Greatest Baseball Swings

[JLP 6]

1. Will Clark - the stance, Lean back, zero in, swing and follow through, serious professionalism meets poety.

2. Paul O'Neil- That little kick only made it sweeter.

3. Ken Griffey Jr. - Stance held straight and tight, all of a sudden he throws the bat into the ball and gets it back undercontrol only for the follow through.

4. Alfonso Soriano - Semi deep crouch like a shell, but it evolves into a pearl of a swing.

5. Manny: I love his stance. Bat at 10 o'clock, forward straight, back leg dipped, leg lifts slightly, and then all should and waist. Beautiful

[TKO11]

My faves have always been Mickey Mantle (from the left side), Ted Williams (except for the end of the follow through) and George Brett. I used to love to watch Brett (despite how he always clobbered whatever team I was rooting for - I was never rooting for the Royals).

[rocky111]

BABE RUTH , Ted Williams, Billy Williams, Stan Musial, Willie Mays, Johnny Mize to name but a few.

[TDKO]

Robert Deniro in "The Untouchables" as Al Capone disciplining one of his men, good motion, poor follow-through, but he was in the strikezone.........

[Michael Frank]

Hank Aaron - absolute perfection - also maybe the most under-rated player of all, as he has held several all-time records yet rarely makes anyone's all-time outfield

Willie Mays - virtually as good as Aaron's, with long follow-through often having the barrel of the bat touch the ground as he began to run to 1st base

Ted Williams - besides having a pretty swing, was the best all-around hitter ever, and the smartest

Lou Gehrig - great all-around hitter and player, and the best hitter Joe DiMaggio ever saw (which Joe admitted only shortly before he died)

Frank Robinson - one of the most under-rated players ever, yet was the 1st MVP in both major leagues - athletic yet controlled swing

Babe Ruth - along with Ted Williams maybe the premier combined HR-and-batting- average hitter - awesome, efficient-yet-powerful swing of the hugest bat in use - .342 lifetime avg. and 714 HRs just incredible, along with Ted's .344 and 521 HRs despite military service in 2 wars

Darryl Strawberry - not accomplished like the others, but a fluid, pretty swing from beginning to end

DiMaggio and Clemente's were among the ugliest swings for top hitters; Reggie Jackson, like Ruth, could look pretty bad when fooled by a pitch. Slap-hitters like Rose and Carew don't count . . .

[JLP 6]

I love the Strawberry mention. Choked the bat, High knee raise, and as you said fluid strike zone swing.

[Surf-Bat]

Lou Gehrig- perfect swing. Could hit it out of the park or fire rockets all throughout.

Ted Williams
Mickey Mantle
(Mantle the more natural, Ted the more studied. Both unbelievably explosive)

Stan Musial- Perfect swing made up for fruity stance at the plate(which always makes me laugh)

Paul Molitor- Robo batter. Did everything textbook. Beautiful to watch.

Now I only wish we had some game films of the greatest batsman of them all- Ty Cobb.

[Surf-Bat]

[QUOTE=Michael Frank]
Lou Gehrig - great all-around hitter and player, and the best hitter Joe DiMaggio ever saw (which Joe admitted only shortly before he died)

DID HE? I WONDER WHY IT TOOK HIM SO LONG TO ADMIT IT. I KNOW HE ADMIRED LOU.
INTERESTING....

Clemente...among the ugliest swings for top hitters;

YEAH, BUT BOY COULD HE HIT ANYTHING !! HIGH, LOW, MIDDLE, OUTSIDE, INSIDE....JUAN MARICHAL SAID HE WAS AMAZED AT HOW RC SEEMED TO BE ABLE TO HIT BALLS AS HIGH AS HIS EAR OR AS LOW AS HIS SHOELACES.

[Michael Frank]

Lou Gehrig - great all-around hitter and player, and the best hitter Joe DiMaggio ever saw (which Joe admitted only shortly before he died)

DID HE? I WONDER WHY IT TOOK HIM SO LONG TO ADMIT IT. I KNOW HE ADMIRED LOU.
INTERESTING....

