Joe Posnanski's Top 100 Players in Baseball

Rickey will be on the list pretty high, I'm sure.

also Kirk Gibson of course. Sammy Sosa, too.

Pretty sure the one non-player he'll have on the list (see criterion #3 above) is Steinbrenner.

Steinbrenner was also the subject of jokes in the Simpsons and Seinfeld

national fame vs regional fame is kind of a key distinction here, probably. to me, ozzie smith is an incredibly famous baseball player. everyone around here knows ozzie smith. albert pujols. mark mcgwire in the late 90s was very famous (on a national level there, for a while, too).

i just polled a non-sports fan who grew up in kansas city. they answered "albert pujols. mike moustakis. oh, and a-rod". they recognized barry bonds name, and when i asked what they knew about him, they said "he cheated. and he took his socks off"

I think McGwire, Pujols, and Ozzie will all be on the list. Agree with your basic point. In Toronto, Moseby, Stieb, and Kelly Gruber are still famous.

I think Ozzie will make it on the strength of "Go crazy, folks!," The Simpsons, his cartwheel, and his nickname (above and beyond his playing credentials).

i wonder if george brett would make the list? pine tar + "the george brett story" on youtube

If you didn't follow baseball in the '70s, this will befuddle you (and if you did, you might hate it), but--just posted--#49: Steve Garvey. (Haven't read the entry yet.)

Brett, I'd say 100%--pine tar, chase for .400, epic post-seasons, hemorrhoids, The Simpsons, on and on.

Didn't realize he was running for the Senate in 2024. You know for which side...

https://stevegarvey.com/

I assumed he was a Republican without knowing anything about him cos most are, website confirmed that, but he could be a fairly standard democrat with those views, and the website is deceptive!

I think he's very much a Romney type of Republican, not so much a Trump guy, but in 2024, who knows. One thing I remember is him citing (during his playing days) Gerald Ford as his political hero for stepping in and (paraphrasing from memory) calming the country after Watergate. Later on that day, he went out and fathered three children.

lol

aahhh - I don't think Brett was on the Simpsons tho?

I thought he was in the Griffey/Ozzie episode, I guess not. He was in Modern Family, though.

george brett comes with a hank scorpio energy so i understand the simpsons confustion

Also Kent Brockman when he won the jackpot that time
https://64.media.tumblr.com/7fa2befb9037814a399c93853a736807/tumblr_oihjvzLbtC1uruw4so1_500.png

#48, Tommy Lasorda. I take it he doesn't consider managers "non-players"--he must have meant a separate category for people not on the field. Because surely Steinbrenner's on there, and there's no way Lasorda's the most famous manager of the past 50 years.

I mean, he's close. I'd say Billy Martin was more famous in the late '70s and into the '80s, maybe Torre, maybe Earl Weaver.

Slim fast my dudes

Sega Genesis games
Tommy Lasorda: 1
Billy Martin: 0

This was pretty famous in its day:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOVHc4hcCX4

Close call--I don't know which of the two is more famous. Maybe Lasorda just by virtue of outliving Martin by three decades.

(Also, the true trademark-owner of "You're fired.")

Can't find a clip on YouTube, but in Spike Lee's Girl 6, Lee himself plays a card collector who's planning to retire one day on all the Ken Griffey Jr. '89 Upper Deck rookie cards he's hoarded.

#47: Don Mattingly.

These are all going to be behind a paywall, but I'll post a brief excerpt each day:

In the moment, Mattingly was often called the best player in baseball--Carlton Fisk, among many others, was quoted saying that. I don’t think, looking back, that he actually was the best player in baseball, or even the best player in the league. I think, even in his prime, Rickey Henderson, Wade Boggs and Cal Ripken Jr. were definitely more valuable, and perhaps also Alan Trammell and Eddie Murray and George Brett and Lou Whitaker. Mattingly didn’t walk much, so, even though he hit for such high averages, he never had a .400 on-base percentage. And after his age-26 season, his power numbers tumbled.

But such stats might cause people to miss the larger point of Don Mattingly: He was both this larger-than-life ballplayer and the guy who lives next door. He was this extension of Yankees royalty--a direct descendant of Gehrig and DiMaggio and Mantle--and also a reminder of what the Yankees used to represent. People love to talk about the meaning of the pinstripes. Well, the pinstripes did look right on him.

#46: Jim Palmer. (With the headline "A Good Head of Hair"--before I scrolled down, my first thought was "Seriously? Oscar Gamble?!")

