Author: Graham Womack

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Any player/Any era: Albert Pujols

What he did: Pujols is building a case he belongs among the all-time greats with his remarkably consistent play. He’s had at least 30 home runs and 100 RBI every year of his career heading into this season and boasts a .332 lifetime batting average, a throwback to an era where sluggers like Babe Ruth and Ted Williams retired with clips above .330.

Pujols has won three National League Most Valuable Player awards, is a nine-time All Star and with another ten years, he might break the home run record. And if Pujols retired tomorrow, he’d still be a Hall of Famer.

Era he might have thrived in: The 1930s

Why: After my column here on Home Run Baker last week, one of my regular readers emailed me, saying he was looking forward to me writing one of these on Pujols. The reader wrote of Pujols:

To my mind, he’s the only [current] right handed hitter who stands a chance of being either the greatest, or second greatest right handed hitter of all time. Put the guy in the 1890’s and he’s Ed Delahanty. Put him in the oughts and teens and he’s Honus Wagner. In the 20’s, Harry Heilmann with close to 40 hrs a year. In the 30’s, he’s Jimmie Foxx, with thirty fewer strike outs a season.

It was an interesting idea, and I happily take requests here. This is still a relatively new enough space that I value — and need — any sign that I’m not just babbling into space. I’d welcome anyone else to get their requests in.

For our purposes, I’ll hypothesize how Pujols might have fared in the 1930s. I envision him on the New York Yankees, a feared American League slugger in the same vein as Foxx, Ruth or Al Simmons. The stat converter on Baseball-Reference says Pujols’ 2009 MVP season would translate to 50 home runs, 158 runs batted in and a .358 batting average for the 1936 Yankees. And his 2003 season converts to a .396 clip for that team.

Pujols would have fit right in on those Yankees who won 102 games and the 1936 World Series. Bill Dickey hit .362, rookie Joe DiMaggio helped fans forget Babe Ruth with 29 home runs and a .323 batting average, and MVP Lou Gehrig put up real-life versions of Pujols’ projected numbers with 49 home runs, 152 RBI and a .354 clip. Taking over for low .300 hitters like Jake Powell or George Selkirk in the Yankee outfield, Pujols most likely boosts the .300 team batting average. I’m not sure if he does anything of note on defense or if the heavier bats of the era help or hurt his cause, but I’m guessing overall, Pujols kicks ass on that team.

Of course, like Al Simmons, Pujols would probably have to Americanize his name playing in a less ethnically tolerant era. Simmons was born Aloys Szymanski. Who knows? Maybe if Pujols had played in the Thirties, we’d know him today as Al Parker.

Any player/Any era is a Thursday feature here that looks at how a player might have fared in a different era than his own.

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Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? Steve Garvey

Claim to fame: Garvey had 2,599 hits, six seasons with at least 200 hits, and a .294 lifetime batting average in a 19-year career from 1969 to 1987. He shined most early on, making eight consecutive All Star appearances from 1974 through 1981, winning four straight Gold Gloves and the 1974 National League Most Valuable Player award in that stretch.

Current Hall of Fame eligibility: Garvey exhausted his 15 years of eligibility with the Baseball Writers Association of America in 2007 and can be enshrined by the Veterans Committee.

Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? Months ago, a reader of my list of the 10 best players not in Cooperstown asked my opinion on Garvey, who didn’t make the list. I responded that if Garvey hadn’t declined after 1980, I think he would have been a Hall of Famer.

I stand by my opinion, though I was motivated to write more about Garvey after my piece on Maury Wills last week led to a forum discussion at Baseball Think Factory. One member noted how Wills’ Cooperstown votes fell, commenting:

Maury Wills had one of the steepest dropoffs in HoF support in history. Guys at 40% don’t fall to 20%. They just don’t – except for Wills and Steve Garvey.

