What he did: Twitter lit up Thursday evening with news Josh Hamilton slipped again in his sobriety. Hamilton, who overcame monumental drug issues in the minors and relapsed before in 2009, at least has time to regroup before the season starts. Josh Gibson never got that opportunity, the end of his life a storm of drug and alcohol abuse after perhaps the greatest career in Negro League history. Gibson was good enough that some called him the black Babe Ruth, while others referred to Ruth as the white Josh Gibson. The history of black baseball admittedly has its share of hyperbole, though one can only wonder what Gibson might have done with an opportunity.

Era he might have thrived in: Bill James ranks Gibson as the greatest catcher of all-time, suggesting he may have fared well in any era the majors would have him. If Gibson hadn’t died of a sudden stroke at 35 in January 1947, mere months before Jackie Robinson broke the modern color barrier, I suspect he might have been picked up by the same Cleveland Indians owner Bill Veeck who signed 42-year-old Satchel Paige in 1948. As such, we’ll go in a different direction here. We’re taking Gibson to the late 1980s and early ’90s where he could fill in for one of the few players who rates a comparison to him.

Why: In his interview for the Ken Burns Baseball miniseries that aired on PBS in 1994, Buck O’Neil spoke of hearing Ruth hit the ball, a “sound of the bat that I had never heard before in my life.” O’Neil heard the sound again with Gibson and, decades later, he heard it again with Kansas City Royals slugger Bo Jackson.

Gibson had power for sure, with Negro League expert Scott Simkus telling me he hit 10 balls clear out of Griffith Stadium in 1942 alone. Gibson hit for average, too, a reported .359, which trumps Jackson’s .250 lifetime clip. Simkus said Gibson most closely parallels Jimmie Foxx, another sweet-hitting slugger capable of playing catcher, though the possibilities with Jackson intrigue me more. In Jackson’s place, Gibson might have been the superstar Kansas City lacked in the late ’80s while George Brett was aging and the Royals declining. Gibson might not have been Bo’s equal as a marketing icon, no “Josh Knows Josh” campaign for Nike, but he could have forged a Hall of Fame career in the majors. I see Gibson good for at least 40 home runs and a .300 batting average with Triple Crown potential.

What else might Gibson have gotten playing in recent years? Besides a seven-figure contract and the basic amenities that black baseball lacked, Gibson would have had better options for combating substance abuse. There’s also the question of his mental health, which went largely untreated in his lifetime. Stories of his issues abound, with Gibson battling depression, having conversations with an imaginary Joe DiMaggio late in life, and once breaking free of a straitjacket he’d been placed in by police. Treatment for mental health was somewhat draconian up through the 1960s, and while today is no renaissance, with plenty of stigma still attached, Gibson might stand a better chance of having his issues properly diagnosed and treated.

Certainly, Gibson’s personal demons wouldn’t be easy to face in any era, as Josh Hamilton could attest. Here’s wishing Hamilton the best.

Any player/Any era is a Thursday feature here that looks at how a player might have done in an era besides his own.

Similar to Josh Gibson: Satchel Paige, Monte Irvin, Jackie Robinson, 

Others in this series: Al Simmons, Albert Pujols, Babe Ruth, Bad News Rockies, Barry Bonds, Billy Beane, Billy Martin, Bob Caruthers, Bob Feller, Bob Watson, Bobby Veach, Carl Mays, Cesar Cedeno, Charles Victory Faust, Chris von der Ahe, Denny McLain, Dom DiMaggio, Don Drysdale, Doug Glanville, Eddie Lopat, Elmer Flick, Frank Howard, Fritz Maisel, Gavvy Cravath, Gene Tenace, George W. Bush (as commissioner), George Case, George Weiss, Harmon Killebrew, Harry Walker, Home Run Baker, Honus Wagner, Hugh Casey, Ichiro Suzuki, Jack Clark, Jack Morris, Jim Abbott, Jimmy Wynn, Joe DiMaggio, Joe Posnanski, Johnny Antonelli, Johnny Frederick, Josh Hamilton, Ken Griffey Jr., Lefty Grove, Lefty O’Doul, Major League (1989 film), Matty Alou, Michael Jordan, Nate Colbert, Ollie Carnegie, Paul Derringer, Pedro Guerrero, Pedro Martinez, Pee Wee Reese, Pete Rose, Prince Fielder, Ralph Kiner, Rick Ankiel, Rickey Henderson, Roberto Clemente, Rogers Hornsby, Sam Crawford, Sam Thompson, Sandy Koufax, Shoeless Joe Jackson, Stan Musial, Ted Williams, The Meusel Brothers, Ty Cobb, Vada Pinson, Wally Bunker, Wes Ferrell, Will Clark, Willie Mays

1.) George Uhle: Uhle might have played an everyday position had he not pitched so well, inventing the slider, once walking a batter to strike out Babe Ruth, and winning 200 games lifetime. One of a handful of pitchers with more than 10 offensive WAR for his career, Uhle hit .289 in his career with a .339 on-base percentage and 21 triples. His speed and contact hitting earns him the lead-off spot.

2.) Red Ruffing: Hall of Fame pitcher Ruffing hit at least .300 eight of his 22 seasons and topped out at .364 in 1930. Projecting his numbers that year to a 500 at-bat season, Ruffing would have had 182 hits with 18 homers, 100 RBI and a .984 OPS. Better, Ruffing went 15-8 on the hill in 1930 after consecutive 20-loss seasons.

3.) Wes Ferrell: I’ve said this before here, though it bears repeating. When people knock Rick Ferrell’s 1987 Hall of Fame induction, they sometimes note he wasn’t the best player in his own family. Rick doesn’t even have the best OPS+ despite playing catcher while Wes served primarily as a rotation-anchoring pitcher, winning 20 games six times. Wes bests Rick for OPS+ (100 to 95), home runs (38 to 28) and slugging percentage (.446 to .378) among other offensive categories. Fittingly, he fronts a 1979 SABR book, Great Hitting Pitchers.

4.) Earl Wilson: Wilson’s 35 home runs aren’t tops for pitchers, but his one homer every 21.14 at-bats might be. It trumps Ferrell, who went yard once every 30.9 at-bats (and hit a record 37 homers as a pitcher and one more as a pinch hitter.) Wilson played just 11 seasons, being stuck much of the 1950s in the minors with the Boston Red Sox, who waited until 1959 to integrate. He also mostly played in the 1960s, one of the worst offensive periods in baseball history. Imagine Wilson’s hitting stats for a longer career in a better offensive era.

5.) Don Drysdale: Like a few of the men here, Drysdale’s career hitting stats are non-imposing:  .186 lifetime batting average with an OPS+ of 45 and a 162-game average of 110 strikeouts. He rates a mention for his one sensational offensive year, 1965, when he was the Dodgers’ only .300 hitter and had seven homers, 19 RBI, and an OPS+ of 140. He also went 23-12 on the mound, helping Los Angeles to a World Series crown.

6.) Carlos Zambrano: For his epic 2011 meltdown in Chicago, Big Z hit .318 with a career-high 130 OPS+ in 44 at-bats. He hit better still in 2008, .337 with four home runs, 14 RBI, and a 122 OPS+ in 83 at-bats. It’ll be interesting to see how he fares in Miami, given that Zambrano had a lower batting average but better slugging numbers in Wrigley than elsewhere.

7.) C.C. Sabathia: Sabathia might be the hitting king of American League pitchers, batting .269 in interleague play lifetime. His .250 career batting average overall pales in comparison to many other pitchers, even active ones, though like Wilson, I wonder what Sabathia could do with more at-bats.

