8) Lou Gehrig
Known as “The Iron Horse,” only something as serious as Lou Gehrig’s disease could keep Lou Gehrig out of the lineup. Gehrig set the record for consecutive games played at 2,130 and held it for 56 years until Cal Ripkin Jr. finally broke it in 1995.
By playing in so many games, Gehrig really had the chance to pile up the stats and prove why he was voted the greatest first baseman ever by the Baseball Writers’ Association in 1969. A career New York Yankee, Gehrig amassed a .340 batting average, sixteenth all-time; a .447 on-base percentage, fifth all-time; and a .632 slugging percentage, third all-time. His 493 home runs currently rank twenty-sixth all-time and 1,995 RBI are fifth. Gehrig also scored the tenth most runs in Major League history with 1,888 and holds the record for most career grand slams with 23.
Selected to the first seven All-Star Games, Gehrig won the AL MVP in 1927 and 1936, was runner-up two other years, won an AL Triple Crown in 1934, and was a member of six World Series Champion Yankees teams. He batted .361 in seven World Series.
It is a shame we lost such a great player, “The luckiest man on the face of the Earth,” so early.
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| #8 Lou Gehrig |
7) Ted Williams
For my money, and for a lot of other people’s, Ted Williams is the greatest hitter of all-time. And despite how much I love that distinction, he’s still only seventh on my list. I demote him for playing his entire career for the Red Sox during their Curse of the Bambino years— he never won a championship—and because he was so focused on his hitting that he was an aimless defender. Let’s discuss what got him to #7 though.
Williams won two AL MVP awards and won the AL Triple Crown twice, but surprisingly, neither of his MVPs came during a Triple Crown season.
The seventeen-time All-Star selection also is the most recent of only eight players to ever post a .400 batting average over a full season, batting .406 in 1941, again, neither an MVP nor a Triple Crown year.
Williams hit 521 home runs, which was third-highest when he retired, and his .344 batting average is the highest of anyone with 500 or more career home runs. His .344 average also ranks eighth all-time, but first among those who played their entire career after the dawn of the "live ball" era, meaning post-1920. Williams holds the mark for highest career on-base percentage with .482, and his .634 slugging percentage ranks second all-time. For all you Moneyballers out there, Williams has the second-highest OPS of all-time as well.
seventeenth all-time in runs scored, Williams led the AL in that category six times. He also led the AL in hitting six times, slugging nine times, total bases six times, and walks eight times.
What astonishes me most however is to think of what his numbers could be if he hadn’t lost a number of his prime playing years to military service as a pilot in both World War II and the Korean War.
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| #7 Ted Williams |
--from @jeuneski
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