Rank the 500 HR Club

[Baseball Guru]

1. Ruth
2. Mays
3. Bonds
4. Williams
5. Aaron
6. Mantle
7. Foxx
8. Schmidt
9. Robinson
10. Ott
11. Griffey
12. Matthews
13. Jackson
14. McGwire
15. McCovey
16. Banks
17. Killebrew
18. Murray
19. Sosa
20. Palmeiro

[Fragmentsofme]

Ranking based on what?

[Baseball Guru]

Your own opinion:D

[Fragmentsofme]

I mean, the best player? Best HR hitter? The person who can fart the best?

[Baseball Guru]

Ahhh, I see your question now..

You can rank them however you want to... When I ranked them I ranked them as overall hitters taking hr's, and average into consideration....

Just your preference really... Just rank who you think are the best of the 500 hr hitters...

[Fragmentsofme]

Ruth
Bonds
Williams
Mays
Aaron
Mantle
Schmidt
Jackson
Foxx
Robinson
Ott
McGwire
Griffey
Matthews
Killebrew
McCovey
Banks
Murray
Palmeiro
Sosa

[robmik]

Tempting to split them into two sections, like history....
B.C. and A.D.

B.C. for "before chemicals"
A.D for "after drugs", or "alleged doper"

B.C.
Ruth
Mays
Williams
Mantle
Aaron
Foxx
Schmidt
Robinson
Killebrew
Ott
McCovey
Mathews
Jackson
Banks
Murray
Griffey
A.D.
Bonds, McGwire,Sosa, Palmiero
The A.D. list gets longer in the ensuing years,as more guys get added.

[BPBlueSox]

Yeah, I have to put Bonds, McGwire, and Sosa all at the bottom of my list.

[Obri]

Well, each to their own....I personally would have Bonds second only to the Babe. No single player has impacted a lineup in recent times like Bonds has the Giants. Regardless of his alleged steroid use, the guy still has a great eye, some would argue still the best in the game today.

[Fragmentsofme]

Yeah, I didn't really factor in juice use. I ranked it on who I would want on my team from first to last.

[Teddy Ballgame]

- AS my username suggests, I am biased toward Ted Williams in discussions of the greatest hitters of all time. I can't help it. He was my boyhood sports idol growing up and I hitchhiked from London, Ontario to Detroit several times in my teens to see him in the twilight of his career, still rattling the railings in the top deck of Briggs Stadium with towering line drives against the Tigers. A few years later, I had one of the highlights of a not uneventful life when I was one of a small group of air force officers who had a few beers with Ted at the base near his New Brunswick fishing lodge. He was one of the few celebrities I have met who actually impressed me even more in person than in their press clippings. And I knew a couple of people from New Brunswick who served as salmon fishing guides and companions for Ted who assured me that he was a larger than life personality and the most charismatic and intelligent and fundamentally decent person they ever knew.

- Having said all that, I recognize that The Thumper may in reality have been only the second greatest hitter of all time. Williams always maintained - including in his 1995 book "Ted Williams' Hit List" that Ruth was both the greatest physical force the game had ever seen and the greatest hitter of all time. Ted was rarely wrong where baseball was concerned.

- But I cannot understand how some baseball fan today are ranking Barry Bonds above Williams and even Ruth as the best batter ever. Like the greatest players past and present who gathered around Ted at the 1999 All Star Game in a scene reminiscent of the Cardinals kneeling at the feet of The Pope, I have no doubt that Ted Williams was the best of the best of the living giants of the game as of that time and the greatest since The Babe.

- Lets compare Ruth, Williams and Bonds on the record to determine if Barry belongs in this Holy Trinity of Sluggers. Lets look at their overall records, including the final years when Babe was in decline, Ted was managing to almost defeat the clock, and Barry was juicing up his productivity through chemical enhancement. Here are the career stats of the three, using their average results and extrapolating these results over the current 162 game seasons:

BATTING AVERAGE - WILLIAMS .344 ... RUTH .342 ... BONDS a distant .300

ON BASE AVERAGE - WILLIAMS .482 ... RUTH .474 ... BONDS back at .443

HOME RUNS/AT BAT - RUTH 11.8 ... BONDS 13.8 ... WILLIAMS 14.7 in the toughest park in baseball for a left handed pull hitter to hit home runs

RUNS BATTED IN - RUTH 133 ... WILLIAMS 130 ... BONDS trailing at 110

SLUGGING PERCENTAGE - RUTH .690 ... WILLIAMS .634 ... BONDS .611

TOTAL BASES - RUTH 375 ... WILLIAMS 345 ... BONDS 331

RUNS SCORED - RUTH 141 ... WILLIAMS 127 ... BONDS 123

So even counting his last five juiced up seasons and his two prior seasons getting juiced up and adding more than 25 pounds of chemically created muscle to his once slender frame and some 25 points to his BA and 15-20 HRs to his power numbers, Barry clearly trails the two greatest hitters as well as the runners up Gehrig and Foxx and Rogers Hornsby in overall average and power numbers.