It goes deeper than that. Dating back to the first Hall of Fame ballot in 1936, just seven players who received at least 30 percent of the vote in their first year of eligibility have not since been voted in by the writers. The seven players are as follows, with their first year of eligibility and vote totals in parentheses:

  • Roberto Alomar (73.7 percent, 2010)
  • Steve Garvey (41.6 percent, 1993)
  • Barry Larkin (51.6 percent, 2010)
  • Edgar Martinez (36.2 percent, 2010)
  • Lee Smith (42.3 percent, 2003)
  • Luis Tiant (30.9 percent, 1988)
  • Maury Wills (30.3 percent, 1978)

For our purposes, we can disregard Alomar and Larkin who will almost certainly be inducted by the writers sometime soon. No other player who has cracked 50 percent of the vote in their first year has failed to be enshrined. We can also set aside Martinez, who has another fourteen tries with the writers and may need several years to determine whether his Cooperstown stock will rise or fall.

That leaves Garvey, Smith, Tiant, and Wills. Smith has mostly hovered in the 40th percentile in eight years on the ballot. The other three men got their highest level of support in their early years and exhausted their eligibility with much fewer votes. Usually it’s the other way around, with players receiving modest vote totals initially and building momentum for enshrinement. Incidentally, Garvey, Tiant and Wills all got a higher percentage of the vote their first years on the ballot than Hall of Famers Don Drysdale, Jim Rice and Billy Williams, as well as every player enshrined by the Veterans Committee except for Jim Bunning, Pee Wee Reese and Enos Slaughter.

I suppose Garvey, Wills, and Tiant got many early votes because some writers figured that’s how everyone would be voting. Perhaps when these writers realized this wasn’t the case, they changed course. There are other factors to consider, of course. Wills lost votes after a drug bust, while Tiant’s first appearance on the Cooperstown ballot came in a weak year for it, 1988.

It’s harder to say what sunk Garvey. He had well-publicized extramarital affairs, but that was old news by the time he became Hall of Fame-eligible. It’s worth noting that Garvey had his first big drop in votes just months after a fellow first baseman, Mark McGwire set the single-season home run record with 70. Garvey hit more than 30 home runs just one season and had 272 lifetime. With the anti-steroid backlash now in effect against McGwire and others, it could make Garvey a prime candidate for the Veterans Committee when it reconvenes in less than six months. I wouldn’t vote for him if I could, but others might.

Garvey might get in regardless of McGwire. As I noted in a recent piece on Don Mattingly, the Veterans Committee historically has a better than 50 percent hit rate on enshrining players who peak between even 20 and 30 percent of the writers vote. Given that Garvey, Smith, Tiant, and Wills all fared better, two of them may eventually have plaques. Try to guess who.

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

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10 players who might have hit .400 for the 1999 Colorado Rockies

At the end of yesterday’s post, I noted that the stat converter on Baseball-Reference says Home Run Baker would have .413 if his 1913 season was translated to the 1999 Colorado Rockies, and I wondered aloud how many other players would hit .400 there. The idea stuck in my head, and I started playing around with the converter Thursday evening. It turns out an astonishing number of players could theoretically have hit .400 if they’d played a prime season for Colorado in ’99.

As I noted yesterday, the converter’s far from perfect, though I had fun seeing how ridiculously well some of the all-time greats may have done. Here are how ten stars might have fared on ’99 Rockies, which could double as a list of Hall of Fame-caliber players who never hit .400:

Player What his numbers convert to for the ’99 Rockies
Hank Aaron His 1959 season where he led the majors with a .355 average translates to .418, with 53 home runs and 305 hits
George Brett His magical 1980 season where he flirted with .400 for much of the year and finished at .390 is good for .454
Rod Carew Another player, like Brett, who nearly hit .400 when he batted .388 in 1977, Carew’s numbers convert to .456. In fact, if Carew played his career on a team like the ’99 Rockies, he’d hit over .400 six straight years and his lifetime average would be .395
Joe DiMaggio He would twice hit over .400, for his 1939 and 1941 seasons, if he played on a team like the ’99 Rockies. Interestingly, he’d have the better average in 1939 — .414 to .403 in 1941, the year of his 56-game hitting streak.
Tony Gwynn Gwynn would hit over .400 eight seasons playing on a team like the ’99 Rockies, peaking at .440 in 1987 and finishing at a .396 lifetime clip (he and Carew have nothing, however, on Ty Cobb, Rogers Hornsby and Joe Jackson who would hit over .400 lifetime. Cobb finishes with an almost nauseating .431 career average, eclipsing .400 13 consecutive years.)
Derek Jeter This might be the most interesting name here, because Jeter’s ’99 season with the Yankees converts to .401 on the Rockies that year. Perhaps if Jeter had played for Colorado, we’d have had the first .400 hitter since Ted Williams in 1941.
Mickey Mantle His 1957 season, where hit .365 for the Yankees translates to .450. Mantle also would have 74 home runs in 1961, not that it matters for unseating Barry Bonds if Bonds gets hold of the converter (read three tabs down, try not to vomit.)
Willie Mays Mays would hit a converted .410 for his 1958 season, with 882 home runs lifetime. He’d also hit 40 home runs and steal 40 bases three straight years and fall one home run shy of being the first 50-50 player.
Babe Ruth I mentioned this in yesterday’s post, but Ruth would hit over .400 six times playing his career on a team like the ’99 Rockies with 906 career home runs and a .386 lifetime average.
Barry Bonds I saved this one — both the best and the worst — for last. It has all the joy of watching any steroid-addled jerk triumph, but the conversion for Bonds’ 2001, 73-home-run season is too astonishing to exclude. Here’s how the year translates to the ’99 Rockies: 101 home runs, a .402 average and 200 RBI. Bonds also hits .461 in 2002.


To anyone wondering where to find the converter (I had to look around on Baseball-Reference), here’s what to do:

  1. On a player’s page, next to Standard Batting near the top, click More Stats
  2. Scroll down to Neutralized Batting
  3. Click on the drop down for year and select any of them, which will bring up a league tab. Repeat the process, which brings up a team drop down. After selecting a year, a league and a team, a player’s stats will automatically convert.

All of this is not to suggest anyone would hit .400 on the ’99 Rockies. Jackie Robinson fell just short in the converter, as did Frank Robinson, Alex Rodriguez and Ken Griffey Jr. (though Will Clark, Keith Hernandez and other lesser greats would have had .400 seasons.) And Ray Oyler would only hit .267 were his 1967 season converted to the ’99 Rockies, though it trounces his .175 lifetime batting average.

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Any player/Any era: Home Run Baker

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What he did: Before Babe Ruth, the closest thing to a fearsome slugger in baseball was Home Run Baker.

The Hall of Fame third baseman and Deadball Era star, born Frank Baker, earned his nickname a decade before Ruth essentially made a mockery of it. Where Ruth hit 40 or more home runs 11 times, out-homered entire clubs early on, and managed 60 homers in 1927, Baker never hit more than 12 long balls in a season. In fact, Baker led the American League in home runs from 1911 through 1914 with 42 combined.

Era he might have thrived in: Colorado Rockies, 1999

Why: This post is based around a simple question: Could Home Run Baker actually have hit home runs in a different era? I think so. Baker hit a softer ball than what Ruth faced in the 1920s and seemingly would have benefited playing his prime years in any generation past his own. Thus, I plugged Baker into a system to take him beyond his era.

Baseball-Reference has a tool that can factor how a player might have done for any team in any year. I first became aware of it after I devoted this column to Ken Griffey Jr. three weeks ago, and I’ve played around with it some since, using it for last week’s column. The tool’s a nifty feature for one of my favorite Web sites, even if I doubt it’s 100 percent accurate or that it can offer more than a simple numerical, formulaic look without any regard for the intangibles that make a baseball season what it is.

I checked how Baker’s numbers would rank for the 1999 Rockies, who had four men with more than 30 home runs. At least according to the stat converter, Baker wouldn’t have been one of those men, although his 1913 season translates to 18 home runs, 205 runs batted in, and a .413 batting average, all career highs. Regardless of what any algorithm says, though, my guess is that Baker could have topped 30 home runs playing in recent years, what with the livelier balls, diluted pitching, and chance to confer with Jose Canseco about steroids. It’s a long shot that Baker gets to keep his nickname, though.