8.) Bob Gibson: Gibson, like Drysdale, is considered one of the best-hitting pitchers of the 1960s and had better peak offensive value than longevity, batting .303 in 1970 and .206 lifetime. Gibson and Drysdale share another thing in common: Each owned the other man at the plate, with Gibson going 2-20 and Drysdale 1-23, though surprisingly, neither hit the other with a pitch despite their reputations as brushback artists.

9.) Walter Johnson: The Big Train had incredible durability, placing third in baseball history with 5,914 innings pitched, though when his skills went, they went fast. Johnson had his last great year at 37 in 1925 when he went 20-7 for the AL champion Washington Senators and hit .433 with two homers, 20 RBI, and a 162 OPS+ in 97 at-bats. He even smacked a triple, his 41st and final. As a man of surprises, he makes a perfect ninth hitter.

What he did: I first knew Doug Glanville as a name from my baseball card collection and the sports page when I was growing up in the 1990s. This is how it often goes, and in the years since I started writing about baseball regularly, it’s always been a funny feeling to meet a player whose card I might have had. Glanville’s gone on to other things since his nine-year career ended, and I know him as much now for his baseball writing. I’ve read some of his work for ESPN, and his 2010 book, The Game from Where I Stand is on my list of things to read. We started corresponding on Twitter a couple of weeks ago, which spurred me to give his stats another look, and I learned something else: Glanville’s another player who would’ve benefited greatly in a different era.

Glanville hit .277 for his career with an OPS+ of 78, a light-hitting centerfielder who didn’t much walk or hit for power. For the most part, he excelled in two areas, base-stealing and defense, with him swiping 168 bags at an 82 percent success rate and accumulating 5.9 lifetime defensive WAR. Glanville played at the height of the Steroid Era, 1996 to 2004, and his strongest assets were undervalued. In a different era, he might not have had a year like 1999 where he took advantage of historically good conditions for hitters and batted .325 with 204 hits to earn his largest contract. But he might have had a longer career.

Era he might have thrived in: We’re going with the 1980s St. Louis Cardinals, a perennial contender that favored defense and base stealing. Glanville would have fit in well with the likes of Ozzie Smith, Vince Coleman, and Willie McGee.

Why: I considered placing Glanville in the 1930s, of course suspending disbelief about him being unable play in the majors as an African American before 1947. For the 1930 Phillies, the Baseball-Reference.com stat converter has Glanville hitting .346 with an .884 OPS and a not-bad-for-then 50 walks. Consider that Chuck Klein hit .386 in 1930 and walked just 54 times. But I wanted an era where Glanville would maximize his base stealing, and the 1930s, anytime between 1920 and 1960 really, wasn’t it. Stolen base totals were generally low then, and rare kings like George Case in the 1940s did it without much help. Glanville told me his prowess was a combination of talent and coaching, with him becoming a lot more efficient in the minors, and this earns him the trip to Stolen Base U, which was St. Louis in the ’80s.

The Cardinals don’t have the record for stolen bases in a season, which goes to the 1976 Oakland Athletics who stole an ungodly 341 bases and had eight players with at least 20 steals. But where those A’s were a free-running aberration, the Cardinals more or less dominated the base paths for a decade, averaging 204.5 steals a year for the ’80s. It fit with manager Whitey Herzog’s “Whiteyball” strategy which favored pitching, speed, and defense, and Glanville had two of those three assets in abundance. The Baseball-Reference.com stat converter has issues projecting stolen base totals, but one of my readers suggested that with a license to run freely, Glanville might’ve had 80 or 90 steals in a season and supplanted Coleman, the least-talented Cardinals outfielder.

St. Louis won the World Series in 1982 with a 200 stolen base team and very nearly won it in 1985 and 1987 with teams that stole 314 and 248 bases, respectively. Perhaps Glanville’s presence would have pushed St. Louis to greater heights.

Any player/Any era is a Thursday feature here that looks at how a player might have done in an era besides his own.

Similar to Doug Glanville: Fritz Maisel, George Case, Rickey Henderson, Vada Pinson

Others in this series: Al Simmons, Albert Pujols, Babe Ruth, Bad News Rockies, Barry Bonds, Billy Beane, Billy Martin, Bob Caruthers, Bob Feller, Bob Watson, Bobby Veach, Carl Mays, Cesar Cedeno, Charles Victory Faust, Chris von der Ahe, Denny McLain, Dom DiMaggio, Don Drysdale, Eddie Lopat, Elmer Flick, Frank Howard, Gavvy Cravath, George W. Bush (as commissioner), George Weiss, Harmon Killebrew, Harry Walker, Home Run Baker, Honus Wagner, Hugh Casey, Ichiro Suzuki, Jack Clark, Jack Morris, Jackie Robinson, Jim Abbott, Jimmy Wynn, Joe DiMaggio, Joe Posnanski, Johnny Antonelli, Johnny Frederick, Josh Hamilton, Ken Griffey Jr., Lefty Grove, Lefty O’Doul, Major League (1989 film), Matty Alou, Michael Jordan, Monte Irvin, Nate Colbert, Ollie Carnegie, Paul Derringer, Pedro Guerrero, Pedro Martinez, Pee Wee Reese, Pete Rose, Prince Fielder, Ralph Kiner, Rick Ankiel, Roberto Clemente, Rogers Hornsby, Sam Crawford, Sam Thompson, Sandy Koufax, Satchel Paige, Shoeless Joe Jackson, Stan Musial, Ted Williams, The Meusel Brothers, Ty Cobb, Wally Bunker, Wes Ferrell, Will Clark, Willie Mays

To whom it may concern:

My name is Graham Womack, and I am founder and editor of Baseball: Past and Present. I had the pleasure recently to conduct an interview with founding Sports Illustrated writer and celebrated baseball author Robert Creamer for my site. I couldn’t have asked for a better interview, and it’s had a phenomenal reception.

I’m writing with an idea.

Part of the reason the Creamer interview went as well as it did was that he was wonderfully introspective in his answers, taking more than two weeks to reply to my 10 questions and offering almost 5,000 words worth of answers. He spoke of many things, such as going to his first game in 1931, the changes he’s seen over the years, and who he considered the greatest player that he covered (“Willie Mays. Period.”) I asked Creamer about his favorite baseball memories and he told me, among other things:

Seeing Babe Ruth hit home runs; I saw Babe play at least one game in 1932, 1933 and 1934, his last three seasons with the Yankees, and each time I saw him he hit a home run (a couple of times it was a doubleheader and he hit a homer in one of the games, but he hit one.) In short I have the thrill of remembering what a Ruthian homer looked like up close – simply gorgeous. That beautiful swing and Ruth’s big face looking up watching it go as he starts to run. And the ball, already enormously high in the air as it floated past the infield. I mean, I saw Babe Ruth hit home runs.

I can’t even begin to describe how cool it was to get to do this interview.

As I mentioned, the interview got an overwhelmingly positive response from readers. It’s been linked to on a few major baseball sites. Major League Baseball official historian John Thorn tweeted, “Just the best thing I can recall reading.” And even if Creamer hadn’t given such an outstanding interview, I sense there still would have been an outpouring of support for him. The man seems universally loved by baseball fans, rightfully so. At 89, he’s a treasure, and I hope he lives and writes many more years.

Which gets me to my idea.

Robert Creamer will turn 90 on July 14 of this year. The annual Hall of Fame induction ceremonies will take place about a week later. What better present to offer Creamer (and baseball) than an award? As a writer,  Creamer can’t be enshrined in Cooperstown, and he’s not even currently eligible for the “Scribes and Mikemen” exhibit, since it only honors newspaper reporters and broadcasters. I have something in mind to remedy this.