Over the last 100 years, here are the lowest WHIPs—walks and hits per inning pitched—in high-leverage situations:

1. Jim Palmer, 0.993
2. Sandy Koufax, 1.007
3. Tom Seaver, 1.029
4. Juan Marichal, 1.032
5. Mariano Rivera, 1.070

Now, here is the career WHIP for each of those pitchers:

1. Jim Palmer, 1.180 (118th all-time)
2. Sandy Koufax, 1.106 (30th)
3. Tom Seaver, 1.121 (40th)
4. Juan Marichal, 1.101 (24th)
5. Mariano Rivera, 1.000 (4th)

You explain that. You explain how Jim Palmer had the lowest WHIP ever in high-leverage situations--when the game was basically on the line--and a less-than-legendary WHIP the rest of the time. It’s not like Palmer was especially skilled at preventing baserunners. He did lead the league in WHIP once, late in his career, but he also walked 100-plus batters three times (and 99 batters once) and four times was among the top 10 in most hits allowed.

What allowed him to turn it up when the heat was at its highest?

Just skimmimg, there's no mention of Baltimore's legendary defense. I realize that's part of the answer, but I also think Palmer really was the rare player who, over a very large sample size, was "clutch." Like the famous stat where he never gave up a grand slam in 213 bases-loaded situations; obviously, that had nothing to do with his defense.

What allowed him to turn it up when the heat was at its highest?

the flexibility and breathability of jockey men's briefs, of course

I'm surprised he didn't use one of those ads for the accompanying photo--pretty close!

https://i.postimg.cc/v8gtRPNB/palmer.jpg

(Having read it now, there is brief mention of the Orioles' defense--including Palmer getting angry at DeCinces for not getting in front of the ball, a feud, and then Palmer later apologizing that he'd been spoiled by Brooks Robinson.)

Palmer is also famous for hardly ever giving up grand slams but also walking home more runs than other good pitchers. The guy knew what he was doing

Interesting. That would more go along with what I meant--not that he had some magical ability to get out of jams, more that he was a smart guy who could weigh the possible outcomes and would concede a run to avoid a big inning (and his defense definitely would have helped there, giving him the confidence that walking a run in was okay).

In the future, everyone will count down famous baseball players for 15 minutes...seems to have stalled for some reason.

Bizarre--literally two minutes after posting that, the new one showed up.

#45: Kirk Gibson

Gibson’s fame was certainly mixed. He never played in an All-Star Game. He played 140 games in a season only three times. He hit 255 home runs and stole 284 bases—when he retired he was one of only nine players to have 250 homers and 250 steals—and yet there was always this sense that his career was a disappointment, that it had fallen short of what might have been. But I tend to believe careers are often what they’re supposed to be, and I’m not sure that a mercurial player like Kirk Gibson—who played with such wild abandon—can stay healthy or be metronome consistent. He was a bright-lights performer. He was a ferocious competitor. He was a football player. Had he stayed in football, who knows, his bust might be in Canton right now. But baseball wouldn’t have been the same.

I don't know if it was the only time he was on the cover of SI, but the issue accompanying the piece is early:

https://i.postimg.cc/zDK1P1mT/kirk.jpg

how do you do that, win an MVP, and *never* make the all star team?!

I don't know if he's the only guy ever to accomplish that, but definitely strange. I thought he would have been part of the '84 game, but he did get off to a so-so start: .273/.349/.483, 12 HR, 46 RBI. (The Tigers were 57-27 at the break.)

(Chet Lemon made it; .307/.377/.540, 12 HR, 51 RBI. Close, but clearly better.)

Gibby w/o a moustache is so weird

Typical Posnanski: he starts the most-famous countdown, gets six entries posted, then begins a pre-season countdown of the teams, #30-1 (for me, not nearly as interesting; there are a zillion pre-season rankings). So he seems to have put most-famous aside for at least three weeks. He did that a few times with the Top 100--took him three or four years to complete.

Resumption. #45, Manny:

He was supernatural with two outs and runners in scoring position. The highest OPS ever in such situations with at least 1,000 plate appearances:

1. Babe Ruth, 1.203
2. Ted Williams, 1.128
3. Lou Gehrig, 1.065
4. Jimmie Foxx, 1.056
5. Manny Ramirez, 1.050

And when asked how he did it, MannyBManny said: “I don’t know. I just hit.”

