Counting 'em down
Merry, merry, all!
We’re all the way to No. 94 on the Baseball 100 …
If you are following on Twitter or in The Athletic comments, you are seeing that many people are arguing about the numbers. It’s kind of a shame because — as you know if you have been with me since the beginning of this crazy adventure — I don’t care much about the numbers. One brilliant reader wrote that I should have had all the entire bottom 51 “tied at No. 49.”
That’s actually a brilliant way to look at it because that’s how I have it in my mind. I’m not REALLY saying that Tony Gwynn is better than Larry Walker or that Robbie Alomar is better than Ichiro. I had to put them in an order in order to make it a list. This is the order my system kicked out. I could defend it, certainly, but it’s so NOT the point for me.
I could also tell you there are 25 players who I could have put in for Nos. 76-100 and I would have felt just about as good about them.
I suspect you know that, again, because you’ve been a part of this for a while. I suppose this is just how it goes when you open something like this up to a wider world. But I will say, I think it’s going great. I’m so thoroughly enjoying writing these essays. I can’t wait for you to read some of the ones ahead.
If you listened to our Holiday Foods PosCast and you are so inclined, you can vote on the winner. We have each pledged some money to put into a pot, and we’re going to donate the money to the charity of our top vote getter.
And if you don’t think anyone won the draft — a reasonable thing, if you ask me — you can vote “Nobody,” and the money will go to my charity, which is DonorsChoose.
I did not expect quite the reaction to this Tweet I did about baseball cards. But I will tell you that if you ever collected baseball cards, ever invested in them, ever spent time trying to hoard Gregg Jefferies, Brad Komminsk or Brien Taylor cards, you will get a kick out of what this thread turned out to be.
Next week, I’m going to write about the five things I did/saw in 2019 that made me most happy. Or, I should say, I will TRY to do that between the dozens of Baseball 100 pieces I am writing, the Hall of Fame series I am starting and so on.
In the meantime, in all sincerity, Happy Holidays to everybody. You make my life so incredible by reading this stuff.
It's easy to complain about the order of somebody else's list. Until you try to do your own. Nobody has a right to complain unless they have publicly created their own list.
I have really enjoyed the essays. As far as the comments go, I don't think most people realize that there is probably not that huge a difference between 76 and 125. I imagine that the bottom quarter of this list, comparing different positions in disparate eras, was probably the hardest, with many great players barely missing the cut.
The comments that immediately dismiss someone in the bottom 10 as "not being top 100" bug me. I think most of them make a quick inner comparison to players who are top 20 in their mind and find them wanting (because there IS a big difference in talent between 100 and 20) and dismiss that player. Unless you can easily thing of 30 or 40 guys who don't make the list that you think are better, it seems an absurd thing to say without seeing the rest of the list.
I imagine these comments will only get more contentious as it goes on. (The Ichiro and Gwynn are too low guys will probably make the comment that they are better on the next 50 essays, and the longer the list goes, the more people whose favorites were lower than they would like will chime in each time) but please know that there are many of us who see this as a great daily experience.