I suggest the creation of the Robert W. Creamer Award, to be presented annually to any non-newspaper writer who’s fostered greater love or appreciation of baseball. I’ll even offer an inaugural class: Roger Angell, Roger Kahn, Bill James, Lawrence Ritter, and Creamer. It’s a travesty none of these men have been honored simply because they didn’t write for a newspaper (frankly, keeping the award tied to one seems arcane in the 21st century.) I could nominate Creamer for the Buck O’Neil Lifetime Achievement Award, but that goes out only once every three years and seems insufficient to honor the great backlog of writers. I suggest the Creamer Award winners be featured in the press exhibit, next to the J.G. Taylor Spink Award winners for newspapermen and the Ford C. Frick Award winners for broadcasters.

I am admittedly a geek for this kind of thing. I went through college thinking I would be a sportswriter, and I’ve read the work of a fair number of men in the writers exhibit. I’ll probably take a look at it the next time I go to Cooperstown, though I wouldn’t subject anyone else to it. But I’d want to tell my son or daughter, if I had one, about Creamer, the man who helped found the greatest sports magazine ever, wrote two of the finest baseball books around, and selflessly showed kindness to me, some random, young blogger. I imagine he’s quietly been helping people for decades.

Creamer deserves more than I can possibly give. But it’d be nice to see the Hall of Fame join me in saying thank you.

Best wishes,

Graham Womack

He was born when Babe Ruth was in just his third season as a Yankee slugger. He went to his first baseball game when John McGraw and Wilbert Robinson were still managing. His tenure at Sports Illustrated began months before the first issue of the magazine printed in 1954. And recently, I found Robert Creamer, original SI writer and author of celebrated biographies on Babe Ruth and Casey Stengel writing as vividly and beautifully as ever at 89.

I had the pleasure to interview Mr. Creamer (Bob, as he insisted I call him) by email recently. I’ve had good experiences with interviews for this blog from Joe Posnanski to Rob Neyer and others, though my experience this time around exceeded all expectations that I had coming in. It was definitely a most unusual interview. The answers came over a two-week span, one and two answers at a time, with Bob footnoting his lengthy emails with apologies for needing more time and explanations that he couldn’t write more that day because of a doctor’s appointment or trip to the grocery store or just age. I chose to be patient, since it seemed wrong and not in my best interest to demand otherwise, and I’m so glad I did. I’ll almost never say this, but for any baseball historian or aspiring writer, the following is a must read.

Many thanks to Marty Appel for helping set this up.

BPP: What still excites you about baseball?

Creamer: That’s easy– the wonder of ‘What happens next?’

When I’m watching a game between teams I’m interested in, sometimes that wonder — and the fullfilment of it, as in the sixth game of the 2011 World Series — can be excruciatingly exciting, and its fullfilment as you watch and wait can be almost literally incredible. Even in an ordinary game, with, say, the miserable Mets, the team I essentially root for, trying to hold on to a one-run lead in the last of the eighth against, say, the Brewers with Ryan Braun at bat, two out and the bases loaded, can keep me glued to the television set. What’s going to happen next? Is Braun going to fist a two-run single to put Milwaukee ahead, or is this occasionally effective reliever going to get Braun to lift an easy fly to center to get us out of the inning? For me, the wait, the anticipation, is still tremendous

I have occasionally quoted my long-ago family doctor who once said to me, “Baseball is a game of limitless dramatic possibility.” We’ve come close to the limit — Bobby Thomson’s home run 60 years ago, the Cardinals last fall — but we haven’t reached it yet.

A retired scout told me baseball changes too much every ten years to allow for comparisons between different eras. What sort of changes have you seen in your lifetime?

Your baseball scout is right on the money, though I would love to read about the changes he’s been most aware of. Me, I forget what an antiquity I am, not just dating from when I began following big league baseball as a little [boy] but later when I started writing about it and even later when I retired from Sports Illustrated, which in itself is a long time ago.

I first became intensely aware of big league baseball in the summer of 1931, when I was nine. My big brother, who was six years older than I, took me to my first major league game, or games — it was a doubleheader between the old New York Giants and the old Brooklyn Dodgers in the old Polo Grounds on the banks of the Harlem River in New York, below the steep hillside known as Coogan’s Bluff. John McGraw was still managing the Giants and Wilbert Robinson the Dodgers, who were generally known as the Robins. Headlines would sometimes refer to the Robins as “the Flock,” as in flock of birds. I’m not sure if team nicknames were technically formal at that time. If not they soon were. Both McGraw and Robinson ended their managerial careers in 1932, and the Robins nickname soon disappeared as “Dodgers” returned. The new manager was Max Carey, whose real name was, I believe, “Canarius.” One sportswriter, Tom Meany, bowing to Max, suggested the team’s new nickname be the Canaries, but it didn’t take.

Nicknames were just that at the time, nicknames, but they became big business later, as did every part of baseball.

I digress, as I always do. Changes I’ve been aware of…. The biggest I can think of offhand are: 1) night baseball, which in the major leagues started very small in the mid 1930s and kept growing and growing; 2) the arrival of Jackie Robinson and the great black players who followed him (Willie Mays joined the Giants only four years after Jackie reached the Dodgers); 3) the big impact of radio broadcasting of home and, later, away games in the New York area where I grew up, first with Red Barber and then Mel Allen and the others; 4) television coverage beginning small in the late 1940s and early 1950s and then exploding in the 1960s; 5) the great expansion of interest in basketball and football in the 1960s and later, which led to a significant decline in the number of American kids concentrating on baseball; 6) the concomitant expansion of the number of Caribbean and other foreign players in the major leagues; 7) the vastly greater size and much better year-round physical condition of major league players today, a change that progressed year by year or decade by decade and began long before all the attention paid to steroids. Some day compare the heights and weights of, say, the great 1927 New York Yankees with any major league team of the last ten or twenty years.

It’s hard to say which changes were most important – what have I forgotten? — but I’d say the sheer size and physical condition of the players today is the most important factor in the changes in the way the game is played today.

And I haven’t touched on the tactical and strategic changes – most notably in the multiple pitching substitutions during games today.

Is baseball still America’s pastime?

No. It’s our spectator sport and I think possibly still our biggest spectator sport, and we love to read about it and talk about it and watch it on TV but nobody PLAYS baseball anymore. Softball, yes,but today everybody plays basketball or touch football whereas a century ago EVERYBODY played baseball. If you can find an old newspaper file from around 1912, ten years before I was born, look at the coverage of games on Saturdays and particularly Sundays – dozens of games, club teams, neighborhood teams, small town teams, political clubs, social clubs. It’s astonishing.

You wrote the foreword to one of Lawrence Ritter’s books. Do you think there’s a living group of players who’d merit another edition of The Glory of Their Times?

I’ll get a little passionate here. I think Larry Ritter’s The Glory of Their Times is the single best baseball book that’s ever been published. I think it stands alone, like Mount Everest, better even than Angell or Kahn or the other terrific efforts. Regarding Ritter, there were several books written in imitation of it later — interviews with old players — a couple I think by the very competent Don Honig — that are informative and fun to read, but compared to “Glory” they’re like watching a good high school game after seeing the Rangers versus the Cards last fall.

What I am saying is that it would be impossible to write another edition of The Glory of Their Times. It was a unique subject. Ritter was a unique writer.

But if a Don Honig were available and the players were available I’d love to read such a book about the era from approximately 1982 or 1983 to 2004 or 2005, 20 extraordinary years with many remarkable players — the era of Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire, Greg Maddux, Roger Clemens, Sammy Sosa, so many singular players, so many significant events.

Who’s the greatest baseball player you covered?

Willie Mays. Period.