He did just hit. The rest of the game held little interest for him. But in that way, he wasn’t really much different from another Red Sox leftfielder named Ted Williams. He was flakier than Ted and less profane than Ted and just plain odder than Ted. It’s unlikely that Ted Williams would have delayed a game looking for his diamond earring in the infield dirt or smiled after getting picked off in the World Series or left the outfield in the middle of the game to go the bathroom or run back to first base after stealing second or dived to cut off Johnny Damon’s throw for no apparent reason or kept a water bottle in his pocket...

Millar: (Julian Tavarez and Manny) had this drink. It was like whiskey and it was this Latin cocktail they’d shake up in this old bottle, like a big old Perrier bottle. They put all this stuff in it: a shot of whiskey, honey, lemon. Well, Manny had the idea of throwing in Viagara pills and didn’t tell anybody. We were all taking shots of this stuff and it was like: “Let’s go play!”

Arroyo: Manny loved a laugh.

Leskanic: You know how they have the Silver Slugger award? I told him that this year they were going to give out a Silver Glove award. So we all spray-painted his glove silver and hung it in his locker. He said: “Lesky, I told you I was going to win the Silver Glove award!”

McCarty: For all the s— he took about his defense, he really worked at it.

Garciaparra: Manny put in the work.

Leskanic: We would go out and have some drinks together. All his drinks had Red Bull. I’d say: “Manny, every time I see you, you’ve got a Red Bull in your hand. Why do you drink so much Red Bull?” And he would say in his dreams he could take longer batting practice because of the energy.

Millar: Only Manny.

Arroyo: Manny was so cheap, when we would check out of a hotel, all his incidentals he would freaking send to Edgar Rentería’s bill every time. You’d see Edgar arguing with the hotel manager that he didn’t have all this food.

Leskanic: That’s true! Terry Adams was checking out, and I was right behind him. Terry was like: “I didn’t get four massages. I wasn’t even here for four days, how the hell would I get four massages?” Manny put it on his bill!

Foulke: Manny would do the same thing to Julian (Tavarez). Julian knew him really well. He’d go into his wallet and get money out.

Leskanic: Schilling made these “why not us” T-shirts. Manny took them all, put them all in his locker, 25 shirts, and he wore a different one home every night.

Arroyo: Manny would open up his man purse and he’d have $10,000 in there.

Leskanic: I just loved the guy.

Most of today's entry was about how little MVP support he garnered during an astounding seven-year run.

I often think of Manny as my favourite player

Why do you drink so much Red Bull?” And he would say in his dreams he could take longer batting practice because of the energy.

In his dreams

he is batting practice viking

manny ramirez (best player)

Down to #6 on the pre-season rundown that put the famous-player countdown on hold (I get the feeling he was rushing to get rundown finished before Opening Day and missed). In his Astros entry for today, there's this little bit--I've had this same theory for a while and have posted about it somewhere on ILX:

OK, I’ve been wanting to unveil this thought I have about 1970s sitcoms, and maybe I can pull it off here. Maybe not. But I’ll try. So you probably know that 1970s sitcoms were, pretty much without exception, filmed in front of a live studio audience. Well, one of the features of this is that after a show had been on the air for a while, the studio audience would cheer the mere appearance of Fonzie or Latka or Laverne.

But what struck me, even as a kid, is that the longer the show would go on, the more characters the studio audience would cheer for simply showing up. I mean, it was one thing when the audience cheered for the Fonz. It was quite another when they cheered for Ralph Malph. That, to me, that was living proof that a show was going on too long--the fans started applauding simply because they recognized someone from the old show. Hey, look, it’s Chachi!

this is a classic clemenza post, ty <3

but has joe posnanski ever been in a live studio audience? i mean, they literally prompt you to applaud! also does he really think 70s sitcom producers adhered strictly to audience reactions rather than using canned laughs when it suited their purposes?

Happy Days was the worst offender by far.

The first two seasons of Happy Days (1974–75) were filmed using a single-camera setup and laugh track. One episode of season two ("Fonzie Gets Married") was filmed in front of a studio audience with three cameras as a test run. From the third season on (1975–84), the show was a three-camera production in front of a live audience (with a cast member, usually Tom Bosley, announcing in voice-over, "Happy Days is filmed before a live audience" at the start of most episodes), giving these later seasons a markedly different style. A laugh track was still used during post-production to smooth over live reactions.

A laugh-track, yeah, but I don't know whether the entrance applause for characters was coaxed or not. It's almost a moot point as to how embarrassing it was to hear that watching at home.