Baseball has a richer history than any other American professional sport and its genetic code is written out in numbers. No other game places such a premium on stats, facts or figures. That's the science of baseball, which is woven together with storytelling of legends past and present. Athletes have gotten better and the action more violent and skilled.
So it remains difficult to compare players across generations despite non-stop efforts. That's the problem one runs into when embarking on the challenge of trying to identify the best to ever put on a uniform. It's tough to look at near perfection and find reason for flaws. Ask 25 different baseball fans and you'll get a different top 25. Still, advanced metrics like WAR can help bridge the gap between different generations of players and help us come to a consensus. We also considered each player's place in history and how much he differed from his contemporaries.