Clemente...among the ugliest swings for top hitters;

YEAH, BUT BOY COULD HE HIT ANYTHING !! HIGH, LOW, MIDDLE, OUTSIDE, INSIDE....JUAN MARICHAL SAID HE WAS AMAZED AT HOW RC SEEMED TO BE ABLE TO HIT BALLS AS HIGH AS HIS EAR OR AS LOW AS HIS SHOELACES.

Yes, DiMaggio apparently liked being known as the greatest living player for decades, and wherever it was that I read his praise for Gehrig, it was mentioned also that this was the first time he had so acknowledged Gehrig publicly, though they had played together briefly in the mid-1930s--Lou was close to leaving the game when Joe came up to the bigs.

For my money, Gehrig was the better all-around ballplayer, though you never hear anyone say so. And he was captain of a team on which his arrival was preceded by that of none other than Babe Ruth. Personally, I think both Mays and Aaron were better all-around players than Joe D. also, but I rarely hear anyone else say so, esp. about Aaron--yet Aaron was the closest thing to the perfect ballplayer. He could do it all AND one never saw him make a mistake (except on the Wheaties commercial!).

As to your comment on Clemente, with which I agree of course, I'd note that several teammates of his chased bad balls all the time as well. Manny Sanguillen most notably. Those Pirates didn't seem to believe in the base on balls.

I'd imagine the superb Ty Cobb's swing wasn't as pretty as that of others named above in this thread, because he was very much a guy who placed the ball, supposedly often with a short swing--a great talent, for sure. I'd have liked to see the swings of Rogers Hornsby (.358 lifetime), Nap Lajoie, Paul Waner, and Lefty O'Doul, all great (and intelligent) hitters.

[TKO11]

While I would preface this post by saying that any argument about the relative greatness of Dimaggio against Mays or Aaron is one of semantics (as they were all true greats), I also think that any argument that they were clearly better than Joe is incorrect.

If you look strictly at offensive numbers, or base-stealing, it would seem that Aaron and Mays had more power and speed than Joe. What the stats don't tell you is all the little immeasurable, intrinsic things that made Joe great. The power numbers also fail to take into account that Joe was a right-handed batter playing in Yankee Stadium, so a huge number of his shots were directly into Death Valley. In any other park he would have averaged another 10 home runs a year.

Joe didn't steal a lot of bases but Joe was incredibly fast on foot, a virtually unparalelled base-runner, and in my opinion a better overall outfielder than anyone else that ever lived. Not only because he was fast and always threw to the right base, but because he saw the ball like no-one else and got the jump every time. To hit it out of Joe's reach you truly had to hit it nowhere near him - and he always made it look easy. That automatically made him less flashy as Mays, but Willie often had to make spectacular catches on plays where Joe would have made routine catches. As a baserunner he was always totally aware of where the ball was, and was always moving in the right direction (usually at the speed of a gazelle). And woe be to the baseman who was going to try to tag Joe out on a slide, because he would kill you coming into the bag as hard as freight train.

Also, the guy was a power hitter who almost never struck out. Not once in his entire career did he strike out 40 times in a season. What that means is that even when he wasn't getting hits, he was contributing to the team's scoring by moving runners around, advancing them into scoring position. On the teams Joe played for, the importance of that cannot be underestimated, and I think that most people today somehow forget that nothing, NOTHING, hurts your team more than a strikeout. Mays and Aaron struck out few times compared to modern power hitters, but they struck out hundreds and hundred of times more than Joe, even when you compare their 13 best seasons to all 13 of Joe's.

Plainly put, Joe did absolutely everything great. There are hitters who were as great, there were fielders who were as great, there were base-runners who were as great, there were players who were as naturally gifted as he. But all of them did one thing as great as he. Joe did everything, every single part of the game, great. He had no weaknesses. And I have always loved the quote where, when in his last season a reporter asked why he still played so hard. His reply was, "Because there might be someone in the stands who's never seen me play before." How awesome is that?