I seem to remember that Bill James, using his fabulous, desiccated statistics, demonstrated that Mickey Mantle, who was Willie’s almost exact contemporary, was actually the better player, and I’m not equipped to argue with Bill, although I’ll try. And there are DiMaggio, Williams, Musial, Barry Bonds, Albert Pujols, Alex Rodriguez – no, wait. I didn’t cover DiMaggio, who retired after the 1951 season — I didn’t start with Sports Illustrated until 1954. But that’s still a pretty impressive collection of players to put Willie on top of.

I saw Mays play a lot. My father and I were in the moderate crowd at the Polo Grounds in May 1951 when Willie played his first game for the Giants. My father was only a mild baseball fan, although he told me his favorite ballplayer when he was a kid in New York back at the beginning of the 20th century was a bearded outfielder for the Giants named George Van Haltren, which indicates a certain degree of baseball intensity. In any case he and I drove down from Tuckahoe to the Polo Grounds, bought tickets (which you could do then) and sat in the lower stands between home and first base. Willie had broken in a few days earlier in Philadelphia where he went 0 for 12 in three games. He was batting third which if it seems a high spot for a brand-new rookie seemed a proper spot to take a look at a rookie who had been batting something like .477 in the minors.

The top of the first took some of the fun out of the game right away. Warren Spahn was pitching for the Boston Braves and in the top of the first Bob Elliott hit a three-run homer for Boston, which took a lot of the starch out of the Giant fans. If Spahn was on, and had a three-run lead already, we didn’t have a prayer. Spahn set the first two Giants down in order and here came Willie, our fabulous new rookie. I forget what the count went to — a ball and a strike, something like that. Spahn threw the next pitch and Willie hit it on a line high and deep to left center field. I cannot recall if it hit the wooden façade high in left field or went over the roof and out of the park. All I remember is the electric excitement that shot through the park at the sound and sight of our precious rookie in his first at-bat in New York hitting a tremendous home run off the great Spahn. “He’s real!” was the feeling. “He’s real!”

Never mind that Spahn closed him down and the rest of the Giants the rest of the night. Never mind that Willie went another 13 times at bat before getting another hit, It didn’t matter — as he subsequently demonstrated, time and time again. He was here.

I saw a lot of Willie Mays, and that certainly gave me a strong bias towards him. But I saw a lot of Mantle too and was deeply impressed by what he could do. Yet Willie stayed above Mickey in my mind, then and forever. I saw the famous catch Willie made against Vic Wertz in the Polo Grounds in the 1954 World Series but later on I saw him make a catch in Cincinnati’s old ball field, Crosley Field. My memory says Crosley had a steep warning bank against the left-field fence. A Cincinnati runner was on first base when the batter sent a tremendous fly ball to deep left center. Willie went up the bank, leaped, made a spectacular catch, turned and as he was falling threw the ball on a line to first base where he just missed doubling off the base runner. Simply an amazing play, and he kept doing things like that.

I saw him in San Francisco after the Giants moved out there almost single-handedly destroy the Braves, now pennant winners from Milwaukee. He could rise to a pitch of intensity that was almost unbelievable, creating an excitement that I have never forgotten. I think of two somewhat parallel plays — double plays started by centerfielders, one by DiMaggio, which I saw on primitive television in the late 1940s, and another by Mays against the Dodgers, which I didn’t see but which I read and heard about for years. In Yankee Stadium the Yankees were beating the lowly St. Louis Browns something like five to one in the ninth inning. I believe the bases were loaded but I’m not sure and I’m not sure it matters. But there was a man on first base. There was one out and the Browns’ batter lifted a little pop fly into the dead area between second base, center field and right field. Neither the second baseman nor the right fielder had a chance for the ball. The old-fashioned TV setup of those days had one camera focused on the area and it showed DiMaggio running in from center field toward where the ball might fall.

There wasn’t a chance he could catch it and the runner on first place took off, running as hard as he could. DiMaggio kept running — he was very, very fast although he never looked fast because of his long loping stride, and he was running straight at the camera. which seemed to be set up near the dugout on the first-base side of home. It seemed to take forever. But DiMaggio, loping in, reached his gloved hand forward, stretched out and caught the ball inches off the ground; he slowly straightened up and without changing his expression or his gait loped across first base to complete a double play that ended the game, kept jogging toward the camera and the dugout and disappeared into the dugout and the clubhouse behind it, without ever changing his expression. It was simply extraordinary, unforgettable.

Willie’s center field double play was different. I don’t recall that it was the ninth inning, I don’t recall that it was a game-ender. But it was a late inning in a game between the New York Giants and the Brooklyn Dodgers and a very close game, one out with a Dodger on third base. Again, the batter hit a sickly little pop fly into short right-field. The right fielder was too deep to get to it, the second baseman was in too close, possibly thinking to cut off a run at the plate. Willie, who was also unbelievably fast, came racing across from center field and there seemed a possibility that he could make a diving catch and get the ball. The Dodger third-base coach held the runner at third, figuring that whether Mays got to the ball or not he’d be running full tilt toward the first-base foul line as he fell and would be unable to get up, turn and throw to the plate in time to cut down the runner. Willie did catch the ball, tumbling toward the ground as he did, and the coach sent the runner toward the plate. Willie fell to the ground as anticipated but as he fell he twisted his body and made a perfect throw to the catcher to double up the base runner. It was an unbelievable play, as wild and extravagant as DiMaggio’s was cool and perfect. But it showed one of the characteristics Mays had in abundance — the extraordinary ability to rise (or, in this case, fall) to an occasion

One other point about Mays. Ordinarily I don’t like longevity being so important in the evaluation of a ballplayer. There must be half a dozen ballplayers in the Hall of Fame who are there because they hung around year after year. Even Ted Williams, unquestionably one of the very greatest ever to play the game, got extra points because of all those extra seasons he had with the Red Sox during the 1950s after he got back from Korea. He hit a lot of home runs and had a couple of extraordinary batting averages but if you look at his record closely and compare it to his fabulous seasons from 1939 into the 1950s he is simply not the same ballplayer, not the same hitter. His runs scored and runs batted in are sadly diminished, not anywhere near the astonishing numbers of his earlier years.

Yet I offer Mays’ physical strength and durability as added reasons for his greatness. I don’t want to take the time now to dig out the Baseball Encyclopedia and cite numbers. But take a look and see how many times in the old 154-game schedules he played 150 games or more, or close to it. He not only played at an all-star level, he did it longer and more consistently than any other of the really great players

Maybe these aren’t good arguments for Mays as the greatest, but, oh, if you could have seen him play, feel the exuberance, see the quick, brilliant baseball mind at work, see the things he could do.

What are your most treasured baseball memories?

This is a very tough question to answer, first of all because some of one’s most treasured memories have nothing to do with the big leagues but with personal experience. I remember when I was about nine around 1930 being in our backyard with my grumpy old grandfather. I was throwing a rubber ball against the back of our neighbors’ garage and trying to field it. Suddenly Pop asked me “You like baseball?” I said “Sure!” He said “What position do you play?” I said,”Shortstop,” which was simply a nine-year-old’s dream back before Little League and organized kids sports. He said, “I used to play shortstop,” and I was astonished. This cranky old man had played baseball? Had played shortstop?

That’s all I remember of the conversation, but some time later the local daily ran a sentimental Look-Back issue, reprinting pages from an 1890 newspaper, and there was a story about the Mt. Vernon All-Stars beating the Wakefield 200, and there in the boxscore was my grandfather’s name — Fred Watts, ss. — and he had a hit! And my uncle John Brett played right field. It wasn’t until years later that I realized it must’ve been a picnic-type game for a barrel of beer, but for a kid, seeing his grandfather’s name in the newspaper playing shortstop for the “Stars”– that was a thrill I still remember. There are a lot of non-pro things I can recall and which meant then and still do now a great deal to me.

