There’s no greater link to sports than a list.
They’re the ultimate argument starter among friends, family and even strangers via social media. There seems to be a list for everything these days, be it the greatest player, team, coach or venue. It feels like if it’s in the sports zeitgeist, then it’ll be on a list eventually.
Joe Posnanski of The Athletic has taken that to another level.
His latest book, “Baseball 100,” ranks the 100 greatest baseball players of all time. Recently, he sat down with the Free Press to talk about his rankings, the inspiration behind the list, and of course, the Detroit Tigers.
(The interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.)
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One of the things that stood out to me was the passion that comes through in the writing and the storytelling that you do in this book. If you could, tell us what the inspiration was behind making this book.
“It actually comes before I started working with the Athletic, I started doing a “Baseball 100” for about 10 years now. I starting doing one for my blog at the time, I was working for NBC at the time and the idea was just doing a ranking of the 100 greatest players and I would write a paragraph or two about each one each day. It seemed like a fun and goofy thing to do, the thing was — I couldn’t stop at a paragraph or two (laughs) I really wanted to dive into each of these players. They all seemed so fascinating to me.
“So, the pieces started getting longer and longer. Eventually, it ate up my entire life. I feel like I didn’t have time to do anything else. It actually petered out around No. 30, I stopped because I had other things to do — I had a job (laughs) and I put it away. I said I was going to come back to it some day when I actually have time to dedicate to it. When I came to The Athletic, I sort of had a different idea about it. It was still going to be a countdown of the greatest players, but it was going to be my story about baseball. This is going to be, ‘Why I love the game’ — why so many of us love the game. It’s going to be about ‘why baseball matters.’ ”
One of the things in reading the book that I thought was fascinating was you put players from Tokyo and the Negro Leagues, before they could play in Major League Baseball. What was the idea behind that? Are you telling the reader, you can’t tell the complete story of baseball without these different leagues?
“You’re absolutely right, I don’t think I could write the book or even think about writing the book without telling stories about the Negro Leagues — there is a Japanese player in there. I considered a couple of the great Cuban players and great Puerto Rican players before they could play in the major leagues. It’s super important. It’s such an untold part of baseball history. We’re now learning so much more about the Negro Leagues but for many, many years nobody knew any of the stories.
“They’re so fascinating, so fun, and so heartbreaking. They make great storytelling, and perhaps the best part about this book is getting to tell stories of not only the Negro Leagues players that so many have heard of, Satchel Paige and Josh Gibson. But maybe even some may have not heard of, guys like Bullet Rogan and Pop Lloyd. These guys were incredible players, I thought it was important, and they’re a part of baseball history too. So, you can write about the 100 greatest baseball players and you can argue about the list, but you’re telling the story about integration, you’re telling the story about segregation, fathers and sons, mothers and sons — you’re telling the immigrant story which is a big part of it. So for me, that’s what was so exciting about it.”
With lists, as you and I both know, they’re never “complete” because there’s always someone who deserves to be on it who isn’t. There’s three or four guys who could’ve been 100 or 99. Who are some guys who you looked at in creating the list and were like, “I wanna put you on the list — but I only have 100 spots.”
“Right, it’s not just that I have 100 spots but I don’t have 197 spots to put people on the list. There’s so many players that you wanna put on the list. I easily could’ve put Eddie Murray on this list, I easily could’ve put “Pudge” Rodriguez on this list. I easily could’ve put Joey Votto on this, and he even told me I should’ve put him on this list.
Whoa, how did that conversation go?
“Oh it was great, because he’s such a great guy. He was mostly joking, but he’s not wrong. He’s easily got a case to be one of the greatest players of all time. I easily could’ve put Zack Greinke on the list — nobody has probably written more on Zack Greinke than I have — and I love the guy but he just missed — I mean just missed. There’s so many of those guys. Ryne Sandberg, Barry Larkin, I could go on and on. There were so many in that final 30 that I only had room for five or something.
“So that was tough. It feels cemented and in stone because it’s in this large book, but when I was writing it for my blog, I would often say that if you asked me tomorrow, I’d have a different list than I did the day before. I had a formula and criteria that I felt good about. I wanted this to be a well-rounded list of players that represented different eras. If someone tells me, ‘Eddie Murray should be on the list,’ I’ll say, ‘Of course he should.’ He’s an unbelievably great player, but he didn’t make the list. It pains me because I love Eddie Murray and I like writing about Eddie Murray. You put Eddie Murray on the list, and there someone on the list who isn’t on there, and I’d be regretting that.”
