Mantle vs Mays....Runs Produced Index

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Posted By: identify7

Ted: Im glad that I could help, I knew that we went down that road before, and you didn’t have a good answer the first time, It’s nice that you care about this frivolity, ‘cause I sometimes find it a bit compelling too.

Ted, sometimes you have to sit down when faced with greatness, so as to not steal any of the thunder due to the other party. Perhaps Mays did a little of this in deference to Rhodes performance in the ’54 Series. After all his catch (and throw) had already insured him of a historical position in World Series annals. And oh, the Yankees have done a bit of this “respect for greatness” stuff themselves also. For example, following Ruth’s conversion to an outfielder, the Yanks went on a tear, winning three Pennants in a row. Although they continued to get better throughout the ‘20s, in 1924 they ran headlong into Walter Johnson, who was finishing up his career, and needed World Series exposure. Actually, it is not so much in this case that the Yanks took it easy on the Senators (Ruth batted .378, Slugged .739; Pipp had 19 triples, Dugan scored >100 runs and Meusel hit .325 with 120 RBIs), as it was Johnson and his team playing beyond their capabilities. This observation is borne out by each player’s stats for ’24 compared to his lifetime accomplishments.

The same happened in ’25, but then the Yanks returned to the top of the AL and stayed there until they encountered the next immovable force: Mack was Back. So after winning in ’26, ’27 and ’28; the Phila. Athletics dethroned them in ’29, ’30 & ’31. It is a bit hard to accept that Connie Mack was able to apparently easily dispense with a team which was the 1927 Yankees, but he did. The Yankees really did not get going again until Ruth was gone (1936) The following year Gehrig was gone too and DiMaggio was the big man. Unlike the preceding era, the DiMaggio years were quite successful. The AL pennant flew in the Stadium in ’36, ’37, ’38, ’39, ’41, ’42, &’43 then again in ’49, 50 and ’51 , when the Yankee Big Man scepter was passed to Mantle. Then things really got out of control; the Mantle years in NY are the performance against which all baseball dynastys will always be compared. They won the Pennant in fourteen of sixteen consecutive years which included the WS crown for the first five years in a row.

Ted: you like to position me in a situation in which I have to argue against that performance? My only argument is that the Mantle Yankees, independent of their performance, do not compare favorably with the DiMaggio Yankees, nor the Ruth/Gehrig Yankees. But even if the ’50s Yankees were as good as their predecessors, the big guy was a disappointment.

You see Ted, it is so easy to be a Yankee fan – try rooting for the Giants, when you have a ‘50s team like the Dodgers not only in your own league, but in your own city. Not only did the Duke lead everyone else in HRs in the ‘50s, but so did Hodges.