I’ve been doing A LOT of reading this offseason and currently, I’m reading Richard Ben Cramer’s bio of Joe DiMaggio. The book reminded me on how, in 1969, he was voted as “The Greatest Living Ballplayer” and how he insisted on being announced as such. I immediately thought this wasn’t true. I don’t think there was any point in DiMaggio’s life where he deserved the title. In fact, you could argue that there was never a time where he was the “Greatest Living Center Fielder”.
So I decided to use Wins Above Replacement to take a chronological look of “The Greatest Living Player” from 1871-2013. WAR isn’t the be-all end-all in evaluating players, but it’s the best we have and it’s a fantastic starting point.
I separated Position Players and Pitchers into two different lists.
First, the position players:
| Player | WAR | Start | End | Years |
| Ross Barnes | 2.1 | 1871 | 1871 | 1 |
| Davy Force | 7.2 | 1872 | 1872 | 1 |
| Ross Barnes | 26.4 | 1873 | 1880 | 8 |
| Cap Anson | 93.8 | 1881 | 1908 | 28 |
| Honus Wagner | 130.6 | 1909 | 1922 | 14 |
| Ty Cobb | 151.2 | 1923 | 1929 | 7 |
| Babe Ruth | 183.8 | 1930 | 8/16/48 | 17+ |
| Ty Cobb | 151.2 | 8/17/48 | 7/17/61 | 13+ |
| Rogers Hornsby | 128.2 | 7/18/61 | 1/5/63 | 1+ |
| Stan Musial | 128.1 | 1/6/63 | 1965 | 3 |
| Willie Mays | 157.9 | 1966 | 2005 | 40 |
| Barry Bonds | 162.5 | 2006 | Present | 8 |
Now for the Pitchers….
| Player | WAR | Start | End | Years |
| George Zettlein | 16.4 | 1871 | 1872 | 2 |
| Al Spalding | 59.2 | 1873 | 1878 | 6 |
| Tommy Bond | 62.0 | 1879 | 1883 | 5 |
| Jim McCormick | 93.2 | 1884 | 1898 | 15 |
| Kid Nichols | 108.5 | 1899 | 1901 | 3 |
| Cy Young | 168.7 | 1902 | 11/4/55 | 53+ |
| Lefty Grove | 103.6 | 11/5/55 | 5/22/75 | 19+ |
| Warren Spahn | 100.9 | 5/23/75 | 1979 | 4+ |
| Tom Seaver | 121.4 | 1980 | 2002 | 23 |
| Roger Clemens | 140.3 | 2003 | Present | 11 |
A couple of notes
– If you want to exclude Bonds and Clemens for PED reasons, then Mays and Seaver would still be the “living leaders”.
– It’s pretty amazing that Cap Anson led all position players for 28 years. That span would be 3rd longest behind Cy Young and Willie Mays.
– Even if you want to credit DiMaggio additional “WAR” for the WAR (WWII), he’d still be well short of the leaders.
– If you credit DiMaggio for time lost to military service, you would also have to do the same for Ted Williams. He missed almost 5 years and finished with 123.2 WAR. He would need to average 7.5 WAR per season to pass Mays, which is actually not that outrageous considering his seasons during that time.
– On Old Timers Day at Yankee Stadium, as DiMaggio was announced as “The Greatest Living Ballplayer”, he wasn’t even the greatest ballplayer on the field at the time (see Mickey Mantle).
I have to agree that Joe DiMaggio was not even CLOSE to the greatest living player at ANY time.
When he was playing, Ty Cobb was still alive. After that you have “The Say Hey Kid” and “The Mick”. Afterwards, you have Barry Bonds.
It was a ridiculous and biased notion when put forth and got more ludicrous as time went on.