Even Ted Williams, the only man of Dimaggio's era that could even remotely claim to have been as great a ballplayer as Joe (though IMO he was very one dimentional compared to Joe) said, "Joe was simply the greatest player I ever saw, as well as the most graceful." And I've never forgotten watching Ken Burns Baseball series about 15 years ago, when they were covering Dimaggio. Billy Crystal, who grew up in New York in the 50s, would ask his father's friends about the stars of the day like Snider, Mays and Mantle. He said they would reply, "Snider? Great. Mantle? Hits the ball a mile. Mays? Runs like the wind.... But you never saw Dimaggio kid. You never saw the real thing."

[hawk5ins]

is and Awesome read.

Hawk

[Michael Frank]

While I would preface this post by saying that any argument about the relative greatness of Dimaggio against Mays or Aaron is one of semantics (as they were all true greats), I also think that any argument that they were clearly better than Joe is incorrect.

If you look strictly at offensive numbers, or base-stealing, it would seem that Aaron and Mays had more power and speed than Joe. What the stats don't tell you is all the little immeasurable, intrinsic things that made Joe great. The power numbers also fail to take into account that Joe was a right-handed batter playing in Yankee Stadium, so a huge number of his shots were directly into Death Valley. In any other park he would have averaged another 10 home runs a year.

Joe didn't steal a lot of bases but Joe was incredibly fast on foot, a virtually unparalelled base-runner, and in my opinion a better overall outfielder than anyone else that ever lived. Not only because he was fast and always threw to the right base, but because he saw the ball like no-one else and got the jump every time. To hit it out of Joe's reach you truly had to hit it nowhere near him - and he always made it look easy. That automatically made him less flashy as Mays, but Willie often had to make spectacular catches on plays where Joe would have made routine catches. As a baserunner he was always totally aware of where the ball was, and was always moving in the right direction (usually at the speed of a gazelle). And woe be to the baseman who was going to try to tag Joe out on a slide, because he would kill you coming into the bag as hard as freight train.

Also, the guy was a power hitter who almost never struck out. Not once in his entire career did he strike out 40 times in a season. What that means is that even when he wasn't getting hits, he was contributing to the team's scoring by moving runners around, advancing them into scoring position. On the teams Joe played for, the importance of that cannot be underestimated, and I think that most people today somehow forget that nothing, NOTHING, hurts your team more than a strikeout. Mays and Aaron struck out few times compared to modern power hitters, but they struck out hundreds and hundred of times more than Joe, even when you compare their 13 best seasons to all 13 of Joe's.

Plainly put, Joe did absolutely everything great. There are hitters who were as great, there were fielders who were as great, there were base-runners who were as great, there were players who were as naturally gifted as he. But all of them did one thing as great as he. Joe did everything, every single part of the game, great. He had no weaknesses. And I have always loved the quote where, when in his last season a reporter asked why he still played so hard. His reply was, "Because there might be someone in the stands who's never seen me play before." How awesome is that?

Even Ted Williams, the only man of Dimaggio's era that could even remotely claim to have been as great a ballplayer as Joe (though IMO he was very one dimentional compared to Joe) said, "Joe was simply the greatest player I ever saw, as well as the most graceful." And I've never forgotten watching Ken Burns Baseball series about 15 years ago, when they were covering Dimaggio. Billy Crystal, who grew up in New York in the 50s, would ask his father's friends about the stars of the day like Snider, Mays and Mantle. He said they would reply, "Snider? Great. Mantle? Hits the ball a mile. Mays? Runs like the wind.... But you never saw Dimaggio kid. You never saw the real thing."

Your points are well taken, but in regard to nothing hurting a team more than a strikeout, I'd say hitting into double-plays is worse--not that DiMaggio did much of that.

I also think the notion of DiMaggio being a better hitter because he struck out less is giving too much weight to that stat when ranking hitters. That one falls into the "most valuable" realm, IMO. Ruth was a better hitter than DiMaggio, with significantly higher offensive stats. He also struck out much more-- which doesn't negate the truth of the previous sentence.

