Bonafide Baseball Hall of Famers

Tony Gwynn had the gastric bypass surgery. Good for him.

He had to be 340 or so, when I saw a piece on him and his son recently....

 

Ragu is correct. Ichiro is a special player. The only player who he reminds me of is Ty Cobb. I think as the story goes, Ty Cobb told someone he's the best hitter in the game. The other person said it was Babe Ruth and Cobb said Ruth wasn't ****. Cobb went out and hit something like three homers in the game said told the guy, "See, I can do that too. I prefer to get base hits."
Ichiro is a hitting machine. I've never seen anyone do what he does. The only hitter in my lifetime who was as automatic at getting a hit was Rod Carew. It seemed like every time I saw him, he got three hits. Ichiro is the same way, just a line drive above.

 

There's a video somewhere (can't find it now, of course) of Ichiro, during an All-Star workout in the Tokyo Dome, throwing a ball from the center field warning track (400 feet from home plate) and hitting the backscreen on the fly.

His arm is anything but "overrated," especially when you consider that in the survey of major league players, he routinely is voted behind only Guerrero in arm strength.

 

I haven't read the thread, so forgive me if this is a repeat. I read about this in the WSJ this morning. Here's the abstract to a paper for a Hall of Fame predictor model:

http://www.bepress.com/jqas/vol5/iss1/6/

 

He, and Carew for that matter are not automatic. They get out more than 60% of the times they put it in play. I'm not being difficult, the point is that if the Cobb story is true, he was stupid. I heard the story in the reverse, that Ruth said he could have hit .600 if he wanted to. That makes more sense.

 

Actually, the stories were told both ways, and there's probably at least a little truth to both.

FWIW, here's that Cobb 3-homer game: http://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1925/B05050SLA1925.htm.

And it wasn't that Cobb was "stupid" for not wanting to hit homers, but he truly did think that a hitter could have far more impact on the game playing his way -- getting a base hit, then rattling pitchers, catchers and fielders on your way around the bases -- than by taking one swing, hitting it out and sitting down in the dugout.

And yeah, Ruth (and Ted Williams, of whom the story was also said) both probably could have hit .600 if they had slapped singles to left all the time. The defense certainly gave them the room, on many occasions. Is it "stupid" that they didn't do so, too?

Nah, more a philosophy difference than anything.

 

OK, but one philosophy sounds a lot more right than the other.

 

Or perhaps that one just fits in more with your thinking. Keep in mind that the game was very different when Cobb and Ruth were playing and the home run did not play nearly as large a role. That was also likely part of Cobb's reasoning.

Also, that is the way he had been successful. Sure, Cobb was arrogant. But was he truly self-confident enough to know he could still be great if he had every completely changed his approach?

 

By the time Babe Ruth made the home run significant, Ty Cobb was 33 years old and in his 15th season.

 

Rice was one of the best 5-7 players in the game for the better part of a decade. That should get you into Cooperstown.

 

It didn't play a large role because most people couldn't do it. If he was able to hit 3 HRs on demand, and chose to hit singles so he could rattle the opposing pitcher, he cost his team countless games.

 

I think he was also taking into account that he wasn't going to be making a lot more outs if he started swinging for the fences all the time.