Masters among Men

Derek Zumsteg

If you watch or listen to a lot of baseball games, you've probably heard any number of players referred to as "sure hall of famers" or "one of the greats". But if Joe Carter is considered even marginal material for the Hall, what does that make Ken Griffey, Jr.? High Dominator of Center Field for Life?

I want to take a minute to look at two players who dominate the game and where they already rank in the History of Baseball, along with where they'll end up, and possibly why they don't get the recognition they so obviously deserve. You know the suspects, but I hope to unearth some new information for your brain-expanding pleasure.

A brief note: all of these lifetime rankings are based on Total Baseball's historical rankings, which I prefer because they're based on how much better a player was than his contemporaries. This means overrated players like old Yankees get the drubbing they deserve (though admittedly, many old Yankees were pretty good). The lifetime Top Five? Babe Ruth, Nap Lajoie, Willie Mays, Ty Cobb, Walter Johnson (followed closely by Hank Aaron). It's good. It's really good.

First, the best pitcher of my lifetime - Greg Maddux. There are a couple of things that are never mentioned about Maddux. First, he pitches more innings than nearly any other pitcher in baseball. Since 1988, he has never pitched fewer than 200 innings, and he does it with fewer pitches than anyone else. Maddux' pitch counts for his games are in the nineties or below alarmingly often. That's efficiency, and it's why he'll be around for a long time to come.

Maddux has led the NL in walks+hits/innings pitched three times, and he's been real close when he hasn't. He was the single most valuable pitcher in the league four straight years from 1992 to 1996. This is incredible, the kind of dominance achieved only by players like Babe Ruth and Willie Mays (Cy Young only managed to be the best in his league four times total).

Greg Maddux, if he'd retired before the start of this season, would be the 40th-best player ever to put on a uniform. After this year, he'll crack the top 30, and the names he passes are legend: Eddie Mathews and Lefty Grove will be surpassed in the coming years, and if he has even three more seasons before he turns into a pumpkin, Maddux will be one of the twenty greatest players, right next to Christy Mathewson and Lou Gehrig. You know those names, right?

Here's what's weird, though. As good as Maddux is, and that's freaking incredible, if he has three more years in him he'll only have had as good a career as Barry Bonds already has. Maddux has dominated pitching four years in a row; Barry Bonds was the best hitter in the league four years in a row from 1990 to 1993, and then he did it twice again in 95-96. Up to 1996, he led the league in on-base percentage four times, slugging percentage three times.

Barry Bonds, were he to retire at the beginning of this season, would have been the 15th-best player to ever play the game, ahead of Stan Musial, and after this season he'll be just behind Mickey Mantle. A couple more "average" seasons from Barry (say, three), and he'll be the fourth or fifth-best player ever to play the game, right up with Cobb and Johnson.

And yet we don't hear about Barry Bonds and Greg Maddux twice as much as, say, a ticket-puncher like Wade Boggs, trying to reach those career milestones at the expense of his expansion team. Why's that? I humbly submit that it's because the national sports media is lazy.

I've harped on this before, but briefly: by over-focusing on nearly meaningless stats like RBI and wins, the media ignores the flashing neon signs of greatness, and so deprives the public of knowing that these two, and greats like Ken Griffey and Alex Rodriguez, walk among them. Barry Bonds is one of the greatest hitters ever to play the game. Where's MVP Juan Gonzalez on that list? Not in the top 500, not even within shouting distance. The total productivity of all of Juan Gonzalez's seasons - all of them - is worth Bonds' '92 season, or a little better than Maddux' '94.

Why aren't they noticed, and voted MVP? Barry Bonds supposedly isn't a good clubhouse influence; he's not a team player. And I say the Giants without Barry Bonds are the Pirates or the Reds or the Rockies. How's clubhouse chemistry when you're being slapped around like a bunch of schoolgirls by teams like the Expos, huh? Huh?

And maybe no one wants to talk about the Braves because they have their own TV station and they're owned by Ted Turner (in a lovely little money-making deal), but without Maddux the Braves would be the third-best team in the NL (um, that doesn't sound as impressive, I know, but this doesn't always work out). There's also the fact that despite racking up strikeouts faster than you can lay down the signs, he's not known as a power pitcher and is "boring" to the Fox types. Lemme tell you something, though - watch Maddux hook some overrated scrub on three high fastballs, each inches higher than the last. That's not power pitching, that's artistry.

Besides, awards like the MVP and the Cy Young are as much political as they are merited. Alex Rodriguez had one of the best seasons for a rookie in all of baseball history, and was robbed by someone from a more successful team who gets RBIs. Cy Youngs often go to the man with the most wins. J.T. Snow wins Gold Gloves. And so on, and so forth, and Bonds and Maddux, recognized as great players, remain unheralded for the place they will take in baseball history.

This is one of the greatest times in the history of baseball. When I see Greg Maddux pitch, I find myself unable to pay attention to things going on around me, like my computer catching fire (@$%@#% Windows). He makes many of the best hitters look like T-ball rejects.

Barry Bonds at work is one of the smartest, most talented hitters, preying upon the best pitching talent like a hawk on wounded pigeons. He is deadly and utterly without mercy, and after my own heart, he walks when others would whiff.

These should be baseball's poster boys, the Michael Jordans marketing types decry baseball for lacking. Maddux and Bonds play baseball nearly as well as Jordan played basketball, they are the best in the game, two of the best in the history of the game. Watch them when you can; there has never been a better time for fans anywhere in the country to watch these great men play out their stellar careers, and to appreciate their greatness.

Derek's just this guy, you know? Email him at dmz@strikethree.com.