I'm not sure Joe did anything better than Mays or Aaron based on the films I've seen, and the stories I've heard from people my parents' age who saw DiMaggio, Mays, Aaron, Mantle, and Snyder play, in person. It's true Joe hit for a higher lifetime average, but Aaron and Mays played way too long, hurting their lifetime averages, and they competed when the major leagues were integrated and more competitive; DiMaggio's career was mostly during the "white-only" days until 1947, and even those last few years of his saw only a handful of blacks and Hispanics in the majors (and none on Joe's own team while he was there).

The American league was only token-integrated (Larry Doby and few others of color) far longer than the National league, and I wonder how Joe's average would have looked if he had faced pitchers like Bob Gibson, Juan Marichal, Don Newcombe, and also others not of color who were just better than most in the AL: Koufax, Drysdale, Robin Roberts, Seaver, Carlton, et. al. Joe faced Bob Feller, but how many others besides him who were great? Aaron and Mays faced better pitchers, I feel.

In the end, you are right that it's sort of splitting hairs between Joe, Willie, and Bad Henry, but I am just noting some distinctions as to their competition.

[TKO11]

As so often happens Michael, you seem to want to claim I said things I never said. I never said that Joe was a better hitter than anyone, and certainly not a better hitter because he struck out less. I said that because he struck out very few times, it was one of a hundred things he did that made him a great, overall, complete ballplayer.

Was Ruth a better hitter than Dimaggion? Absolutely. Was he a better ballplayer? In my opinion not a remote chance. He couldn't even begin to compare to Joe at anything other than swinging the bat. This doesn't diminish Babe, because he never gave a shit about anything but his offensive numbers. Dimaggio didn't care about his offensive numbers, only that he do everything possible to get a win for his team. And he did a million little things that the stats don't show that made that happen.

Incidentally, Babe had that incredibly short porch in right field, and Joe had Death Valley in left - anyone who doesn't consider that in Joe's numbers is simply not paying attention. Again, that isn't said to diminish Babe (who's power numbers were going to be awesome no matter where he played).

[hawk5ins]

Top 12 Hitters of All Time, excluding himself:

1-Ruth
2-Gherig
3-Foxx
4-Hornsby
5-Dimaggio
6-Cobb
7-Musial
8-S.J. Jackson
9-Aaron
10-Mays
11-Greenberg
12-Mantle

Ted had some interesting things to say about him(self) Hitting in Yankee Stadium and Joe D. Hitting in Fenway. Because both parks played to their strengths (Williams in Yankee Stadium and Dimagg in Fenway), neither hitter got many decent pitches to swing at (even though Ted did hit .301 in NY.).

He also mentions that The Monster (37' high) routinely played agianst Joe D., becuase he was not a "lofty type hitter" and hit more "hard, hard line drive homers", thus reducing many those potential homers into long singles.

But even with that said, Sox pitchers rarely gave him much to pull.

Great book especially given this topic.

Hawk

[TKO11]

Hold on though Hawk - that fails to take something very important into account. First, Fenway isn't the only other park in the AL. It also forgets that when Joe played at Fenway he was facing Red Sox pitching - always pretty strong.

What I am saying is that if he played at a park that had a standard depth for his home games, facing the pitching he would otherwise face at Yankee stadium, he would have hit MANY more dingers. For the 154 game season, he was playing 77 games every year in a park where half the field (from left field through to right-center field) was over 400 feet, and his power alley was 460.

What if he played at Municipal, Comisky, Griffith or Tiger Stadiums, where his power alley would have been 385? Or even Shibe Park, where the power alley was deep (420) but still 13 yards shorter than Yankee Stadium?

Legend has it that one day Joe came up twice with two outs and the bases loaded and both times hit 2 balls 455 feet to Death Valley, both being caught by his brother Dom. Two grand slams in any other park in baseball. Joe had invited Dom to his house for dinner that night and said later he was so mad that he didn't even talk to his brother the whole time.

When you are a right handed batter in a park with dimensions like these:



....you lose a ton of dingers just due to geography. Joe's stats reflect that pretty clearly.

[hawk5ins]

Or for him for that matter.

I Was just repeating Teddy's comments that he thought if the two had switched ball parks, he was not convinced that both would have had significantly better numbers has had been argued by others.

I simply found it very interesting coming from Williams.