BUT LETS MAKE THE MORE HONEST AND REALISTIC COMPARISON to see where Bonds really stands in relation to The Babe and The Splinter. Hall of Fame greatness is measured in careers not in a few short flashy years. And so should we also use a significant span of years in determining where Bonds ranks in the hitters parthenon. The fairest comparison should be to take the achievements of Ruth, Williams and Bonds in their prime years, before The Babe and Ted got old and Bonds got artificially enhanced. (I almost wish that Babe and Ted - both of whom naturally bigger than Barry - had packed on the
steroids advantage. Williams at 6'4" would have bulked to about 250 pounds and they might have had to ban him for the pitchers' safety on the mound.)

LETS SEE HOW THEY DID IN THEIR FOURTEEN PRIME YEARS. For Ruth, this was from his first year as a full time player in 1919 until his last really good year with the Yankees in 1932. For Williams, it was his first years 1939-42, then his years after returing from WWII from 1946 to 1951 and then his years after returning from Korea 1954 to 1957, leaving out his final three years and his retirement at age forty two (it now seems that Bond has damaged his knees enough with steroids that he won't make it to 42 in uniform). For Bonds, it is the first 14 years of his career from 1986 to 1999.

DURING THOSE 14 PRIME YEARS, The Babe's batting average was .354, fully 12 points higher than his career average. Williams hit .350, six points better than his lifetime average. Bonds managed a pitiful .288 in those tough times without chemical enhancements. During their 14 prime years, Williams won SIX batting titles (missing one more by ONE HIT and another by too few at bats which later led to rule change that helped Bonds among others) while Ruth won ONE batting title. Bonds - zero, nadda, zilch, shut out.

IN THOSE PRIME YEARS, Ruth averaged a home run every 10.8 at bats compared with his career average of 11.8 while Williams averaged one for every 14.9 at bats and Bonds was in the rear with a home run every 15.7 times up, way below his assisted career stat of 13.8 and thereby relinquishing the only batting advantage he held over either of the two real giants in any category.

ALSO IN THESE PRIME 14 YEAR SEGMENTS, RUTH won 10 OBA titles as did Williams while Bonds won but three and Ruth won 11 home run crowns and Ted had 4 to Barry's 1 (ONE). The Bambino led the league in RBIs six times in 14 years, Ted led four times and Barry but once. In slugging percentage, Babe took an incredible 13 titles in 14 years while Ted won eight times and Barry just three times. Total Bases - six crowns for both Babe and Ted, 1 (one) for Bonds. Runs scored - 8 titles for Babe, 6 for Williams and again (I see a pattern here that's hard to ignore) 1 (ONE) for this ersatz superstar who, as a hitter over a career, is merely a star among many stars.

OF COURSE, baseball is a wonderful pasttime for "woulda, shoulda, coulda" speculations. Some claim Cobb "coulda" have hit many more home runs. Others will argue that Williams "shoulda" taken advantage of The Williams Shift that had only the third baseman on the left side of the diamond and that by chocking up on the bat and poking singles to left field he "coulda" hit at least .600 until the oppostion got wise and changed the shift.

But leaving all the woulda, coulda, shoulda stuff aside, Bonds is an unworthy pretender to the crown of greatest combination power and average hitter of all time. This crown is rightly worn jointly by the two guys who have the two hand carved statues outside The Hall of Fame - Babe Ruth and Ted Williams.

PS. READ in today's Toronto Star that MLB is now investigating Bonds and the shady characters around him including his frequently censured "doctor" for an array of illegalities including tax evasion and fraud. It couldn't happen to a more deserving guy than Bonds. I hope they finally throw the book at him. He doesn't belong with the true greats in baseball history but merely with the near greats and certainly with the ingrates.

