Greatest Living Baseball Player

[kcmets]

Maybe in twenty years, not that I'll be around to see it, the obvious

answer will - of course - be Francisco Alvarez.

[batmagadanleadoff]

Nobody will take up this mantle. (No pun intended). It's not just Willie's stats. It's his persona, his aura. Nobody will replace the totality of what Willie Mays was and represented.

There Will Never Be Another Willie Mays



Anyone who now ascends to the title of The Greatest Living Ballplayer will be forever just a placeholder.



By Charles P. PiercePublished: Jun 19, 2024 4:58 PM EDT







Excerpt:

There was a time in which Joe DiMaggio insisted in a rider to all his public appearance contracts that he be referred to as "the greatest living ballplayer." And I thought, every time I heard it, "My god, did Willie Mays die?" In the last line in the last column he ever would write, which made it elegiac in about ten different ways, legendary sportswriter Red Smith wrote, "Someday, there would be another Joe DiMaggio." And I thought, reading that, "My god, man, you saw Willie Mays." To be entirely fair, Smith never shirked from acknowledging Mays' transcendence on the ballfield. “Snider, Mantle and Mays—you could get a fat lip in any saloon by starting an argument as to which was best,” Smith wrote in 1972. “One point was beyond argument, though: Willie was by all odds the most exciting.” He also was the best of the three, and by a ludicrous margin. And DiMaggio fares even worse by comparison. Quite simply, Willie Mays is the only real competition that Babe Ruth has for the title of the greatest baseball player of all time, and Ruth only edges him out because of the years in which he was a top-flight major league pitcher, one of the few things missing from Mays' lifetime CV of pure excellence. And if I may digress on an issue of personal sorrow and regret. Not long ago, in the successful pursuit of procrastination, I happened upon an essay by John Klima on the website of the Society For American Baseball Research. Its subject was the complicated process by which Mays had been signed away from the Negro League Birmingham Black Barons by what were ironically called the major leagues. It also told the story of one Piper Davis, the BBB's player-manager and, apparently, something of a mentor to the young Willie. In 1959, the Boston Red Sox signed Davis, the first Black player that the team, with its revolting history of racism, ever signed. There was a strong suspicion throughout all of baseball that the Red Sox signed Davis only as a means to sign Mays. Klima writes: Davis felt he had been treated poorly and that his performance did not warrant his release a few months later. Many in Birmingham believed that once the Red Sox found their efforts to acquire Mays through Davis insufficient, they cut him. Locals speculated that Hayes would not facilitate a deal for Mays with the Red Sox because a framework deal with Pompez to send Mays to the Giants already existed. His usefulness expired, Piper Davis was released and returned to the Black Barons. The Birmingham community felt betrayed by the way Davis had been treated in the Red Sox organization. Hayes, in particular, would not reward the Red Sox for mistreating a player which meant much to his city and team. Birmingham did hold grudges and Mays would never become a Boston Red Sox. Willie Mays, for a decade, batting next to Ted Williams in the order, playing next to him in Fenway Park's vast centerfield? You will pardon me now as I sob uncontrollably. Because baseball insisted on its idiotic resistance to inter-league play throughout my youth, I only got to watch Mays play in All-Star Games, and in the 1962 World Series, and in the wonderful old Mel Allen TV vehicle, This Week In Baseball. What I saw was wondrous—what would later be called a "five-tool player": run, throw, hit, hit with power, and field. The difference was that Willie's five baseball tools were more finely precise than those of most of his peers. They were made for precision work. They made other five-tool players look as though they were using lug wrenches and mallets. Willie Mays died on Tuesday at the age of 93. A spirited debate erupted on Xwitter over who now would ascend to the title of The Greatest Living Ballplayer. The DiMaggio-Mays Precedent eliminates all active players. (Sorry, Mike Trout.) The case for Barry Bonds is forever entangled with the drug hysteria. Pitchers forever seem to be disqualified, otherwise, Sandy Koufax would be a prime choice. My own selection would be Mike Schmidt, the Hall of Fame third-baseman of the Philadelphia Phillies, and perhaps baseball history's most overlooked superstar. But even I know that Schmidt would be essentially a placeholder, but perhaps, a placeholder forever. Unlike Red Smith and DiMaggio, I'm not sure there ever will be another Willie Mays.

Read it all at https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a61178886/willie-mays-dead/https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a61178886/willie-mays-dead/

[MFS62]

In 1959, the Boston Red Sox signed Davis, the first Black player that the team, with its revolting history of racism, ever signed. There was a strong suspicion throughout all of baseball that the Red Sox signed Davis only as a means to sign Mays.

Mays had been playing in the major leagues by 1959. How did the Sox think they could sign him? And to use a SABR writer as a source of that?

Willie Mays, for a decade, batting next to Ted Williams in the order, playing next to him in Fenway Park's vast centerfield?

Last time anyone checked, the centerfield fence in Fenway is under 400', one of the shortest in the majors; hardly vast.

The writer may have been a fan, but he has a whole lot of baseball learning to do.



Later

Edited June 19, 2024 by Guest

[Frayed Knot]

#1 I assume this is a misprint meant to read: 1949



#2: CF is Fenway is quite large, particularly the RCF section which Mays, theoretically next to the range-challenged Williams, would be

responsible for about 90% of it. One fence reading doesn't accurately measure the size of the OF.

[Edgy MD]

Yeah, there are some holes in Mr. Pierce's angle.

[Gwreck]

Chad ochoseis wrote: I went with Bonds, as the question was not "Who is the greatest living player, cheaters not included?"

Are we sure Willie Mays wasn't using PEDs?

[MFS62]

Frayed Knot wrote: #2: CF is Fenway is quite large, particularly the RCF section which Mays, theoretically next to the range-challenged Williams, would be responsible for about 90% of it.

Williams played 1982 of his 2151 games left field.

Later

[Frayed Knot]

I meant LF but the point holds either way. Once you get away from the very short lines on both sides, the walls at Fenway

slant outwards at angles greater than most making the vast majority of the middle section of the outfield rather large.

[Edgy MD]

I've got a wild card for the discussion: Sadaharu Oh — 84 years young, with successful careers as a manager and as an executive following his legendary playing days.

[MFS62]

The polls I've been seeing are for the greatest living MLB player.

But you have a very valid point, Oh has to be considered if you expand the scope.

Later

[metsmarathon]

I voted Rickey because, other than bonds and arid and Clemens, it's Rickey. And then probably Schmidt.



But it really should be bonds. Or at least it coulda been

[metirish]

I must have missed this ,what a clown

[Edgy MD]

A vote for Clemens or Rodriguez is hard to justify, because Bonds kind of laps them both (as he laps anybody else alive) in career value, and pretty much any argument to pre-emptively eliminate him from consideration would eliminate those two also.



Maybe that was the chink in Mays' armor. He could have been a better godfather.

[Chad ochoseis]

Chad ochoseis wrote: I went with Bonds, as the question was not "Who is the greatest living player, cheaters not included?" Are we sure Willie Mays wasn't using PEDs?

No question in my mind that Willie Mays used amphetamines, which were much more of a gray area in his time. They were legally declared a controlled substance in 1970, when his career was largely behind him.

[The Hot Corner]

I went with Ken Griffey, Jr. Like Mays before him, he could do virtually anything on a baseball field and he had a way of making it look rather effortless.



If I were to go with a pitcher, I would have to choose Greg Maddux. He never looked overly impressive, but he reliably and methodically carved up the opposing line up game after game.

[G-Fafif]

Might have to change my vote to J.D. Martinez.