all make the team . I might have to increase from 25 to 30 players!

[jason.1969]

Guerrero was my favorite of the mid 80s. I lived and died with that 1985 tram that won the West but lost to the Cards in the NLCS.

Pedro was pretty much the only offense the team had. Of course, if you check the pitching stats for Orel, Fernando, and Welch...not too much help was needed.

[Peter_Spaeth]

Burleigh Grimes, Dazzy Vance, Zach Wheat notable omissions from the latest list.

[ooo-ribay]

Dusty Baker, because he came to the light.

[jason.1969]

Bill, I think you read the posts wrong. Drysdale was only off the list when I made a typo. And then the OP dropped Martinez to make room again for the Big D.

[the 'stache]

Originally Posted by jason.1969

Bill, I think you read the posts wrong. Drysdale was only off the list when I made a typo. And then the OP dropped Martinez to make room again for the Big D.

It looked to me like he was switching Martinez in place of Drysdale. If it's the reverse, ok then. I will withdraw my point of contention there. Thank God, because my head was going to explode. I know how easy it is to forget about a guy (see my head scratching omission of Christy Mathewson in the all-time pitchers discussion a few months ago).

But he still needs to include all the players in the franchise's history. Greatness is greatness, and limiting it to only the Los Angeles years needlessly excludes a lot of the game's best.

[the 'stache]

Jason, the confusion for me was how HBB worded his choice changes.

In one post, he says "Switch out Mike Marshall for Carl Erskine", meaning Marshall is in, Erskine is out.

Then he says, "Yes, I'm going to swap out Ramon Martinez for Drysdale." If he is being consistent, that means Martinez is in place of Drysdale.

No biggie. Drysdale is on the list, that's all that matters.

[hawaiian bam bam]

bill , you need to relax bro, this is for fun not to have a coronary about things! geez! relax!

my wording might be confusing but it makes sense to me and in the end thats what matters most. sorry you didnt understand what i was trying to say. the majority of folks understood it, so its a mute point.

if i picked all of the brooklyn greats then yes i could pick a complete 25 member team with just brooklyn dodgers. for example if i picked pitcher bob longtooth, how many people would know him? or even saw him pitch? if i say sandy koufax or clayton kershaw, how many people know them and how many people actually saw them play? a whole lot more. if i picked first baseman tom big bottoms, who would know him? probably no one, but if i say steve garvey, 99.9% of people even not dodgers fans, will know him or have seen him play.
again, yes i can build a team of a bunch of people no one has heard off that were great"back in the day" but what fun would that be? with the exception of grimes, wheat etc.

i think people like players they connect with. for some when people say dodgers they think robinson, hodges, reese, koufax, drysdale hershisher, piazza, garvey, snider scully, lasorda , valenzuela. for others when they think dodgers they think cox, johnson, smith, taylor and morgan. to each their own, im trying to pik a team of greats that are legends, legens to me are players that EVERYONE knows like koufax, drysdale jackie robinson duke sniooder, orel and fernando. every dodger fan knows them!

lets have fun with this and not try to have a heart attack about "wording" or how one interprets or reads things.

[the 'stache]

Oh, I'm good, and enjoying the topic, HBB. The Dodgers are not my team, but I certainly love reading about them, or talking about them. In fact, some of my all-time favorite players have been Trolley Dodgers. Ask me how many times I've watched Brooklyn Dodgers: The Ghosts of Flatbush HBO documentary, which is perma-saved on my DVR. If I could go back in time, I'd live in Brooklyn in the 1950s, and walk to Ebbets Field with Duke and Oisk. There was something very special in Brooklyn-a real sense of community, and I don't know if it's been replicated since.

The average baseball fan today would have no clue who Eddie Collins was. Should he be excluded from the all-time Athletics team, if we had that discussion, just because the average fan is devoid of historical appreciation? Not in my opinion. But that's just my opinion. Like I said, it's your list, and you can do it however you want. I'm happy to contribute if I can. I just want to be true to the established parameters.

And BTW, when I say something like "my head is about to explode", it's not meant to be indicative of some impending myocardial infarction. Rather, I couldn't believe that one of the all-time great Dodgers was going to be excluded. Perhaps I over embellished there. That's my bad. I was trying to convey absolute shock. I do that sometimes.

If you want to build the team from players that have name recognition only, we can do that. But some great players like the aforementioned Zack Wheat, and Nap Rucker, will be overlooked in the process.



Let Nap in! (I had to, one of my favorite cards from the T206 set)
38 career shutouts, 4th best all-time for the franchise behind Sutton, Drysdale and Koufax.