You’ve covered the AL Central as a beat writer for the Kansas City Royals, I’m fascinated on how you view the Tigers as an all-time organization. Of course, they’re among the great franchises in league history due to longevity — but it almost feels like if you put them on either coast, then that profile gets elevated a bit. Would you agree?
“Detroit is an iconic baseball team with iconic baseball fans and an iconic baseball city. I was talking to long-time Detroit Tigers fans recently and they asked me how many Tigers are in the book, as I was naming off who is in the book it occurred to me — wow, there are a lot of great players for this franchise. Of course, (Ty) Cobb and (Hank) Greenberg — even in the modern era but I think about (Alan) Trammell and (Lou) Whitaker. I think in one version of this list, they were on it together — because you have to put them on the list together.
“You think about so many great players in Tigers history — in some ways, it is a very underappreciated and underrated baseball history, baseball team, baseball fanbase. I think a lot of it is because they haven’t won the World Series since ’84, and they had some incredibly talented teams that didn’t win it all and that has a little something to do with it. I’ve told a few people this, there’s two people the Hall of Fame should put in there tomorrow and that’s Lou Whitaker and Minnie Miñoso.”
One name I was surprised to not see on this list was Hal Newhouser. For my generation and others, guys like Newhouser and Charlie Gehringer, who is on the list, in a way feel lost to history in terms of greatness.
“I think part of that might be due to the time. Newhouser was right around the war years, he’s there during the war years. He’s the best pitcher in ’45, then it’s he and (Bob) Feller in ’46. So you know, it’s such a weird time because so many players are gone during that time.
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“Gehringer, is someone who I think is underappreciated because he wanted to be. That was the driving force behind Charlie Gehringer, was he was utterly disinterested in fame and being a great player. He just wanted to go out and play the game. He was Mr. Automatic and everything else. That’s what I wanted to accomplish with this book, there are a lot of guys on here who are just a name to even some of the most diehard baseball fans. Maybe you’ve heard the name, but you get to learn about these guys and discover just how good they were.”
Is there someone on the list that either you or others have universally looked at and thought to yourself, I’m surprised he wasn’t higher. Because I have a name, but I’d want to hear yours first.
“Well, it starts at No. 100 — No. 100 is Ichiro. As you know, Ichiro has a passionate fan base who can’t fathom the thought of 99 players being better than Ichiro Suzuki. Then there’s a lot of people who think Tony Gwynn should’ve been ranked higher and was ranked too low. (Sandy) Koufax was another guy many thought was ranked too low. There’s a specific thing with Joe DiMaggio where people think he was ranked too low, but I ranked him in a certain spot specifically.
“There are people who argue that Babe Ruth — who was ranked No. 2 — should be No. 1. So it pretty much goes all the way through. I think if you don’t have those conversations, then you’ve done something wrong. You want people to have those conversations about their favorite player, or a player they feel strong about and want them to be higher. I keep telling people, to be one of the 100 greatest baseball players ever is an amazing accomplishment, it’s not an insult (laughs). But just being in there is not enough for some people.
In those players you mentioned, you didn’t bring up the guy I figured you might’ve got the most guff about — Pete Rose at No. 60. But when you look at the rest of those guys from the Big Red Machine era, it makes sense.
“There’s some people who don’t think he should be on the list at all. You deal with everything when it comes to Pete Rose. It’s personal for me; my second book, “The Machine” was about the 1975 Reds. I have a very personal relationship with those guys. With Pete Rose, he’s such an interesting player. He was not talented — that we often think about in ways guys are talented, in terms of the five tools. He didn’t have power, he didn’t have a good arm, he was versatile but not a smooth or graceful defender. He hit, that’s what he could do. He got hits.
“It’s amazing, he got more hits than anybody in the history of the game. One of the most important tools is to play every day — he was indestructible, which is the rarest of all talents. He was this guy who just wanted it more than anybody else and played harder than everybody else — and was the center of so many winning teams.”
You mentioned something a bit earlier talking about those Tigers teams that were on the cusp of winning a World Series. Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander were two guys who were fantastic on the bump for those teams; would you consider them an underrated pitching duo?
“It is incredible to me that the Tigers had Verlander and Scherzer on the same staff, two of the all-time greats. And then they had (Rick) Porcello! He ended up winning a Cy Young. They might be one of the greatest teams to never win it all — that 2011-2012-era Tigers team. That team also had Miguel Cabrera, and a bunch of other good hitters. That was an incredibly talented team.
“Scherzer was a good pitcher — not a great pitcher when he got to the Tigers. Then he became a great pitcher, winning the Cy Young. You figured, ‘Is he this good?’ but then he goes to Washington and takes it up a notch. Verlander was a more direct path, highly drafted and could throw 100 mph. Verlander was a super prospect winning the MVP and Cy Young and then went into real struggles and got hurt, then he went to Houston and had great success again.”
