My All-Time Baseball Team

Baseball has often been referred to as America's pastime and, as such, it carries a rich history. Perhaps unlike any other sport, fans and historians alike remember the great players of yesteryear, along with the legendary statistics of the game. 56, .406, 4,191, and 755 are all numbers that even casual baseball fans recognize.

As with any sport, it is difficult to compare players from different eras due to changes in the game and to its athletes. With the recent "steroid era" that Major League Baseball is just now emerging from it makes it even more challenging. But here I have attempted to compile my all-time baseball team.

The roster is comprised of a squad of 25 players, with starters listed first and backups at each position. I've attempted to place personal biases aside (which is why you won't see any '84 Tigers yet so many Yankees on the list) and to examine not only career statistical output, but also how a player compared to his peers during the era in which he played. For this list I've decided to include players from the steroid era if they dominated relative to others that played at the same time.

Any list like this will obviously leave out some worthy candidates. But with only 25 slots, there will be some great players not included. Without any further adieu, here's my roster along with some pertinent statistics & awards: (Note: This list was last updated upon the completion of the 2012 season)

Catcher
Yogi Berra (.285 BA, 2,150 hits, 358 HR, 1,430 RBI, 15-time All-Star, 3 MVP's, 13-time world champion)

Johnny Bench (389 HR, 1,376 RBI, 14-time All-Star, 10 Gold Gloves, 2 MVP's, 2-time world champion)

First Base
Lou Gehrig (.340 BA, 493 HR, 2,721 hits, 1,995 RBI, 7-time All-Star, 2 MVP's, 2,130 consecutive games played, 6-time world champion)

Jimmie Foxx (.325 BA, 534 HR, 2,646 hits, 1,922 RBI, 9-time All-Star, 3 MVP's, 2 world championships)

Second Base
Rogers Hornsby (.358 BA, 2,930 hits, 301 HR, 2 MVP's, 6 batting titles, 1 world championship)

Joe Morgan (2,517 hits, 268 HR, 689 stolen bases, 10-time All-Star, 2 MVP's, 2 world championships)

Third Base
Alex Rodriguez (.300 BA, 647 HR, 1,950 RBI, 2,901 hits, 15-time All-Star, 3 MVP's, 2 Gold Gloves, 10 Silver Sluggers, 1 world championship)

Mike Schmidt (548 HR, 1,595 RBI, 2,234 hits, 12-time All-Star, 10 Gold Gloves, 3 MVP's, 6 Silver Sluggers, 1 world championship)

Shortstop
Honus Wagner (.327 BA, 3,415 hits, 1,732 RBI, 8 batting titles, 722 SB, 1 world championship)

Cal Ripken, Jr. (3,184 hits, 431 HR, 1,695 RBI, 19-time All-Star, 2 MVP's, 2 Gold Gloves, 8 Silver Sluggers, 1 world championship)

Outfielders
Babe Ruth (.342 BA, 714 HR, 2,873 hits, 2,217 RBI, 2-time All-Star, 1 MVP, 94 wins & 2.28 ERA as a pitcher, 7 world championships)

Hank Aaron (.305 BA, 755 HR, 3,771 hits, 2,297 RBI, 25-time All-Star, 1 MVP, 3 Gold Gloves, 1 world championship)

Willie Mays (.302 BA, 660 HR, 3,283 hits, 1,903 RBI, 20-time All-Star, 2 MVP's, 12 Gold Gloves, 1 world championship)

Ted Williams (.344 BA, 521 HR, 2,654 hits, 1,839 RBI, 17-time All-Star, 2 MVP's, .482 OBP)

Ty Cobb (.367 BA, 4,191 hits, 1,938 RBI, 892 SB, 1 MVP, 12 batting titles, 54 steals of home)

Stan Musial (.331 BA, 3,630 hits, 475 HR, 1,951 RBI, 24-time All-Star, 3 MVP's, 3 world championships)

