Best / Greatest baseball player ever, redux

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Posted By: John Kalafarski

This is one of my favorite topics to debate. I think, in large part, what makes it so interesting is that it's really hard to compare players from different eras. It would be great, also, if we had a lot of film to look at from the deadball era. Since, I've retired, I've done a ton of reading about the subject and collected a good deal of old baseball on video. I'm not big on relying overly on stats. With that said, I have a list of seven position players who I think are the best of all time: Ruth, Williams, Cobb, Mays, Wagner, Mantle, DiMaggio. I give Williams the consideration of the 5 years lost to military service; also, he was hindered by the distance to the right field stands at Fenway; and Joe D was shooting to the very deep distances in Yankee Stadium. Ruth, of course, had the short shot to right in the same park as Joe. Mays played too long and that hurt his stats. I give Mantle credit for playing injured for most of his career. Cobb's lifetime ave. is hard to ignore. Put Ted in Yankee Stadium and give him the 5 years and he'd be #1. Put Joe D in Fenway without the bad heels and he'd be #1 too. Give Joe Jackson the rest of his career and . . .