Williams simply thought the WORLD of Joe. In the Chapter on Dimaggio, he comes right out of the gate:

"Dimaggio was the greatest all around player I ever saw. I give it to him over Mays simply becuase he was a better hitter than Mays. I saw him play, I saw what he could do and I'm positive that he was a better hitter than Mays. He didn't have quite the power that Willie had, but he was certainly smoother, and he was a classic hitter. Dimaggio was a .325 hitter despite playing half his games at a tough ballpark like Yankee Stadium, and he looked grat doing it. At the plate he was poetry in motion; his fluid swing was a thing of beauty.

I can't say enough about DiMaggio. Of all the great major leaguers I played with or agianst in my 19 year career, he was my idol. I Idoilized Joe DiMaggio!"

Coming from Teddy Ballgame, I think that says quite a bit.

Hawk

[TKO11]

Yep - the only time he didn't like Joe was when the writers did the voting for MVP....

[hawk5ins]

In, at least THIS book, I'm referencing, Williams states:

" It's incredible to think that during DiMaggio's 56 game hitting streak in 1941, he never attempted a single bunt in 223 official at bats. During that streak he batted at a .408 clip and showed some power with 16 doubles, 4 triples and 15 Homeruns. He won the MVP that year although some people thought I shoudl have gotten it becuase I hit .406 that same season. Well I never felt I should have won it in '41! Dimaggio had an incredible year and led the Yanks to the pennant. Theres no doubt that his streak was one of the most amazing feats in baseball history."

Hawk

[TKO11]

As I recall, it was Joe's 1947 MVP award that Ted thought he was screwed on.

Hard to say - Ted's offensive numbers were much better than Joe's (Ted won the Triple Crown) but again it ignores a lot of things. Joe was a terror on the bases and the top defensive player at his position. Ted sometimes didn't see balls coming his way because he was practicing perfecting his batting stance standing out the in right field.....

[Surf-Bat]

Yes, DiMaggio apparently liked being known as the greatest living player for decades, and wherever it was that I read his praise for Gehrig, it was mentioned also that this was the first time he had so acknowledged Gehrig publicly, though they had played together briefly in the mid-1930s--Lou was close to leaving the game when Joe came up to the bigs.

For my money, Gehrig was the better all-around ballplayer, though you never hear anyone say so. And he was captain of a team on which his arrival was preceded by that of none other than Babe Ruth. Personally, I think both Mays and Aaron were better all-around players than Joe D. also, but I rarely hear anyone else say so, esp. about Aaron--yet Aaron was the closest thing to the perfect ballplayer. He could do it all AND one never saw him make a mistake (except on the Wheaties commercial!).

As to your comment on Clemente, with which I agree of course, I'd note that several teammates of his chased bad balls all the time as well. Manny Sanguillen most notably. Those Pirates didn't seem to believe in the base on balls.

I'd imagine the superb Ty Cobb's swing wasn't as pretty as that of others named above in this thread, because he was very much a guy who placed the ball, supposedly often with a short swing--a great talent, for sure. I'd have liked to see the swings of Rogers Hornsby (.358 lifetime), Nap Lajoie, Paul Waner, and Lefty O'Doul, all great (and intelligent) hitters.

Thanks for the info.

I think Gehrig is superior to DiMaggio as well. In fact I have yet to see a "Greatest Ballplayers" list or a debate between baseball experts where Joe is rated higher than Lou.

[Surf-Bat]

[QUOTE=TKO11] He couldn't even begin to compare to Joe at anything other than swinging the bat. This doesn't diminish Babe, because he never gave a shit about anything but his offensive numbers.
QUOTE]

Too bad Ruth didn't continue pitching. He was quite awesome at it. I saw a comparison of Babe vs Walter Johnson at the mound and Babe actually outperformed him most of the time.

Here's a great Ruth thread:

http://www.baseball-fever.com/showth...walter+johnson

[Surf-Bat]

Just finished the Cobb bio, btw. Yikes. A horrifying human being. He'd be institutionalized today.