But big-league baseball memories — seeing Willie break in is a tremendous memory, and the other things he did. Seeing Babe Ruth hit home runs; I saw Babe play at least one game in 1932, 1933 and 1934, his last three seasons with the Yankees, and each time I saw him he hit a home run (a couple of times it was a doubleheader and he hit a homer in one of the games, but he hit one.) In short I have the thrill of remembering what a Ruthian homer looked like up close – simply gorgeous. That beautiful swing and Ruth’s big face looking up watching it go as he starts to run. And the ball, already enormously high in the air as it floated past the infield. I mean, I saw Babe Ruth hit home runs.

As mentioned earlier I saw John McGraw and Wilbert Robinson in uniform managing in 1931. In 1954 during an old timers game I sat on the bench in Yankee Stadium near Connie Mack and Cy Young and watched a middle-aged Lefty Grove kidding with those two old men. I got a thrill every time I had a chance to talk to or (much more important) listen to Casey Stengel. I got to know Mickey Mantle, who the New York sportswriters didn’t much like, and found, when you got past the shyness and antagonism toward strangers, that he was a nice, kind of diffident young guy.

I didn’t think about it at the time but looking back I think the relatively close association with certain players created a host of treasured memories — not necessarily the great players like Mays and Mantle but the bright, relatively obscure players like Monte Irvin, Gil MacDougald, Al Smith, Jerry Coleman, Wally Moon, Rocky Bridges, Bill White. It seems childish but I remember them more warmly and I think with more excitement than the intermix with the great stars.

This is a sorry answer. I should have specific moments of baseball history– like Willie’s great catch of Vic Wertz’s huge fly ball in the first game of the 1954 World Series, which I saw standing with Roger Kahn as we got ready to go around the stands to post-game stuff in the centerfield clubhouses.

You’ve written biographies on Casey Stengel and Babe Ruth. If steroids had been a part of the game when Stengel and Ruth were players, do you think they would have used?

Sure. Yes. Absolutely. Hell, for decades before the big scandal about steroids in baseball, clubhouses used to have plates or dishes filled with little candy-like pills players gulped or chewed on routinely. My mind is gone – I forget what they were called.. Uppers? Bennies? I can’t recall. But that was standard. Athletes are always looking for an edge and that was a way to get them fired up. I have never been as upset by steroid use as the moralistic holier-than-thou baseball writers who vote on the Hall of Fame. What a bunch of self-important phonies!

I mean, you’d think all an ordinary player would have to do is take steroids to hit 70 home runs or bat .350. But I think McGwire was telling the truth — he took steroids to hold back distress, to make him physically able to play the game. Steroids don’t make a player good. Think of the hundreds, even thousands of players who have been in and out of the major leagues and who may have dabbled in steroids and think how few have hit 50, let alone 60 or 70 homers. Sure, every two-bit hitter in the lineup seems able to drive the ball over the outfield fences, but that has as much to do with the dimensions of the fields and the dimensions of the players, even without steroids. As mentioned earlier in this interview one of the great changes in the game over the decades has been the increasing size of the players. They’re enormous compared to the players of 80 years ago and more than enormous compared to those of 120 years ago.

One other thing that ought to engage the moralists, some of whom still bleed tears for poor old Shoeless Joe Jackson and feisty Pete Rose. Jackson took money to throw ball games. That’s a fact. Whether he actually threw a game or not is beside the point. He AGREED to play badly for money. Rose brought betting on games into the clubhouse, which is horrible, despite all the warnings against doing so, despite the evidence that gambling corrupts sport. I think both of them should be in the Hall of Fame — tell the truth about them on their plaques: they were superb players but moral midgets — but both should continue to be banned from active participation in the game, either posthumously or not.

But the terrible sinners who took steroids were doing what? They were trying to get better, trying to improve themselves (foolishly), trying to win. They were wrong but their motives in a way were admirable.

A new season of Hall of Fame voting was recently upon us which also means the Baseball Writers Association of America announced the 2012 winner for its J.G. Taylor Spink Award. Does it irk you that the award is solely for newspaper reporters and not magazine writers like yourself?

The BBWAA was an important and valuable organization when it was founded back in the 1910s and it continued to be vigorous and important until the 1950s, when TV began to boom and newspapers began to die. In the middle 1950s just after Sports Illustrated began it rankled me that the BBWAA kept non-newspaper sportswriters like me out but it quickly became a non-issue. It simply did not matter. In its early years I believe the BBWAA controlled the pressboxes but in my experience the clubs’ PR people did, so who needed the BBWAA? It existed for the Baseball Writers Dinner, which used to be great fun and may still be, but otherwise it simply does not mean much anymore, and its annual award is just another item of clutter, a good-attendance medal. In the last fifty years I don’t believe I’ve ever heard a magazine writer or a TV broadcaster moan because he or she wasn’t a member. Or maybe they do complain but who really cares? I hope I don’t sound bitter or spiteful because I don’t feel that way. I just don’t think the BBWAA has much significance. I’m not complaining, honest. I know I’ve written some good stuff but I’ve never felt I was on a level with, say, Larry Ritter, John Lardner, Ed Linn or Roger Angell, and I don’t recall any of them being given awards by the BBWAA. Perhaps I’m wrong but to answer your question, no, it doesn’t irk me.

Jimmy Cannon once said that being a sportswriter is like living in a prolonged boyhood. How much has this held true through your life?

Ah, Jimmy Cannon. There aren’t a lot of my generation still hanging around, so I can’t produce validation of the following opinion. Still, I’ll toss it on the table, if only to stimulate discussion.

Jimmy Cannon’s reputation as a great sportswriter was much larger with people who didn’t work with him, or who came across selected pieces of his work after he more or less disappeared from the scene. I believe the mild aversion among his generation to outspoken praise for Cannon derived at least in part from his own fascination with his writing and his constant need for praise, for reassurance.

I was a little surprised by the quote you cite, that Jimmy once said being a sportswriter was like living a prolonged boyhood. To me, that implies prolonged happiness, a carefree existence. Now I didn’t know Cannon — I may have met him once or twice, and I certainly remember being in press boxes with him — but I wasn’t a conversational friend of his as I was with so many sportswriters of that era. But from my observation of him and the many stories I heard about him, Jimmy Cannon seemed the opposite of carefree and happy. He often looked worried. I always felt he worried about his writing. My impression was that he wanted everything he wrote to be great or, maybe more important, to be considered great. Sometimes it was. I remember being knocked out by some Cannon columns, some lines, some phrases — pieces that were simply superb.

But the next piece could just as well be overwrought, overdone, overwritten, mawkish. Here’s an anecdote that bears this out. Jimmy once bearded Frank Graham, a kind and gentle man. I always felt that Frank’s best work — usually plain, simple, low-key writing — was about as good as sportswriting could get. Always controlled, maybe too controlled. It was very different from Jimmy’s, yet Jimmy had high regard for Frank, so much so that he went to him and asked what he, Graham, thought of his, Cannon’s, work. Graham tried to tap-dance his way through an answer because he knew Cannon wanted praise, unfettered praise, even though Cannon’s style was at the other end of the spectrum from Graham’s. Frank kept dancing around the subject, knowing how sensitive Cannon was. Jimmy was insistent and finally Frank gave in. He said, “Jimmy, you’re like a young pitcher. Great fastball, no control.”

