from Amazon
Wednesday, July 08, 2009
The greatest LHP of all-time… pitched 80 years ago?
I don’t buy it.
If it was a case of someone being so far above everyone else (say a Babe Ruth as a hitter), then I can believe that whatever downward adjustment you want to apply will still reasonably keep him as the best hitter of all time, then fine. But, Lefty Grove is not that. When you see a list like this:
Pitcher Career WAR
Lefty Grove 98
Warren Spahn 94
Randy Johnson 92
Steve Carlton 81
Tom Glavine 67
Sandy Koufax 65
Carl Hubbell 64
Hal Newhouser 57
Then how can you still claim to have Lefty Grove as the best LH ever? As I said, this doesn’t happen in the other sports. The greatest hockey player of all time will only go back as far as Gordie Howe. Even the revered Maurice Richard doesn’t enter the discussion. And with Howe, it’s easy to believe, seeing how well he played even as he hit fifty years old. So, a very freak-of-nature kind of player. Jean Beliveau is very highly regarded, but he takes a back seat to Mario Lemieux. As all the older players should. Today’s players are simply bigger, stronger and faster. Somehow, we are supposed to believe that the older players are their equals or better, because they made up for it with more heart and better fundamentals.
It’s Randy Johnson, and I don’t think it’s particularly close either.
Who’s the oldest player in the NFL that is talked about as being possibly “the best”? Unitas? Jim Brown? How about in the NBA? Bill Russell?
Fifty years from now, I’ll believe that Gretzky was the greatest ever, if only because he dominated his peers at such a level, that even if you apply a timeline adjustment, he’d still rank high (like Babe). Lefty Grove is not it.
Recent comments
Older comments
Page 1 of 344 pages 1 2 3 > Last »Complete Archive – By Category
Complete Archive – By Date