The Wall Street Journal has
a list of the 10 greatest Yankees.
The Wall Street Journal developed a comprehensive set of criteria to determine which 10 Yankee position players were the greatest of all-time. The categories included postseason batting, fielding range, on-base plus slugging percentage and wins above replacement player. We also included the player's impact on team attendance and his effect on the value of the franchise. To give a more rounded portrait, we scored each candidate by their relevance in popular culture, upstandingness and earning power in the collectibles market.
The Mick only number 6? Fuck. YEEEEEEW!!!!
Despite his many accomplishments, Mantle also benefitted from dumb luck. The kid from Oklahoma joined the Yankees in 1951, the same year major-league games were first broadcast in color and nationally. The telegenic Mantle became the face of a loaded team that reached 12 World Series in 14 years. His smile came to symbolize "post-war American optimism," said Jane Leavy, author of a coming biography. At the start of his career, Topps launched the first modern-day trading cards, and Mantle's 1952 card came to embody the hobby. By the early 1980s, when the sports collectibles market began to soar, the boys who grew up idolizing Mantle were running corporations and spending huge sums on anything associated with the Mick.
3 comments:
The Mick--my fave all-time Yankee, btw--also benefited from being a monster player who set a slew of records that still stand half a century later, all while taking over for another legend who played the same position. Where's the dumb luck in that?
Get ARod off that list, he's not even a Yankee in my book.
Well, Nerdhappy, I guess A-Rod is lucky your proverbial book will not be used to determine his true measure as a Yankee.
Meanwhile, in the eight seasons left on his Yankee contract (2010 inclusive), an average of 22 HRs per season would have A-Rod surpassing Barry Bonds for the all-time HR record. Which means he’d obviously pass The Babe as the Yankees’ HR king. If you factor in the opportunities to add a couple more MVP titles to his current three, and the possibility of acquiring another World Series ring or two, that would make him—whether you like him or not—one of the great Yankees. And all this while eventually playing in The Bronx for 14 complete seasons: longer than Munson, Donnie Baseball, or even Joe D, for those keeping score.
(Btw, he has more career stolen bases than Jeter, the leader among current Yankees, himself in second place over-all, right behind the great Rickey Henderson’s tenure in pinstripes.)
All Rodriguez has to do is stay healthy. But if his strong work ethic and last year’s speedy recovery from hip surgery—and the dismissal of a planned second surgery—are any indication, A-Rod will be in fine form, with his time in The Bronx cementing his reputation as the greatest player of his generation. And the paycheck that went along with it will have been worth every dime. Not bad for a kid from Washington Heights.
It would be quite awesome to see, wouldn’t it?
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