*** VD 14 Commentary Thread ***

[revo]

That is pretty cool. So do they meet u at the curb or do u need to walk in ?

They throw it through your open window

[heyelander]

... And then I feel asleep. Looking at things now

[heyelander]

You get one mulligan and then we throw you into the coronavirus pit!

Stop the name dropping assholes! I was really hoping Randy Milligan would remain a secret find!

[heyelander]

spent less time thinking about that pick than I did managing ya'lls expectations about when it would be up.

gonna be another one of those drafts...

[The Feral Slasher]

My year for henderson is 1985. Year for ott is 1929

[frae]

Does Garp know there is no KS to wait for and that he is up?

[The Feral Slasher]

I just realized Mel Ott was 5'9", I always assumed he was 6'3" or something like that. First time I have picked him

[heyelander]

I think about the PONY league draft I slacked off on updating that top 100 players list. Here's what's been done so far (He slowed down to three a week I think when baseball season was delayed)

No. 18: Tris Speaker
No. 17: Rogers Hornsby
No. 16: Alex Rodriguez
No. 15: Josh Gibson
No. 14: Lou Gehrig
No. 13: Roger Clemens
No. 12: Honus Wagner
No. 11: Mickey Mantle
No. 10: Satchel Paige
No. 9: Stan Musial
No. 8: Ty Cobb
No. 7: Walter Johnson
No. 6: Ted Williams
No. 5: Oscar Charleston

[heyelander]

Oscar Charleston:

I want this one ranking to make you angry.

We are now close to the end of the Baseball 100, and all along I have made certain to almost never mention the rankings. There’s is a specific reason for this: the rankings are just a device. Someone once asked Orson Welles if Mr. Thompson, the man who goes in search of Rosebud in “Citizen Kane,” learned anything or grew at all throughout the movie. “He’s not a person,” Welles raged. “He’s a piece of machinery to lead you through.”

That’s what the rankings are … they are here to give this project shape and to spark a few feelings. Yes, they’re in the basic order of a formula I used, one based on five things in no particular order:

Wins Above Replacement
Peak Wins Above Replacement
How multi-dimensional they were as players
The era when they played
Bonus value — This might include postseason performances, leadership, sportsmanship, impact on the game as a whole, if they lost prime years to the war and numerous other possibilities.
But I have no illusions about the formula. It is as flawed as anything so, whenever possible, I attached the player and a number that fits. So, for instance, Mariano Rivera is 91 for Psalm 91, the Psalm of Protection. Gary Carter is 86 for his role on the 1986 Mets. Joe DiMaggio is 56 for the hitting streak. Grover Cleveland Alexander is 26 because that was his magical year, 1926.

Bob Gibson, Tom Seaver, Jimmie Foxx, Greg Maddux, Mike Trout, Jackie Robinson, Frank Robinson and Mike Schmidt, among others, were all given a ranking based on their uniform numbers. I would say at least two-thirds of the numbers have some sort of connection to the ballplayer.

I even skipped No. 19 because of the ’19 Black Sox, the biggest single-year scandal in baseball history.

That’s not to say that I couldn’t defend the individual rankings. I’m sure I could. But to do so would be to say negative things about various players’ talent, which goes against the very essence of this project. And anyway, fighting over the questions — Ted Williams over Ty Cobb? Steve Carlton over Sandy Koufax? Carl Yastrzemski over Ken Griffey? — is a big part of the fun.

The anger people feel when seeing their player under-ranked is a good anger.

But this one, Oscar Charleston at No. 5, is different.

I want you to feel the fury of this ranking, feel it down deep. I want you to think, “Look, I’m sure he was terrific, but there’s no possible way that Oscar Charleston, who played in a struggling league 100 years ago, could possibly be the fifth greatest player of all time.”

Or I want you to think, “Fifth greatest? That’s ridiculous. He should be No. 1!”

Or I want you to think, “This is pure romanticism. We have almost no stats on Charleston. We have only a handful of quotes about him. You can’t rank someone this high on the list based on a few crusty legends and myths.”

Or I want you to think, “It’s such an infuriating tragedy that we as an entire nation never got to see the greatest player in the history of baseball.”

Or I want you to think, “How is it that I’ve never even heard of this guy?”

Or I want you to think some of those thoughts together, or even all of them at the same time. This ranking, unlike the rest, is a statement and, even more, it’s a challenge. Oscar Charleston is the fifth greatest player in baseball history? It is meant to make you think about what you think.

See, Charleston — Charlie, as he was called — is different. I would say he, more than Satchel Paige, more than Josh Gibson, more than Cool Papa Bell, more than any player in baseball history in my view, represents that time in America when African Americans were invisible to much of the country, when baseball was played exclusively by white men, when being black and playing ball was like howling into the wind.

“I’m truly tempted to research Oscar Charleston,” Thomas Boswell wrote angrily in 1999 when Charleston was included on The Sporting News’ 100 greatest player list. “Was he a 19th-century player? A Negro Leagues star? A legend in Antarctic sandlot ball? Who knows?”

Boswell’s column was intended to make a larger point about how modern players regularly get overlooked and under-ranked, a fair criticism about all lists, including this one.

But, he picked Charleston as his target. Why? Because Charleston is the one who challenges us. It’s one thing to honor Paige, who was one of America’s most charismatic figures and who pitched in the big leagues in his 40s and 50s. It’s one thing to honor Gibson, whose home run legends have endured through the years and who died too young.

But Charleston? Even now, if you asked moderate baseball fans across America, how many would even recognize his name?

Yes, I want you to feel rage about this ranking. Because there are only two possibilities. One is that I’m over-ranking Charleston, perhaps out of a raw sentimentality.

The other is that this is about right, that he was one of the greatest — maybe even the greatest — baseball player who ever lived and most of America ignored him.

And — here’s where the rage part comes in — we’ll never know for sure.

[Bene Futuis]

Does Garp know there is no KS to wait for and that he is up?

I sent him an email

[cavebird]

Seriously, though, thanks revo. Now that I think about it, name dropping was a problem back in the day, especially at the end. Mea culpa.

[johnnya24]

One pick per day ... way to go fellas

[revo]

One pick per day ... way to go fellas

It’s going to be a race to finish this before the next pandemic

[cavebird]

And yet still too fast for me to finish my prep before I had to make a pick in the dark in the second round.

[frae]

One pick per day ... way to go fellas

The Amish just passed us.