Now of course, if Babe Ruth had played his entire career for the 1999 Rockies, the stat converter says he would have hit 75 home runs for his 1927 season, batted over .400 six seasons, and finished with 906 homers and a .386 lifetime average. There may be a related post of just how many players could have hit over .400 for the 1999 Rockies (I’m thinking somewhere in the hundreds), but I’ll save that for another time.

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

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Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? Maury Wills

Claim to fame: Wills revolutionized baseball in the 1960s by the leading the National League in steals from 1960 through 1965. In his 1962 MVP season, Wills stole 104 bases, broke Ty Cobb’s 47-year-old Major League record, and personally accounted for 13 percent of the steals in the National League, a rare feat. Other players soon followed suit. By 1965, the stolen base total in the National League was nearly twice what it was the year before Wills began playing, setting the stage for speedsters like Lou Brock, Tim Raines and Rickey Henderson.

Current Hall of Fame eligibility: Wills exhausted his 15 years of eligibility with the Baseball Writers Association of America in 1992 and can be enshrined through the Veterans Committee.

Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? This post was inspired a piece from Los Angeles Times columnist Jim Murray in January 1978, not long after Wills first fell short on the Hall of Fame ballot with the writers. Murray wrote:

It’s a good thing these guys aren’t on the gates of heaven. It’s all right to be selective, but will someone in the congregation please rise and tell me why Maury Wills only got 115 votes? Will someone please tell why Rabbit Maranville is in the Hall of Fame and Maury Wills isn’t?

Murray went on to point out Wills’ 1962 record (since broken multiple times), career marks and his impact on bringing back the steal. He added:

If Maury Wills doesn’t belong in the Hall of Fame, Babe Ruth doesn’t. He did the same thing Ruth did–change a national pastime, forever. For him to get only 115 votes and finish 11th behind a pack of journeymen players is a joke.

Murray was and remains one of the most respected sportswriters ever, nearly 12 years after his death, and in the three years after his column, Wills’ Cooperstown votes rose, to a peak of 40.6 percent in 1981, though he never again cracked 30 percent thereafter. Of the 11 men who finished in front of Wills on the 1978 ballot, all but one — Gil Hodges — is now in Cooperstown. Wills also finished 11 spots in front of future Veterans Committee pick Bill Mazeroski.

So the question is, does Wills belong in Cooperstown? Much as I respect Murray, one of my writing idols, my vote is no though I suspect the Veterans Committee may tab Wills before too long because of how he did on the writer’s ballot. Wills has also gotten sober since leaving the big leagues and turned his life around. As I wrote about another man who did this, Don Newcombe, the committee could do well to honor players who find recovery after falling short of greatness due to substance abuse.

For me, though, Wills’ career was too brief, his game didn’t offer much besides base running  (though he did win two Gold Gloves) and his career marks aren’t impressive. He ranks 19th all-time in career steals. Raines is fifth all-time and until he gets a plaque, I can’t support giving one to Wills. These days, Wills seems more like the Home Run Baker of base stealers than the Babe Ruth.

I’m not surprised at Murray’s piece. It’s common for sportswriters to lobby for local heroes. I recently watched a DVD compiled from 8 mm color footage shot by Washington Senators outfielder George Case and there’s a clip at the end from 1989, after Case’s death, where longtime Washington Post writer Shirley Povich says Case belongs in the Hall of Fame. And though it wasn’t a plug for Cooperstown, the last published words Red Smith ever wrote were, “Indeed, there was a longish period when my rapport with some who were less than great made me nervous. Maybe I was stuck on bad ballplayers. I told myself not to worry. Some day there would be another Joe DiMaggio.”

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

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Book Review: The 25 Greatest Baseball Players of All Time

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A couple weeks ago, I received an email from a representative of a publishing company, Sourcebooks. The rep said New York Times bestselling author Len Berman has a new book due out this fall, The 25 Greatest Baseball Players of All Time. The rep wrote:

I’d be curious to hear your thoughts on his list, which include Alex Rodriguez (preposterous if you ask me) and excludes names like Rod Carew, Cal Ripken Jr., Ken Griffey Jr. and several other 90’s players that have proven themselves above and beyond many that made the list.