You talked about Miguel Cabrera, you mentioned him with those Tigers teams. I look at Miggy as one of the great players of his generation, but when you look at his numbers, it’s almost a case you can argue that he’s underrated.
“I think that’s true, but it comes with a caveat — those teams didn’t win the World Series and it comes with playing in Detroit. He’s got the Triple Crown and the MVP but players know, that’s the most important thing. Players know how great he is. There are players that are great, fans and players would tend to agree on. Then there are some players that fans like more than players for whatever reason.
“Then there are fans who know players are great — he won a Triple Crown, fans know he’s great but the players are in awe of him. Nobody hit the ball harder than him, maybe ever. Players are awed by that — I think Mike Trout has the same effect. Fans know how good he his, but players are in awe of what he can do. There was nowhere you could throw it, he (Cabrera) was gonna mash it and he’s one of the absolute greats, there’s no question about it.”
In reading the book, I was caught up in the emotion with which you talked about Hank Greenberg. For those who don’t know the story about Hank Greenberg, could you share why it’s so significant?
“The home run record has always fascinated me. There seems to be more pain than glory (laughs), you look at the all-time home run record and the regular-season home run record, at a time, were both owned by Babe Ruth. In 1941, right before (U.S. involvement in) World War II, as a Jewish athlete he’s about to break the record and what that represented.”
“Greenberg is fascinating to me, he’s the sort of athlete you need to set the time. When you talk about what Jackie Robinson did or what Larry Doby did, pioneers of the game. I think it’s pretty apparent what they went through and had to endure. I don’t think it’s easy to explain what America was like when Hank Greenberg was playing. This was a time where there was a strong anti-Semitic movement — certainly worldwide but in America as well. He (Greenberg) had to endure that in a city with Henry Ford, who was leading that anti-Semitic movement, there’s a lot of American history in his story. A big, gregarious player who was a great hitter who hit home runs and barely struck out. You put it all together, it’s one of the great stories in baseball history.”
Al Kaline, he’s a guy whose numbers I don’t think I really appreciated initially until he passed away. When you look at numbers of him and others — I’d say post-Korean War baseball — he’s right up there with Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays, and others. If you could, touch on the significance of Al Kaline for the younger generation.
“I’ve been lucky to have met with and spoke to some of these gentleman and Al Kaline was such a gentleman. An engaging person, he had a more turbulent career than I’d assumed when I started to write about him. He became this iconic Al Kaline — Mr. Tiger later on in his career but he had a temper when he was young, and he was difficult to deal with.
“You look at him as a hitter, and it’s tough to endure what he went through to be the great hitter that he was, but he did it. He endured, he kept coming back and stayed forever. He got 3,000 hits and did all the things that make you a great player. When he first came up, he was this greyhound of a player — unbelievable defender with the cannon arm. His season at age 20 is one of the greatest seasons for anybody his age. It looked like it was going to come easy, but it never did but, in some ways, that makes the story better. It’s someone who had to endure ups and downs but still made himself into one of the greats.”
The highest-ranking Tiger on this list is Ty Cobb. There are a lot of things you can say about Cobb, and go in so many directions. It seemed like he was the perfect baseball player for that era, but in some ways he was maybe too perfect for that era.
“It’s funny, because I actually write about this in the book, but the two players I think of what Cobb was most like, in terms of ‘ferocious’ and ‘unyielding’ are Pete Rose, who has a connection with him through the hit record, and the other player is Jackie Robinson.
Ok, that’s fascinating.
“I know, you generally don’t think about it in those terms, he (Jackie Robinson) played the game just like Cobb. Rolling into the bases, playing fearless, unstoppable and played tough and was called “The Black Ty Cobb” in the papers. I find that to be one of the most interesting things I discovered in writing the book was this connection. Of course, because Cobb was known as a racist — but then you have some people say that he was misunderstood, but then some will say, ‘Well, he was racist.’ ”
“You always want to find somewhere in the middle, but it’s hard to find a middle. You talk about the most important people in baseball history, most iconic people in baseball history, you mention Ty Cobb.
“It’s telling, when the Baseball Hall of Fame opened, Ty Cobb actually got more votes than Babe Ruth. It tells you this veneration of Cobb, nobody wanted to win more — there was fury in how he played and it burned through. It’s a vital portion of baseball history.”
Contact Andrew Hammond at aahammond@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @ahammFreePress. Check out some of the tremendous offers from the Detroit Free Press and subscribe today!