NEW YORK — The World Wide Leader got swept up in Yankee mystique yet again.
ESPN has been unveiling its list of the Top 100 MLB players of all time this week. Babe Ruth came in at the top spot, with Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, Ty Cobb and Ted Williams rounding out the Top 5.
While not particularly egregious from a historical standpoint — the collective baseball intelligentsia decided long ago that Ruth was the greatest and could never be bothered to change their mind — leaving Barry Bonds out of the Top 5 completely is laughable. Bonds had to settle for the eighth spot.
The rankings note that they are based on “career WAR, Hall of Fame status, peak performance and overall contributions to the game” which is code for, “If you maybe did steroids we hate you.” This explains the Bonds disdain, though Cobb was violently racist, Aaron admitted to taking greenies in his autobiography, and a former teammate of Mays testified in federal court that the Say Hey kid distributed amphetamines in the clubhouse.
The point is, professional baseball players have never been choir boys. ESPN’s rankings still clearly prioritized a nice guy image and the sanctity of playing the game the right way over actual on-field production. This is how you get Derek Jeter (28th) ahead of Pete Rose (34), the man with the most hits in league history. Overrating Jeter is nothing new, especially with championship obsession taking precedence over everything else. But this list has him 37 spots ahead of Cal Ripken Jr., who destroys him in the WAR department and had similarly monumental contributions to the game as it recovered from the 1994 strike.
Jeter absolutely deserves a spot in the Top 100, but putting him ahead of players like Albert Pujols (who was 46% more productive at the plate than Jeter during the 14 years they were both active), Ichiro Suzuki (an infinitely better defender whose 10-year peak outpaced Jeter) and Tony Gwynn (a better hitter by nearly every single rate stat) is ludicrous. The Yankee shortstop has the benefit of longevity on his side for things like career hits, the benefit of team success for World Series trophies and the benefit of the New York media market for attention. His star was so bright in the late ‘90s and early 2000s that you can certainly give him the edge in the contributions to the game category, but that’s literally it, and again, that was mostly from the luck of getting drafted by the Yankees.
ESPN did get one thing right. Alex Rodriguez was a better player than Jeter. A-Rod and his 26th overall ranking nudge Jeter down the list just like the Yankees should have nudged Jeter to third base when they traded for the notorious baseball villain. A-Rod’s various drug scandals undoubtedly hurt him in these rankings, but for many baseball fans (including this writer), he and Bonds were the most talented players they’ve ever seen. Naming them the 26th and eighth best players in league history, respectively, is yet another example of the old baseball media guard clutching their pearls at any semblance of controversy, or even worse, the loaded “disrespecting the game” notion.
Altogether, 17 players who wore the Yankee uniform ended up on the list. Along with Ruth, Jeter, A-Rod and Ichiro, Phil Niekro (99th), Ivan Rodriguez (90th), Whitey Ford (60th), Dave Winfield (56th), Reggie Jackson (55th), Wade Boggs (45th), Yogi Berra (39th), Mariano Rivera (31st), Rickey Henderson (23rd), Roger Clemens (17th), Joe DiMaggio (16th), Mickey Mantle (7th) and Lou Gehrig (6th) cracked the Top 100.
The Mets’ representation was limited to Duke Snider (95th), Roberto Alomar (86th), Mike Piazza (81st), Max Scherzer (65th), Warren Spahn (47th), Nolan Ryan (42nd), Henderson, Tom Seaver (22nd) and Pedro Martinez (11th), with Piazza and Tom Terrific serving as the only ones who are really associated with the blue and orange.
Scherzer joined Bryce Harper (94th), Justin Verlander (72nd), Miguel Cabrera (59th), Clayton Kershaw (52nd), Pujols (30th) and Mike Trout (15th) as the only active players to receive the honor.
The point of rankings like this is always to get people talking, and ESPN accomplished that goal, especially by unleashing it during the height of the lockout. Still, while biases and personal allegiances will always come into play, objectively it feels silly to keep assigning GOAT status to Ruth when he played pre-integration with players who had second jobs during the offseason and treated conditioning as a mere suggestion.
Jeter’s god-like status is earned, but it’s been blown out of proportion. Much like with Hall of Fame voting, once baseball media can accept modernity and loosen its embrace on tradition, we’ll have a much more logical assessment of the sport and its turbulent history.