That for me sums up Cannon’s writing. Here and there it was fabulous, and those were the pieces that were reprinted and which established his reputation. But he turned out a lot of tiresome blah too. And he got lazy, as we all do. In 1951 he wrote an extraordinary column after the Giants came from 16 games back to tie the Dodgers and force a playoff for the pennant, which came down to one final game. Cannon wrote his column from the point of view of Charlie Dressen, the Brooklyn manager, who was wonderful in many ways but didn’t know how to rise to greatness. Cannon began his column (I can’t remember the exact words) “You’re Charlie Dressen and you’ve got one game to show what you can do.” I forget Cannon’s words, which were a million times better than that. It was a superb piece –one of the best ever to appear on a sports page — but Cannon used the format so frequently after that that it became a cliche. “You’re Mickey Mantle… You’re Joe Louis… etc.” I remember a wonderfully funny parody of it by another writer (not me) that began, “You’re Jimmy Cannon and you’ve got a column to fill.’

So I think Cannon was very good but not all the time. I think his line about “prolonged boyhood” was pleasant bullshit, nothing more. Was it prolonged boyhood? I can remember too many nights in distant hotels writing through the night trying to get a damned story to work. Sure, it was fun, great fun, but for me working for Sports Illustrated was the best part of the fun. Getting a story and getting it written– and getting from home to the story and back again later– was work. Nice work, and I was delighted to have it. But still work.

Has there been a philosophy or ethos you’ve tried to follow through your writing career?

I found out when I was quite young that writing was something I could do. Other kids could do things well that I couldn’t do well, like whistling through your teeth or shooting marbles or drawing pictures or singing in harmony or doing push-ups. I was inept or at best mediocre in these areas. But I could write — it was just something I could do. I liked writing. I liked doing what we called “compositions,” which most kids hated to do. I liked reading stuff, which most kids weren’t fond of.

So reading and writing were second nature to me and the jobs I got when I was young almost all related to writing. Not sports-writing necessarily, even though I was a big sports fan, a big sports-page fan. Just writing. I was 31 before I got my first full-time sports-writing job — with the still in utero Sports Illustrated in March of 1954, five months before we published our first issue in August of that year.

But I had read sportswriters intently and, without consciously doing so, had formed an idea of who was good or even great and who was not. The three I admired most were Red Smith (New York Herald-Tribune), Frank Graham (New York Sun and then New York Journal-American), and John Lardner (Newsweek and various monthly magazines, but not ever Sports Illustrated.) I think Lardner was the best writer who ever wrote regularly on sports but Red Smith, because he wrote beautifully too and because he did his wonderful columns EVERY day – or at any rate six times a week – was the de facto king. My god, what terrific stuff he turned out for the Herald-Trib day after day.

Okay, this is a long-winded way of getting around to answering your question. You ask about “my writing career” and whether I had a philosophy or ethos about it. When I was young I thought I was the best writer in the world, or at least that I was as good as anyone else. Over the years as I found and marveled at writers of great skill and accomplishment I began to understand that I was okay but that there were a lot of writers, male and female, who were better than I, and who could do things I couldn’t do.

Part of that sobering up process came from an appreciation of something Red Smith said (or wrote — probably both) when he was at the height of his admirable career. I may have the precise quote wrong but essentially Red, a newspaperman through and through, said, “It’s important to remember that today’s poetry gets wrapped around tomorrow’s fish.”

Amen.

__________________

Other interviews: Joe Posnanski, Rob Neyer, Josh Wilker, John Thorn, Hank Greenwald, Dan Szymborski

What he did: This is a story of two baseball owners, one a used car salesman from Milwaukee, the other a Texas oilman. After Major League Baseball commissioner Fay Vincent was forced to resign in 1992, these two men were looked at by the other owners as possible replacements. Bud Selig of course got the job and continues in it today, nearing his 20th anniversary of becoming commissioner. George W. Bush ran for governor of Texas and six years later, president. The rest is history.

Bush has said he felt God wanted him to lead the country. But it’s easy to see where his interests still lie, from a reference to steroids during his 2004 State of the Union Address to his presence at the World Series this year watching the team he owned in the late 1980s and early ’90s, the Texas Rangers. I haven’t been a huge supporter of Selig as commissioner, and in the interest of full disclosure, I wasn’t a fan of the Bush presidency either, though I’d have loved to see what he could’ve done in Selig’s place. Selig has seemed a pawn of the owners, presiding at times spinelessly over troubled stretches for baseball. Love him or hate him, Bush would never have gone for that.

Era he might have thrived in: I wish Bush had been commissioner instead of Selig, not just because it would have kept him away from the Oval Office. He’d have been an asset to baseball. And Bush might have done well heading up the sport at other points in its history, too. With his willingess to have two black Secretary of States, Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, perhaps Bush would have stood tall like Happy Chandler against the owners of the mid-1940s who voted 15-1 against Jackie Robinson’s signing. Or Bush could have made an able successor for Ford Frick in the mid-1960s, a marked upgrade over the timid, forgotten William Eckert.

Why: Bush’s brazen approach to foreign policy alienated much of the world and, at least for me, made for eight long years. But this attitude could work well with baseball, where the best commissioners and leaders for the most part have been resolute in their rule and willing to stand up to owners, players, whoever.

Ban Johnson had all the charm of a czar and built the American League, the only upstart to the National League in baseball history that’s survived. Kenesaw Mountain Landis was as autocratic a commissioner as any past federal judge could be expected, sweeping in after the doomed 1919 World Series and ridding baseball of game-fixing scandals that were endemic in the early 1900s. I don’t like what Landis did to systematically keep blacks from the majors in his 20-plus years in office, though he essentially set the standard for commissioners. Others have followed suit in his ruthlessness. Ford Frick crushed the Continental League and helped ignite the expansion movement in the process. Bartlett Giamatti had the guts to ban Pete Rose.

I don’t know what Bush’s claim to fame would be as commissioner. But come to think of it, it isn’t too late for him to make his mark in baseball. Joe Torre just quit a league-level job to make a bid for the Dodgers (as, I would add, John F. Kennedy’s dad tried to do for him in the 1940s.) Maybe it’s time for Bush to see about Torre’s former gig. It would sure beat sitting on some board of directors, or whatever it is the former commander-in-chief is up to now.

Any player/Any era is a Thursday feature here that looks at how a player might have done in an era besides his own.

Others in this series: Al Simmons, Albert Pujols, Babe Ruth, Bad News Rockies, Barry Bonds, Billy Beane, Billy Martin, Bob Caruthers, Bob Feller, Bob Watson, Bobby Veach, Carl Mays, Cesar Cedeno, Charles Victory Faust, Chris von der Ahe, Denny McLain, Dom DiMaggio, Don Drysdale, Eddie Lopat, Elmer Flick, Frank Howard, Fritz Maisel, Gavvy Cravath, George Case, George Weiss, Harmon Killebrew, Harry Walker, Home Run Baker, Honus Wagner, Hugh Casey, Ichiro Suzuki, Jack Clark, Jack Morris, Jackie Robinson, Jim Abbott, Jimmy Wynn, Joe DiMaggio, Joe Posnanski, Johnny Antonelli, Johnny Frederick, Josh Hamilton, Ken Griffey Jr., Lefty Grove, Lefty O’Doul, Major League (1989 film), Matty Alou, Michael Jordan, Monte Irvin, Nate Colbert, Ollie Carnegie, Paul Derringer, Pedro Guerrero, Pedro Martinez, Pee Wee Reese, Pete Rose, Prince Fielder, Ralph Kiner, Rick Ankiel, Rickey Henderson, Roberto Clemente, Rogers Hornsby, Sam Crawford, Sam Thompson, Sandy Koufax, Satchel Paige, Shoeless Joe Jackson, Stan Musial, Ted Williams, The Meusel Brothers, Ty Cobb, Vada Pinson, Wally Bunker, Wes Ferrell, Will Clark, Willie Mays

Claim to fame: This isn’t the first Hall of Fame column about Bagwell, far from it, though I’ve noticed something in reading the other pieces. They generally fall into two camps. The first dismiss Bagwell as a possible steroid user. There is no evidence for this. Bagwell never failed a PED test, never showed up in a government report or steroid dealer’s deposition, never got mentioned in a book by Jose Canseco. Still, there are some who say the hulking frame of the Houston Astros first baseman and the fact he starred during the Steroid Era are enough to merit suspicion and keep him out of the Hall of Fame. I loathe these articles, but I’m not big on their counterparts, pieces by fellow baseball bloggers and others that essentially augur for automatic enshrinement. Today’s column is about taking a different tact.