I had a guy walk up to me when he saw me reading it and say "He was a racist". I laughed. Saying that Cobb's racism was his problem is like saying that a stubbed toe is the problem of a person with a limb torn off. Or that a person with pneumonia has a "bad cough".

[Mike DeLisa]

If by Cobb bio you mean anything by Al Stump, throw it out and start over.

Stump was a sycophant and and bullshitter. He stole a bunch of memorabilia from a senile Cobb and later sold the stuff.

He intentionally wrote a sensationalist book (actually 2 books) that defamed Cobb and his legacy.

Cobb deserved better from Stump!

[TKO11]

I loved the movie "Cobb" with Tommy Lee Jones about his travels with Stumpy. I especially loved when he was dying of cancer toward the end of the movie and a nurse told him she needed to take a blood sample. He said, "Well bring a bucket over here darlin', and I'll cough up a few pints for you...."

[Chuck1052]

While Joe DiMaggio had a very low strikeout total, it should be pointed out that he also had comparatively low walk totals. Could it be that DiMaggio was more of a "first-ball" hitter, which do much to explain why he had relatively few strikeouts and walks.

Yes, low strikeout totals can be a virture in a number of ways, but notice that Babe Ruth, Ted Williams, Lou Gehrig, Barry Bonds and Mickey Mantle had very high walk totals, which is a major reason that they had impressive on-base percentage statistics. While Joe DiMaggio was a truly great hitter, I don't think that he was nearly as good in that department as Ruth, Williams, Gehrig, Bonds or Mantle when you look beyond batting averages, home run and strikeout totals.

- Chuck Johnston

[Michael Frank]

As so often happens Michael, you seem to want to claim I said things I never said. I never said that Joe was a better hitter than anyone, and certainly not a better hitter because he struck out less. I said that because he struck out very few times, it was one of a hundred things he did that made him a great, overall, complete ballplayer.

Was Ruth a better hitter than Dimaggio? Absolutely. Was he a better ballplayer? In my opinion not a remote chance. He couldn't even begin to compare to Joe at anything other than swinging the bat. This doesn't diminish Babe, because he never gave a shit about anything but his offensive numbers. Dimaggio didn't care about his offensive numbers, only that he do everything possible to get a win for his team. And he did a million little things that the stats don't show that made that happen.

Incidentally, Babe had that incredibly short porch in right field, and Joe had Death Valley in left - anyone who doesn't consider that in Joe's numbers is simply not paying attention. Again, that isn't said to diminish Babe (who's power numbers were going to be awesome no matter where he played).

TKO,

Look, I'm not looking to argue and to have a thread degenerate. If you say you're not saying Joe was better than anyone, I'll accept it.

What I was responding to was your comment,

"On the teams Joe played for, the importance of that cannot be underestimated, and I think that most people today somehow forget that nothing, NOTHING, hurts your team more than a strikeout. Mays and Aaron struck out few times compared to modern power hitters, but they struck out hundreds and hundred of times more than Joe, even when you compare their 13 best seasons to all 13 of Joe's."

It seemed you were arguing to refute my claim that Hank and Willie were better than Joe, vis a vis his lower strikeouts. But if it's to say it contributed to his being a "great, overall, complete ballplayer," my view is that it's an offensive stat and should be judged within his offensive contributions only. No one's convincing me that Joe was a better base-stealer or fielder than Mays, or had a better arm, or broke faster for a fly ball, or hit for better (or equal) power.

Unlike some others, I won't insist that you implied, meant, or were thinking a certain way. It just seemed to me that you were not addressing Joe's superior strikeout stat to show he was equal to or worse than Mays and Aaron, but better. You compared their 13 best seasons to his 13 total seasons, and said his were much lower as to K's.

Also, like Surf, I'd say Ruth was no one-trick-pony. He had an excellent throwing arm, knew the game perfectly and made few mental errors, and was actually one of the greatest pitchers, ever, for a few years, before management decided to make him an everyday player because of his offense.

Ralph Kiner called Ruth the greatest baseball player ever, and yet he played when DiMaggio did. Kiner was a prodigious HR-hitter for a few years but I don't believe this biased him in Ruth's favor (though Ralph was the player quoted, when asked why he didn't choke up on the bat, as saying, "Because Cadillacs are down at the end of the bat"--often misquoted as "Because home run hitters drive Cadillacs," which IS what he meant).

