egvrich wrote:Make one career average card of these guys,
Not sure I'm following...you mean make up a card based on career averages? That's a non-starter in my book. Or do you mean a card that represents a year that comes closest to career averages? That would be fine by me, but good luck getting that card voted in....
And Andy, you can't be serious about Maris. Two times MVP, 7 times an All-Star (okay when they played two games a year), an excellent fielder, member of three World Series champs (Yanks and Cards), the man of whom Casey Stengel said that he never made a mistake in right field nor on the base paths, the player that Mantle said was the best all-around player he had ever seen. I'll leave you with an extract from an excellent article on why Maris should be in the Hall:
Maris has never made it into the Baseball Hall of Fame, and that is a scandal. The case against Maris is this: a somewhat short career (1957 to 1968) and a weak batting average (.260 career). Maris batted only .269 in his famous year of 1961. It didn’t help that he was extremely shy, a cold North Dakotan of Croatian heritage, and unpopular with fans, unlike teammate Mickey Mantle.
The case for Maris to be named to the Hall is much more powerful. He was a two-time league MVP winner (1960, 1961). Of the 11 Major Leaguers who have won back-to-back MVPs and are eligible for the Hall, only Maris and Dale Murphy have not been inducted. Maris’ low batting average isn’t all that damaging. Baseball statistics gurus, such as Bill James, have shown that batting average may be the most overrated stat in the game. Maris walked a lot and drove people home, including himself 61 times in 1961.
Mickey Mantle said this: “Roger Maris was the best all-around baseball player I ever saw.” Maris was a Golden Glove right fielder with a howitzer arm. He was an extremely fast runner. In 1951, as a high school footballer at Fargo, N.D.’s Shanley High, Maris returned four kickoffs for touchdowns in a single game.
What about the short career? In 1965 Maris developed hand problems. He couldn’t check his powerful swing, which left him vulnerable to a high rate of strikeouts. So he instead became a slap hitter, a role he played on the 1967 world champion St. Louis Cardinals. Had Maris had access to today’s huge advances in sports medicine, it’s likely he could have enjoyed a longer career as a slugger.
Steroids began to trickle into American sports in the mid-1960s. A decade later Eastern bloc women on steroids began obliterating every track and field record. Today any high-level sport demanding bursts of strength or speed is suspect. Users have been one step ahead of testers–almost always.
However, 1961 was still an age of innocence. Roger Maris was 6 feet tall and 197 pounds when he began that season. By season’s end, wracked by tension and smoking cigarettes like a fiend–which might have contributed to his death at 51 from lymphoma–Maris was down to 185 pounds.
Do you think any 185-pounder could hit 61 home runs today? Not a chance. Maris belongs in the Hall.
Fri May 05, 2017 8:33 am