I welcome story ideas, and I’ll write about interesting topics that relate to this site. Berman’s book met those criteria, so I encouraged the rep to send me a copy. He obliged and also included Berman’s bestseller, The Greatest Moments in Sports, which I’ll review in the next few weeks, once I read it.

I finished Berman’s newer book yesterday, and it wasn’t bad. It’s meant for children, similar to many baseball books I had growing up. The book didn’t tell me much I didn’t already know, but it offers good information for children learning the history of the game. The 25 players are mostly fine ambassadors to baseball, offering kids a slice of America’s pastime at its best. In alphabetical order, Berman’s top 25 players are:

  • Hank Aaron
  • Johnny Bench
  • Ty Cobb
  • Joe DiMaggio
  • Bob Feller
  • Jimmie Foxx
  • Lou Gehrig
  • Bob Gibson
  • Josh Gibson
  • Rogers Hornsby
  • Walter Johnson
  • Mickey Mantle
  • Christy Matthewson
  • Willie Mays
  • Stan Musial
  • Frank Robinson
  • Jackie Robinson
  • Alex Rodriguez
  • Pete Rose
  • Babe Ruth
  • Mike Schmidt
  • Warren Spahn
  • Honus Wagner
  • Ted Williams
  • Cy Young

(As I’ll make clear before the end of this post, my top 25 differ somewhat.)

Berman, an eight-time Emmy Award-winning sportscaster, determined picks with a Blue Ribbon Panel consisting of Ralph Branca, Frank Deford, Steve Fortunato, Roland Hemond, Jeffrey Lyons, Chris Russo, and Bernie Williams. The panel members apparently voted subjectively on who they considered worthy, with the 25 highest vote recipients making the book. Given how much baseball changes every generation, the panel’s unscientific look might have been the fairest selection method. Still, a quantifiable ranking system may have helped, too.

I have recently begun to pay more attention to one of the latest crazes in the baseball research community, a metric called Wins Above Replacement (WAR.) This rates the number of extra wins a player theoretically provides over an average replacement, incorporating both offense and defense and suggesting a player’s overall worth. Using TheBaseballGauge.com, I found the 25 best players for career WAR. They are as follows, with players who didn’t make Berman’s list in boldface:

  1. Babe Ruth
  2. Ty Cobb
  3. Walter Johnson
  4. Honus Wagner
  5. Cy Young
  6. Barry Bonds
  7. Willie Mays
  8. Tris Speaker
  9. Stan Musial
  10. Ted Williams
  11. Hank Aaron
  12. Eddie Collins
  13. Mickey Mantle
  14. Roger Clemens
  15. Rogers Hornsby
  16. Christy Matthewson
  17. Grover Cleveland Alexander
  18. Lou Gehrig
  19. Rickey Henderson
  20. Mel Ott
  21. Frank Robinson
  22. Nap Lajoie
  23. Joe Morgan
  24. Greg Maddux
  25. Tim Keefe

WAR isn’t perfect, and in general, stats often don’t tell the whole story. No metric could fully measure the contributions to baseball of Jackie Robinson, who has an eternal spot in my top 25. Still, looking at WAR and other formulas popular within the Society for American Baseball Research can double-check for worthy old-timers like Speaker and Collins.

Berman notes in his postscript, “Who knows? Maybe this book will turn into a ‘doubleheader.'” That route offers plenty of material. I could list 50 great players who didn’t make the cut including Carew, Ripken and Griffey. I don’t know if they make my top 25, and I think if Rodriguez is on Berman’s list, Bonds should be there as well (personally, I don’t feel like honoring either man or Clemens.)