[Michael Frank]

Thanks for the info.

I think Gehrig is superior to DiMaggio as well. In fact I have yet to see a "Greatest Ballplayers" list or a debate between baseball experts where Joe is rated higher than Lou.

You're welcome, Surf-Bat.

[TKO11]

I have to ask this: Michael, are you even aware of how you misdirect just about everything?

You responded to my comment about Joe's Ks by saying that doesn't make him a better hitter than Babe Ruth (something I never alluded to). Now you suggest that Joe's low strikeout totals, shouldn't be used as a yardstick of what a complete player he was, which is bizarre beyond words.

"It just seemed to me that you were not addressing Joe's superior strikeout stat to show he was equal to or worse than Mays and Aaron, but better." This after saying, "Unlike some others, I won't insist that you implied, meant, or were thinking a certain way."

If you can't see the inarguable fact that you are talking out of both sides of your mouth.... good on ya.

I am not talking about hitting only (is that why you seem so far off? Because the thread is about a swing?) I am saying he was a 100% complete player. Honing in on one factor I mentiomed to suggest how Joe's greatness covers a lot of intrinsic factors, particularly when I wrote several paragraphs to say just how the stats don't paint the picture, seems almost impossible to even discuss.

I guess Ozzie Smith was an okay player. No power, only a couple of decent years at the plate, good speed. Won a lot of gold gloves but still made plenty of errors. Just doesn't seem that great.... unless you think about how most of his errors came while attempting to make outs on hits that nobody else in the league would even have made any effort on. The books don't show that. Just like the books don't show why Tris Speaker may have been the best outfielder that ever lived as well. But many will tell you it's so.

Regarding Ruth, yes he had a good arm as an outfielder, a leftover from his original assignment. So you have me there. Too bad he couldn't get to half the balls anyone else in the league would have.

[Off The River]

I'd like to throw John Olerud into the mix here.

[TKO11]

Not to belabour the Dimaggio point, below are some things said about Joe from people who played with, against him or managed him. They all suggest the little things that Joe did that don't appear in the stats:

"As one of nine men, DiMaggio is the best player that ever lived." - Connie Mack

"He was a god." - Jerry Coleman

"DiMaggio was the greatest all-around player I ever saw. His career cannot be summed up in numbers and awards." - Ted Williams

"He had great wrists and hit balls like rockets, with top-spin, that exploded past third basemen. It always seemed as if he hit the ball hard. Every at bat." - Bobby Doerr

"He had the greatest instinct of any ball player I ever saw, he made the rest of them look like plumbers." - Art Passarella

"Joe DiMaggio was beyond question one of the greatest players of the century." - Mickey Mantle

"Dimaggio is the most complete ball player I've ever seen. He can do everything." - Joe McCarthy who was then asked by a reporter if he could bunt to which he replied, "I'll never know."

"He was just a smooth outfielder and smooth in his hitting. No mistakes, ever. He was a solid ball player in every way. I never saw him make a mistake, but there was a smooth way he had of going about everything." - Red Schoendienst

"I don't think anyone can ever put into words the great things DiMaggio did. Of all the stars I've known, DiMaggio needed the least coaching." - Joe McCarthy

"I wish everybody had the drive he had. He never did anything wrong on the field. I'd never seen him dive for a ball, everything was a chest-high catch, and he never walked off the field." - Yogi Berra

"Name a better right handed hitter, or a better thrower, or a better fielder, or a better base runner. That's right, a better base runner. Did you ever see him slide when he hooked the bag with his toe? Absolutely perfect." - Hank Greenberg

"Ted Williams was the greatest hitter I ever saw, but (Joe) DiMaggio was the greatest all around player." - Bob Feller

"There was never a day when I was as good as Joe DiMaggio. He was the best, the very best I ever saw." - Stan Musial

"You saw him standing out there and you knew you had a pretty darn good chance to win the baseball game." - Red Ruffing