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 The century's most important players
Posted: Thursday July 22, 1999 12:34 PM
As baseball fans ponder their choices for major league baseball's all-century team they will compare statistics across generations. They will factor where and for what sort of team each man played, and they will split the thinnest of hairs. And fans will still end up leaving dozens of great players out after the final cut. I've got a better idea: To make my starting Team of the Century it's not enough to simply rank among the all-time great ballplayers. Yes, that's a prerequisite and the player has to have made the ballot now circulating at big league parks and online. But in addition to stats and skills, each of the nine players on my team has also slipped the bounds of the game in a significant way. The story of baseball, to risk Ken Burns-style hyperbole, has at times paralleled the story of our country -- and these players have all touched on far reaches of society. They are players even your Aunt Ida in Idaho recognizes; players without whom America would not be America. I expect there to be disagreement with these selections. Surveying my team I can hear the familiar strains of, "Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio?" in my head; Joltin' Joe was the hardest to exclude. Yet I'd put this club up against the best you can come up with, knowing folks would be talking about the team for years -- and not just because of how well it played. Here's my Team of the Century: Outfield: Babe Ruth. The greatest ballplayer of all time, Ruth epitomized the roaring '20s when he played and now endures as a symbol of American joy. Ruth reminds all of us of the pleasure of excess and he looms over the century's sporting life as FDR looms over the Presidency and Einstein over science. Outfield: Hank Aaron. When he was chasing the Babe's home run record Aaron received piles of hate mail and frightening threats, some of them addressed simply "Dear N--." It is no stretch to say that at that time, the early '70s, Aaron sometimes risked his life by taking the field. Then he hit home run No. 715 in 1974 and the scoreboard blared, "Move over, Babe." The nation had taken a small step forward. Outfield: Roberto Clemente. The son of a sugar cane worker, gracious Clemente became a hero to the people of Puerto Rico (and elsewhere) both for his superior play and for his selflessness. He died at age 38 in a New Year's Eve plane crash while ferrying supplies to victims of an earthquake. First base: Lou Gehrig. His stoicism in the face of death and his immortal Yankee Stadium speech ("Today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth") led doctors to name amytrophic lateral sclerosis, the muscle-withering disease from which he suffered, after him. His indomitable courage still inspires people today. Second base: Jackie Robinson. The most important player in history. In 1947, when many schools were still segregated and the crest of the civil rights movement was still years away, Robinson stepped onto the otherwise all-white major league fields. He withstood vicious racism and by representing hope, justice and freedom drew a legion of non-baseball fans to the game. Shortstop: Cal Ripken Jr. He came to play every day. Every single day. When he broke Gehrig's record by playing in his 2,131st consecutive game, America's honest working men and women enjoyed a day of glory along with him. Third base: Pete Rose. Should his gambling diminish what he did on the ballfield? Should he be in the Hall of Fame? The philosophical debate is so easy to transfer to other realms that Rose's case was used by some pundits as a basis for comparison during the Clinton impeachment proceedings. That is, Should a president's professional achievements be tarnished by his private life? Catcher: Yogi Berra. By saying things like, "Nobody goes there anymore, it's too crowded " and, "The stadium was as loud as I've seen it," he exalted malapropism to an art form. A blue-collar Oscar Wilde, Berra's words are still quoted, and chuckled over, across the land. Pitcher: Sandy Koufax. He refused to pitch a World Series game on Yom Kippur; he ended his career while he was still on top; he disappeared quietly from the limelight. His mystique is part James Dean, part J.D. Salinger -- and has made him larger than life.
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