Here’s my top 25:

  1. Babe Ruth
  2. Willie Mays
  3. Ted Williams
  4. Ty Cobb
  5. Walter Johnson
  6. Hank Aaron
  7. Satchel Paige
  8. Lou Gehrig
  9. Cy Young
  10. Honus Wagner
  11. Jackie Robinson
  12. Stan Musial
  13. Christy Matthewson
  14. Tris Speaker
  15. Rogers Hornsby
  16. Eddie Collins
  17. Pete Rose
  18. Rickey Henderson
  19. Josh Gibson
  20. Joe DiMaggio
  21. Greg Maddux
  22. Roberto Clemente
  23. Mickey Mantle
  24. Sandy Koufax
  25. Joe Jackson

I encourage anyone who’s interested to post their top 25 in comment form here.

I periodically review baseball books. For a compilation of my reviews, go here.

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My 2010 NL and AL All Star ballot

As regular readers may know, I joined the Internet Baseball Writers Association of America a few months ago. Duties for club members are fairly light, though one of the things we do is cast token votes on mid-season awards and All Star selections. I’m proud to offer my first ballots:

American League

POSITION/ AWARD NAME (Last, First)
First Base Morneau, Justin
Second Base Cano, Robinson
Third Base Beltre, Adrian
Shortstop Jeter, Derek
OF (vote for 3) Hamilton, Josh; Suzuki, Ichiro; Crawford, Carl
Catcher Mauer, Joe
DH Guerrero, Vladimir
Cy Young Lee, Cliff
MVP Morneau, Justin
Rookie Boesch, Brennan
Manager Maddon, Joe

National League

POSITION/ AWARD NAME (Last, First)
First Base Gonzalez, Adrian
Second Base Prado, Martin
Third Base Wright, David
Shortstop Ramirez, Hanley
OF (vote for 3) Ethier, Andre; Pujols, Albert; Holliday, Matt
Catcher Olivo, Miguel
DH Jones, Chipper
Cy Young Jiminez, Ubaldo
MVP Jiminez, Ubaldo
Rookie Heyward, Jason
Manager Black, Bud


Jones is a sentimental pick at National League DH, and with no third baseman doing anything especially noteworthy in that league, I was almost tempted to give the possibly-retiring Atlanta Brave the start. Beltre gets the nod for resurrecting himself, as does Guerrero, and I was tempted to tab Barry Zito for the same reason, but Jiminez has been simply too amazing, in this, the Year of the Pitcher. Lee may be a consensus choice as AL Cy Young, though if I was simply picking who’d make the All Star start, I’d tab Armando Galarraga to make a statement.

Mostly though, I went off of Wins Above Replacement (WAR) data to determine my picks. I used a Web site I recently learned of called TheBaseballGauge.com, which allows any number of different WAR comparisons, including by position and league. I encourage any fellow baseball geeks to make use of it. It could be the new Baseball-Reference or Retrosheet for fanatical baseball researchers.

IBWAA All Star voting ends Wednesday, June 30, 2010, at 9:00 p.m. PST. Anyone who writes about baseball in any capacity on the Internet is eligible to join (yearly dues are $20) and cast a vote for this, as well as Hall of Fame selections at the end of the year. Email Howard Cole, baseballsavvy@aol.com for more information.

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Any player/Any era: George Case

What he did: I’ve written a couple of times recently about Case, an outfielder for the Washington Senators and Cleveland Indians from 1937-1947 who shot 8 mm color footage of his career. I didn’t know of Case before first hearing from his son George Case III, but his stolen bases totals impressed me.

In an era before speedsters like Maury Wills, Lou Brock and Rickey Henderson helped revolutionize base stealing, Case averaged over 40 stolen bases in six seasons of leading the American League. Imagine what Case could have done in an era where stealing was encouraged and coached for.

Era he might have thrived in: The 1980s, playing for the St. Louis Cardinals.

Why: Perhaps no team stole as well as the 1985 Cardinals, who swiped 314 bases and had five men with more than 30 steals. Case stole a career-high 61 bases for the Senators in 1943; the stat converter on Baseball-Reference says Case would have 70 steals on the ’85 Cardinals, second-most on the team behind rookie Vince Coleman who had 110.