[goathead63]

i got to see willie mays actually play,and he was the best complete player i ever saw.from watching old tapes of mickey mantle,he was a great hitter with an eye for the right pitch.as for pure power,sosa,mccguire,and bonds are up there to me,it does'nt matter what help they did or did'nt have.as for ted williams,i think he may be the smartest hitter that ever played the game.he treated every at bat as though it was his last ever. :thumbsup: i loved hank aaron,but the only reason he was able to break ruth's record was the simple fact he played so long.if willie mays had the 3 or so seasons back he fought for this country,he would be the one holding the home run record now. :thumbsup: :thumbsup: :thumbsup:
http://www.hill86.com/Images/Goats/Export/goathead-100.jpg

[Baseball Guru]

This thread was originally done before the whole steroid scandal was brought to light so I think Bonds got the benefit of that.. I would bet if most were to re-rank he would definitely be dropped down a great bit... I know he would on my list... This was more of a list of pure power and if we were to rank on "greatest OVERALL batter" I would probably rank Williams #2... By overall hitter I would take into account hr's, obp%, avg, etc.... I think I would only put Ruth ahead of him in that catagory...

Its fun to rank these guys...

[Teddy Ballgame]

i got to see willie mays actually play,and he was the best complete player i ever saw ... if willie mays had the 3 or so seasons back he fought for this country,he would be the one holding the home run record now.

- G - Yes, I agree with you that Willie Mays was the greatest all around player in history with the best combination of the five tools of baseball superstardom ... he could run, throw, field, hit and hit with power and in his prime he made every game interesting simply with the anticipation of what great feat he might pull off next ... Ted Williams considered Willie to be, with Joe DiMaggio, the best all around players of his era (the 40s and 50s) ... as for hitting, Willie was great and better than Bonds without benefit of the juice but, as Willie himself said in the thread in this forum where the Legends talk about The Legend, Williams was the best hitter in the history of the game ...

comparing Ted's stats with Willie's is quite instructive:
Ted batted .344 vs Willie's .302 with an OBP of .482 vs .384, a HR every 14.7 AB vs every 16.5 AB and a slugging percentage of .634 vs .557... as you say, Willie not Babe would have held the HR record had he not spent just under TWO seasons fighting in Korea ... on the other hand, Williams would have the record had he not spent just shy of FIVE seasons in the two wars of his time ... I wish I had been able to see Willie play but he was always in the NL and when I was growing up and we did not live near any NL team except the Expos and only for the last three years of Mays' career.

[goathead63]

i can't remember how many homers ted williams had in his career,was it 562?
i do'nt think you could lose if you picked mays or williams as the greatest,and maybe smartest players to play the game.if we had to pick pure power hitters,though somebody like greg luzinski would be in my top ten. :thumbsup:

[Teddy Ballgame]

i can't remember how many homers ted williams had in his career,was it 562?
i do'nt think you could lose if you picked mays or williams as the greatest,and maybe smartest players to play the game.if we had to pick pure power hitters,though somebody like greg luzinski would be in my top ten. :thumbsup:

- G - Ted only hit 521 homers because his career was cut short by over five years of war time service and because he walked more often per trips to the plate than any other player ever. His HR/AB ratio, however, remains in the top three or four of all time. In terms of walks, it was a combination of a great eye for the strike zone, fear by the pitchers who tried not to put anything over the plate that Ted could clobber, respect by the umpires who figured Williams knew and could see the strike zone better than they could, and his incredible discipline and patience to "get a good pitch to hit".

- One time a young pitcher complained to the umpire when he called a ball against Williams that the pitcher thought was actually a strike. Said the umpire to the pitcher, "Young man, when you throw a strike, Mr. Williams will let you know."

- I recall a game at Briggs Stadium in 1959 when Williams struck out his first two times up without taking the bat off his shoulder. His third time up in the seventh inning, on his first actual swing of the day, he launched a rocket into the second deck to win the game for the Sox by 2 to 1. Asked after the game why he took two consecutive called strike threes without swinging, Ted explained that through some kind of a fluke the Tiger second baseman Harvey Keunn (sic) had in Williams first two at bats positioned himself with his white uniform directly in Ted's line of sight so that he couldn't get a good look at the ball coming out of Keunn's chest with the release point of the pticher. "But in the seventh inning with a man on and two out, Harvey had to move closer to the bag and so I got a real good look at the ball and I was ready for it."

- Yes, Williams was probably the smartest hitter of all time and Mays may have been the smartest guy covering centerfield as well as a very astute base runner.

- Yes, Luzinski and another Polish giy with arms like tree trunks named Ted Klewsuski (sic) were raw power hitters for sure.