Barry Bonds (.298 BA, 762 HR, 1,996 RBI, 2,935 hits, 514 SB, 14-time All-Star, 7 MVP's, 8 Gold Gloves, 12 Silver Sluggers)

Mickey Mantle (.298 BA, 536 HR, 1,509 RBI, 2,415 hits, 16-time All-Star, 3 MVP's, 1 Gold Glove, 7 world championships)

Pitchers
Walter Johnson (417 wins, 2.17 ERA, 3,508 strikeouts, 110 shutouts, 531 complete games, 2 MVP's, 1 world championship)

Cy Young (511 wins, 2.63 ERA, 2,803 strikeouts, 7,354 innings pitched, 740 complete games, 76 shutouts, 1 world championship)

Roger Clemens (354 wins, 3.12 ERA, 4,672 strikeouts, 11-time All-Star, 7 Cy Youngs, 1 MVP, 2 world championships)

Warren Spahn (363 wins, 3.09 ERA, 2,583 strikeouts, 14-time All-Star, 1 Cy Young, 1 world championship)

Christy Mathewson (373 wins, 2.13 ERA, 2,502 strikeouts, 79 shutouts, 434 complete games)

Mariano Rivera (608 saves, 2.21 ERA, 1,119 strikeouts, 12-time All-Star, 3x MLB saves leader, 5 world championships)

Dennis Eckersley (197 wins, 390 saves, 3.50 ERA, 2,401 strikeouts, 6-time All-Star, 1 Cy Young, 1 MVP, 1 world championship)

So there's my all-time 25 man baseball team roster. What changes would you make?

When Our Heroes Fail Us

I have been thinking about the recent developments with the news regarding both Michael Phelps and Alex Rodriguez. I came across this article by ESPN.com's Jeff MacGregor and thought to myself, "Yep, that pretty much sums it up!"

Let me go on record as saying that I think both Phelps and A-Rod were in the wrong. Phelps should not be taking illegal drugs and Rodriguez should not have taken steroids. But let's be honest here. Phelps is not the first college-age dude to smoke some weed at a frat party and A-Rod is not the first professional athlete to try to gain an advantage in order to succeed in his field.

What they did was wrong, but the public response has probably been so strong because we expect so much more of our athletic heroes. We don't really care about some utility infielder that juices up and most of us certainly don't care about swimmers that don't win gold medals. It is because we have elevated these guys as icons and expect them to be something they are not -- superhuman.

As MacGregor writes:

"And this has been our recent trouble with American "heroes," at least the ones arriving still warm off the humming assembly lines of popular culture. The problem lies not in their manufacture, but in our perception of the final product. Once we've been sold their heroic stories by the media and the for-profit institutions in charge of such things, we refuse to see our heroes for what they really are: complex, fallible human beings just like us who rise briefly out of the mire to do something extraordinary, then return to join us in the hog wallow of moral confusion and squalid appetite that is everyday life.
Heroes never were meant to be an accurate reflection of daily human enterprise. They were meant to be examples of the rare capacity to exceed ourselves. Go back to ancient mythology, and you'll see what I mean. The Greeks understood that becoming a hero didn't absolve anyone of being human. In fact, that was usually the point of the story. Cautionary. Many of those "heroes" were lucky to get out of those stories alive. Most traded a single act of glory for a lifetime of punishing regret or a grisly death.
Here in 21st century America, however, we prefer the Candyland version of heroic myth, in which no one is doomed to die or drown or wander forever in a wasteland of pain, but instead sets a record, scores a contract with William Morris, makes a million and marries a swimsuit model, and everything winds up hunky-dory at the end. Nobody has to sleep with his own mother and then claw his eyes out with a brooch."

I don't think it's unreasonable to ask those that make millions of dollars playing a game to attempt to be good role models. But they are not perfect and they will fail. So even though Phelps and Rodriguez's confessions smacked of public relations scripting, they did admit to what they had done and asked for forgiveness. At least they've acknowledged it and sought to make things right. I think that says something about them. If we can't forgive them then maybe that says something about us as well.