Maybe there are certain intangibles a machine can’t compute. I ran track all four years of high school, and I remember that as our team attracted more good runners, I got better. I think a lot of things in life are like that. People thrive on competition. We learn from others who best us, receiving encouragement from their feats that the seemingly impossible can be done.

Case didn’t have many peers to draw from. Wally Moses finished just behind him in 1943 with 56 steals, though no other American League player had 30. In fact, Case fell just shy of stealing at least 10 percent of the bases in his league that year. Looking over Baseball-Reference, I found seven men in the modern era who have done this:

  • Luis Aparicio in 1959 and 1964
  • Lou Brock in 1966
  • Bill Bruton in 1954
  • Willie Mays in 1956
  • Jackie Robinson in 1949
  • Snuffy Stirnweiss in 1944
  • Maury Wills in 1962 and 1965

For reference, Ty Cobb didn’t steal 10 percent of the bases in his league when he swiped 96 bags in 1915, Brock fell short of the 10 percent mark when he had 118 in 1974, and Henderson’s record-setting 130 steals in 1982 accounted for 9.33% of the 1,394 stolen bases in the American League that year.

With the glut of expansion and nearly twice as many teams now playing in each league than they did in Case’s era, stealing 10 percent of the bases in one’s circuit has become almost impossible. Consider that Jose Reyes’ 78 steals in 2007 were less than 5 percent of the 1,564 steals in the National League that year. Still, I think Case’s totals for his era are impressive.

Curious, I emailed Case III. He wrote back, “My father often said, that if he had played in another era, he probably could have stolen at least 100 bases in a season.  My dad never ran when the team was behind by more than three runs and never tried to steal third with two outs – it just wasn’t done when my dad played.”

There’s one more thing worth mentioning. Case died in 1989 at 73 from emphysema. When I interviewed Case III by phone two weeks ago, I asked if his dad had smoked during his career. Case III told me his dad started smoking when he was 10. If he’d come of age in an era where this was frowned upon, who knows what his stolen base totals could have been.

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

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Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? Chipper Jones

Claim to fame: Jones rates among the greatest-hitting infielders, with 2,452 hits, 430 home runs and a .306 lifetime average. The 1999 National League Most Valuable Player, six-time All Star and longtime Atlanta Braves third baseman has declined since winning the 2008 batting title, though he’s wrapping an outstanding career.

Current Hall of Fame eligibility: Jones still plays and will be eligible for enshrinement through the Baseball Writers Association of America five years after he retires.

Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? The short answer is yes. Every eligible infielder with 400 home runs and a .300 lifetime batting average is in Cooperstown. The question is not if Jones will be enshrined but when.

I took part Friday in a forum discussion at Baseball Think Factory prompted by a blog post from Furman Bisher on news Jones may be retiring (Bisher’s a 91-year-old sportswriter who in 1949 conducted the only interview Joe Jackson granted about the 1919 World Series.) Bisher wrote of Jones:

I don’t care to get into a spitting fight over his ticket to Cooperstown, but I don’t foresee him as a first-ballot inductee. Nor a second, but somewhere down the line. If he had hit 500 home runs, that might have been the decider. Sorry, but he’ll come in somewhere behind Griffey Jr.

Several forum members objected, calling Jones a certain first or second-ballot pick. I side with Bisher, and I commented:

Five of the 10 batters that Jones compares most to on his Baseball-Reference page are in Cooperstown and only one, Mickey Mantle, was a first-ballot Hall of Famer. The others: Duke Snider (11th ballot), Billy Williams (6th ballot), Eddie Matthews (5th ballot) and Jim Rice (15th ballot.) Or, to put it another way, if you were filling out a Braves dream team and had a choice between Jones and Matthews at third, could you honestly take Chipper over Matthews? That’s what, in effect, would happen with making Jones a first-ballot inductee.

This attracted opposition. Some forum members suggested voting for worthy players regardless of their ballot and decried penalizing Jones for Matthews’ unjustly late enshrinement. I still wouldn’t give Jones a first ballot vote. To me, these votes are best rarely used, for immortals like Ken Griffey Jr. and Greg Maddux. Jones has fine numbers, but I doubt he’s considered immortal.