Current Hall of Fame eligibility: Bagwell received 56 percent of the vote this year in his second try with the Baseball Writers Association of America. It’s a promising showing. Bagwell has 13 more years of eligibility with the writers, and aside from Gil Hodges, Jack Morris, and Lee Smith, no player who’s ever received more than 50 percent of the vote isn’t in Cooperstown now. But the glut of steroid-connected players who will arrive on the ballot over the next several years could be a game changer for Bagwell and others. And at this point, the potential for voting-related chaos looks great.

Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? I have a confession, a reason for why I’m writing this column late. I haven’t wanted to write it. Don’t get me wrong, on numbers alone, Bagwell is a Hall of Famer, easily. Besides hitting 449 home runs, Bagwell very nearly pulled off a .300/.400/.500 lifetime split for batting average, slugging percentage and on-base percentage, a rare feat. His lifetime Wins Above Replacement of 79.9 is among the best for non-enshrined, eligible players, and it was better than any player on the writers ballot this year. He was even a fairly likable guy and thrived in the Astrodome, which helped sabotage the Hall of Fame bids of Jim Wynn, Cesar Cedeno, and most every other position player who spent a good chunk of his career there.

My problem is I have this gnawing feeling Bagwell might have used. Do I have any evidence whatsoever? Of course not, and I admit I have this suspicion about most players from the past 20 years. Should steroids keep Bagwell or any other man out of the Hall of Fame? Probably not. Perhaps the majority of the players in Bagwell’s era were on some kind of performance enhancer, and there was nothing in the rules for the majority of Bagwell’s career saying he couldn’t. But I wish both sides in the Bagwell debate could work more constructively besides firing off slam dunk yes or no columns. Stuff’s about to get crazy with voting in the next year, as Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, and others become eligible, and we can’t seem to do much besides stick on our respective moral high horses. This needs to change.

I’d like to see some kind of consensus reached about what to do with the glut of steroid users (both confirmed and rumored) who will become eligible for Cooperstown. It isn’t fair to judge players on differing standards. It also isn’t fair to simply leave the decision to the writers to fumble for individually or pass off to the Veterans Committee. The task facing voters isn’t an easy one, and what transpires over the next few years could shape Cooperstown for decades to come. It’d be a shame if this decision is made flippantly or not at all. Bagwell’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? is a Tuesday feature here.

Others in this series: Adrian Beltre, Al Oliver, Alan Trammell, Albert Belle, Albert Pujols, Allie Reynolds, Barry Bonds, Barry Larkin, Bert Blyleven, Bill King, Billy Martin, Bobby Grich, Cecil Travis, Chipper Jones, Closers, Curt Flood, Dan Quisenberry, Darrell Evans, Dave Parker, Dick Allen, Don Mattingly,Don Newcombe, George Steinbrenner, George Van Haltren, Gus Greenlee, Harold Baines, Harry Dalton, Jack Morris, Jim Edmonds, Joe Carter, Joe Posnanski, John Smoltz, Juan Gonzalez, Keith Hernandez, Ken Caminiti, Larry Walker,Manny Ramirez, Maury Wills, Mel Harder, Moises Alou, Pete Browning,Phil Cavarretta, Rafael Palmeiro, Roberto Alomar, Rocky Colavito,Roger Maris, Ron Cey, Ron Guidry, Ron Santo, Smoky Joe Wood, Steve Garvey,Ted Simmons, Thurman Munson, Tim Raines, Tony Oliva, Vince Coleman, Will Clark

I haven’t done one of these in awhile, so here goes. This is an occasional BPP feature and probably the most allegorical thing we do. Credit the great Josh Wilker for originally posting a lineup card of his favorite writers. Today, we look at high court justices, past and present.

P- Earl Warren: The longtime head of the Supreme Court might be its Cy Young. Among Warren’s biggest decisions: ending school segregation, guaranteeing Miranda Rights, and ensuring that political representation correlated with population size. And in his bravest performance, akin to Young’s 20-inning loss to Rube Waddell in 1905, Warren overcame personal reservations and led the commission that investigated the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

C- William Howard Taft: The only man to serve as both president and chief justice would crush any runner dumb enough to challenge him. Scott Cousins would long for the days of flattening Buster Posey while being pried out of Taft’s 330-pound girth. Never again would the Miami Marlins agree to an exhibition against a court.

1B- William Brennan: Lou Gehrig’s got nothing on Brennan, an Iron Horse of justice from 1956 to 1990. Brennan was a progressive, known for his views and writing the decision in New York Times v. Sullivan that established that actual malice was needed for libel judgments involving public figures. The journalist in me appreciates that almost as much as my inner baseball historian loves Gehrig’s “luckiest man in the world” speech.

2B- Thurgood Marshall: Marshall was the first African American justice with his appointment in 1967, so he’ll patrol where Jackie Robinson played the most games in his career.

SS- Sandra Day O’Connor: Who’s the perfect double play partner for the first black man on the court? The first woman. Granted, O’Connor would protest vociferously, telling court beat writers she’d been a star right fielder in the federal appellate leagues. None of the writers would listen, though, unaware O’Connor found their Phil Rizzuto comparisons deeply patronizing. And Rizzuto, for his part, would never get over his subsequent nickname of Sandra.

3B- Hugo Black: The 1919 Chicago White Sox were a deeply divided team with first baseman Chick Gandil refusing to speak to star second baseman Eddie Collins for two years. Black and Marshall might be the Gandil and Collins of this team, thanks to Black’s one-time membership in the Ku Klux Klan.

RF- Antonin Scalia: Right field’s an appropriate place for a right-leaning judge. Scalia would be known for his rifle arm, confusing to some who’d question if it was a reference to his support for the National Rifle Association.

CF- Oliver Wendell Holmes: Ask the average high school or college student to name any Supreme Court justice who hasn’t sat on the bench in their lifetime. They might know of Holmes, who has a name out of a Charles Dickens novel and was a legend of the 19th century high court. He’s Pete Browning here.

LF- William Rehnquist: Rehnquist marched to his own beat during his time on the court, a Nixon-era appointee who cast the deciding vote in Bush v. Gore in 2000. He’ll play left field.

Other starting lineups: Beatles songs, ex-presidents, writers

What he did: Cedeño may rank as one of the great “What If?” players in baseball history. Not long after Cedeño debuted with the Houston Astros in 1970, Leo Durocher declared him the next Willie Mays. And while the centerfielder had power good for 199 homers and speed that netted him 550 steals to go with a .285 batting average, he didn’t come close to reaching his Hall of Fame potential. In fact, Cedeño received just two votes out of 430 ballots in 1992, the only year he was eligible for Cooperstown with the writers. Many things hurt his cause, including: 1) A reckless temper and style of play that led to injuries and legal problems; 2) Playing his best years in the cavernous Astrodome; 3) Having his career in the 1970s and ’80s, no great time for hitters.

