Aaron, Mays, Mantle, Williams, Ruth, Gehrig, Frank Robinson and others that sit atop the all time HR list accomplished truly amazing feats.
Currently there are 25 players in the history of the game to amass more than 500 HR in their career. Five (5) or 20% of that short list have direct implications back to PED (Bonds, Arod, Palmeiro, Ramirez, Sosa). Two others on the list are or have been suspected (McGwire, Sheffield), if ever proven to have used PEDs that would be 7 out of 25 or 28% of the greatest homerun hitters cheated.
As I look at the remaining names on the list, you get goosebumps thinking about these historic players:
Aaron, Ruth, Mays, Griffey, F. Robinson, Killebrew, Reggie, Thome, Schmidt, Mantle, Foxx, McCovey, F.Thomas, T.Williams, Banks, Mathews, Ott, and E.Murray.
Ted Williams stands out to me, because I hail from Boston originally as well as because he lost close to 5 seasons of his prime to military service.
I took a minute to estimate some production numbers for him had he not gone to serve his country and lost that time:
The pink highlighted cells represent what I estimated. (averaged the four years prior to get 1943-1945, averaged 1951 and 1954 to get 1952 and 1953)
The yellow highlighted cells are partial years I subtracted (and replaced with full pink years)
The green highlighted cells are his actual career totals.
The blue highlighted cells would be my estimate of his career totals without missing the time.
While I project Williams would have been close to or around the #3 all-time spot (when you remove the cheaters) and with similar HR numbers to Willie Mays it is the likelyhood that his average would have stayed around his career .344 mark that coupled with the HR production, and the almost a walk a game, amazes me. Ruth is the only other top HR hitter to compare to when looking at average as well.
Mays and Aaron didn't lose any significant time during their careers for any reason.
As I further get into the numbers, it is a real shame Griffey had so many injuries in his early 30's, he would have been a challenger (assumed clean) to Aaron's HR mark.
Will we see any more of the top All-Time HR leaders get asterisks placed next to their names/numbers in the near future? I honestly hope so, it will make it easier to understand who to embrace as heroes and who not to...
Totally agree about Griffey. Such a shame to see such a talent lose so much time to injury. He could have been closing in on 700 right about now, if not already passed it.
ReplyDeleteAnd same goes for Teddy Williams. Imagine if he had those years back.
you go to hand it to Winfield and Frank Thomas and Greg Maddux and all the other guys who didn't take the easy way, but earned it. They are the heroes.