Few are. Of the 104 players the BBWAA has voted in (and 292 people elected total), just 44 made it on their first ballot, not counting Lou Gehrig and Roberto Clemente who were enshrined through special elections. Using Baseball-Reference, I compiled a list of the 44 first ballot inductees. They are:

  • Hank Aaron
  • Ernie Banks
  • Johnny Bench
  • Wade Boggs
  • George Brett
  • Lou Brock
  • Rod Carew
  • Steve Carlton
  • Ty Cobb
  • Dennis Eckersley
  • Bob Feller
  • Bob Gibson
  • Tony Gwynn
  • Rickey Henderson
  • Reggie Jackson
  • Walter Johnson
  • Al Kaline
  • Sandy Koufax
  • Mickey Mantle
  • Christy Matthewson
  • Willie Mays
  • Willie McCovey
  • Paul Molitor
  • Joe Morgan
  • Eddie Murray
  • Stan Musial
  • Jim Palmer
  • Kirby Puckett
  • Cal Ripken Jr.
  • Brooks Robinson
  • Frank Robinson
  • Jackie Robinson
  • Babe Ruth
  • Nolan Ryan
  • Mike Schmidt
  • Tom Seaver
  • Ozzie Smith
  • Warren Spahn
  • Willie Stargell
  • Honus Wagner
  • Ted Williams
  • Dave Winfield
  • Carl Yastrzemski
  • Robin Yount

Interestingly, Jones’ career Win Above Replacement (WAR) rating of 78.4 bests 19 first ballot Hall of Famers: Banks, Bench, Brock, Eckersley, Feller, Gwynn, Koufax, Jackson, McCovey, Molitor, Murray, Palmer, Puckett, Brooks Robinson, Jackie Robinson, Smith, Stargell, Winfield, Yount. It also ties Jones with Griffey, 59th all-time. But I don’t know if enough BBWAA members rely on sabermetrics yet for it to factor. I suspect more voters will employ a subjective sentiment that goes, Chipper was good but he should have been a little bit better… 500 home runs…

Even Roberto Alomar fell short his initial vote in January. Jones and Alomar each may rank among the best-hitting infielders in recent years, but Alomar nabbed 10 Gold Gloves while Jones hasn’t won any. Alomar’s reputation plummeted after he spit on an umpire in 1996, and he still got 73.7 percent of the Cooperstown vote. There are different ways to look at this. Some may suggest Jones, a player with arguably better offensive numbers (and, not that many writers care, better WAR) may receive a sufficient boost without Alomar’s personal baggage to garner the necessary 75 percent of the vote for Cooperstown. Maybe so. But I also think it shows when there’s doubt, the BBWAA votes conservatively.

For what it’s worth, most Hall of Famers needed multiple tries at induction, including Joe DiMaggio, Jimmie Foxx and Tris Speaker. Same goes for 14 of the 20 300-game winning pitchers in Cooperstown. And from 1937 until 1962, there were no first ballot selections. I could write more on how voting has changed over the years or what might make a first ballot Hall of Famer today. For now, I’ll close by saying there’s no shame if Jones joins the multitudes in Cooperstown without that distinction.

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

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Update: There is now color footage from 1940 of Joe DiMaggio and Ted Williams online

A few weeks ago, I did a post here on a DVD, “Around The League: 1939-1946” compiled from 8 mm color footage shot by Washington Senators and Cleveland Indians outfielder George Case. I got a fun story with great anecdotes from Case’s son George Case III and good still shots from the film. The one thing I lacked when I posted my original piece was a good clip from the DVD.

However, with the help of Case III and the DVD production company, Delaware Digital Video Factory, there is now a two-minute, forty-eight second clip online. I encourage anyone who would like to see color footage of Joe DiMaggio and Ted Williams taking batting practice in 1940 to check out the guest post I wrote for Seamheads.com, which is also running a podcast today with Case III.

Let me know what you think!