Era he might have thrived in: With his speed and contact, Cedeño would have appealed to Branch Rickey. Cedeño might not have had the temperament to stand in for Jackie Robinson at Rickey’s behest and stoically break baseball’s color barrier in 1947. But assuming we suspend disbelief about Cedeño’s dark skin color keeping him from the majors prior to this, he might have been a hit with Rickey’s other dynasty, the Gashouse Gang-era St. Louis Cardinals of the 1930s. And considering he’d be playing with future Veterans Committee head Frankie Frisch, who famously enshrined several of his teammates, Cedeño’s place in Cooperstown would probably be assured.

Why: The projected numbers speak for themselves. In 1972, Cedeño hit .320 with 22 home runs, 82 RBI and 55 steals, his OPS at .921, among the best ever by a Houston starter in the Astrodome years. On the 1931 Cardinals, these numbers convert to a .349 batting average, 25 home runs, 100 RBI, 62 steals and a 1.001 OPS. Cedeño might need to play right field since Pepper Martin and Chick Hafey wouldn’t be going anywhere, but otherwise, nothing would prevent Cedeño from playing a vital role on a championship team. He’d also be a young player in an offensive golden age, playing for a general manager who might help his attitude, too. That or he’d be just another one of the boys on those Cards, a fun-loving, hard-drinking club.

Are the projected numbers infallible? I doubt it. While Rickey signed players in part for foot speed and the Cardinals stole a lot of bases for their era, 114 in 1931 alone, it seems unlikely Cedeño could go for 62 steals that year. Granted, Ben Chapman led the American League with 61 steals in 1931, but it was somewhat aberrational. From the dawn of the Live Ball Era around 1920 to Luis Aparicio and Maury Wills revolutionizing the base paths 40 years later, stolen bases were a largely forgotten art in the majors. Frisch led the National League in 1931 with 28, and that’s not even the lowest total for a leader in that generation. All the same, Cedeño could have a shot at 30 steals. A 40-40 season more than a half century before Jose Canseco doesn’t even seem out of the question.

There’s also a question of whether a 21-year-old Cedeño could find a spot in St. Louis’s batting lineup. Rickey famously developed his teams through his farm system and rarely brought up young starters or kept old players around. The ’31 Cardinals exemplify this: Aside from 25-year-old shortstop Charlie Gelbert and 36-year-old third baseman Sparky Adams, every starter was in his late 20s or early 30s. Still, there were occasional exceptions, like Johnny Mize who became the Cardinals’ starting first baseman as a 23-year-old rookie in 1936. Perhaps Cedeño could follow his lead. Regardless, Cedeño would shine whenever he got his moment with those Cardinals.

Any player/Any era is a Thursday feature here that looks at how a player might have done in an era besides his own.

Others in this series: Al Simmons, Albert Pujols, Babe Ruth, Bad News Rockies, Barry Bonds, Billy Beane, Billy Martin, Bob Caruthers, Bob Feller, Bob Watson, Bobby Veach, Carl Mays, Charles Victory Faust, Chris von der Ahe, Denny McLain, Dom DiMaggio, Don Drysdale, Eddie Lopat, Elmer Flick, Frank Howard, Fritz Maisel, Gavvy Cravath, George Case, George Weiss, Harmon Killebrew, Harry Walker, Home Run Baker, Honus Wagner, Hugh Casey, Ichiro Suzuki, Jack Clark, Jack Morris, Jackie Robinson, Jim Abbott, Jimmy Wynn, Joe DiMaggio, Joe Posnanski, Johnny Antonelli, Johnny Frederick, Josh Hamilton, Ken Griffey Jr., Lefty Grove, Lefty O’Doul, Major League (1989 film), Matty Alou, Michael Jordan, Monte Irvin, Nate Colbert, Ollie Carnegie, Paul Derringer, Pedro Martinez, Pee Wee Reese, Pete Rose, Prince Fielder, Ralph Kiner, Rick Ankiel, Rickey Henderson, Roberto Clemente, Rogers Hornsby, Sam Crawford, Sam Thompson, Sandy Koufax, Satchel Paige, Shoeless Joe Jackson, Stan Musial, Ted Williams, The Meusel Brothers, Ty Cobb, Vada Pinson, Wally Bunker, Wes Ferrell, Will Clark, Willie Mays

Claim to fame: I saw Vince Coleman got a few votes in my recent project on the 50 best players not in the Hall of Fame, six votes out of 86 ballots to be precise, and I noticed something interesting. I noticed this thing again in a forum discussion on Monday over at Baseball Think Factory. That thing I noticed goes something like this: A lot of people want to see Tim Raines in the Hall of Fame (including yours truly), and Raines has 808 stolen bases and is fifth on the all-time steals list. Coleman has 752 steals and is sixth. If Raines goes in the Hall of Fame, does Coleman need to also be enshrined? The short answer is no, but let’s explore that question further.

Current Hall of Fame eligibility: Coleman received 0.6 percent of the vote his only year on the Baseball Writers Association of America ballot for Cooperstown in 2003. Under the Veterans Committee’s new format of considering players depending on their era, Coleman will first be eligible with the committee in 2019.

Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? So Vince Coleman has 752 steals. He also led the National League his first six seasons and stole over 100 bases each of his first three years in the majors. He even had pretty good efficiency, being caught stealing just 177 times for an 81 percent success rate. Does this make Coleman a Hall of Famer? Eh, not really.

Coleman’s essentially a one-trick pony. Besides a lot of stolen bases, I’m not sure what else his Hall of Fame case consists of. Coleman hit .264 lifetime and had 1,425 hits in 13 seasons. His lifetime OPS+ of 83 would very nearly be the worst of any position player enshrined, just beating Rabbit Maranville’s 82. Without checking, Coleman’s career Wins Above Replacement of 9.4 would seemingly be the lowest by far of any player in Cooperstown, making Tommy McCarthy and his 19.0 WAR look epic. Cooperstown’s enshrined some lousy candidates before, but Coleman would vault almost instantly to the top of any list of the worst players in the Hall of Fame. There could be a dual ceremony while he was being inducted.

And then there are the extracurricular points against Coleman that my Twitter followers educated me on, such as:

• As a rookie, Coleman professed to not know who Jackie Robinson was. (credit @lecroy24fan)
• Coleman threw cherry bombs at kids in the Dodger Stadium parking lot. (credit @Joeneverleft)
• While warming up on-field, he once got run over by an automatic tarp. Better, it happened in the postseason and knocked Coleman out for the duration while his St. Louis Cardinals went on to lose the World Series. You cannot make this up. (credit @lecroy24fan and @baseballtwit)

Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? is a Tuesday feature here.

Others in this series: Adrian Beltre, Al Oliver, Alan Trammell, Albert Belle, Albert Pujols, Allie Reynolds, Barry Bonds, Barry Larkin, Bert Blyleven, Bill King, Billy Martin, Bobby Grich, Cecil Travis, Chipper Jones, Closers, Curt Flood, Dan Quisenberry, Darrell Evans, Dave Parker, Dick Allen, Don Mattingly,Don Newcombe, George Steinbrenner, George Van Haltren, Gus Greenlee, Harold Baines, Harry Dalton, Jack Morris, Jim Edmonds, Joe Carter, Joe Posnanski, John Smoltz, Juan Gonzalez, Keith Hernandez, Ken Caminiti, Larry Walker,Manny Ramirez, Maury Wills, Mel Harder, Moises Alou, Pete Browning,Phil Cavarretta, Rafael Palmeiro, Roberto Alomar, Rocky Colavito,Roger Maris, Ron Cey, Ron Guidry, Ron Santo, Smoky Joe Wood, Steve Garvey,Ted Simmons, Thurman Munson, Tim Raines, Tony Oliva, Will Clark