Sometimes statements are made in a moment of passion that both speaker and listener wish had not been made. Other times, assertions can be made with a certain intent, no matter how ridiculous those assertions may be. Tim McCarver, the announcer that many Yankees television viewers mute in favor of the radio broadcast team of John Sterling and Michael Kay (this, in and of itself, says a tremendous amount about McCarver), made such a statement when informed that Barry Bonds had hit his 54th home run. McCarver began gushing about Bonds's greatness and then, in hyperbole that would have made a used car salesman proud, proclaimed that Barry Bonds is a better baseball player than Ted Williams.
McCarver has a penchant for exaggeration and tries to astound viewers with extreme statements that have enough plausibility to seduce casual fans into believing that he is more insightful than other "experts." Experienced fans shrug off such statements with a knowing smile, while others wonder what McCarver is talking about.
Barry Bonds is an outstanding player who is having an excellent season. He is hitting home runs at a pace that makes him a real threat to break the single season records of Babe Ruth (154-game season), Roger Maris (162-game season), and McGwire (the lively-ball era record). But he is not a better baseball player than Ted Williams.
Just as Ty Cobb (according to Cobb himself) could hit .325 against the pitching of the late 1950s, one could make the same argument about Williams being able to hit .330 against current major league pitching. Bonds may be better than Williams TODAY, but The Splendid Splinter, of course, will turn 83 at the end of this month.
Baseball seduces its fans, and that is one of its great attractions. So many facets of the game engender discussion and allow passions to flow so that one loses perspective. Is Bonds really better than Williams?
Passionate fans can lose objectivity and become illogical. The result is confused thinking. When one asks if Bonds is a better player than Williams, one must delineate the parameters of the discussion. What did Tim McCarver mean when he said that Barry Bonds was better than Ted Williams?
If a manager were starting an all-time team, would he want Williams or Bonds? If he were playing a single game for a championship, who would he pencil in to play left field? If the game were on the line and the outcome hinged on a single at-bat, a single defensive play, a stolen base, or an attempt to score on a single from second base, would the manager feel more comfortable with Williams or Bonds?
Barry Bonds can do more things on the field than Ted Williams could do, but he is not better than Ted Williams. Bonds is the better overall fielder, has a better throwing arm, is faster, and steals many more bases than Williams even attempted, but Williams was so superior as a hitter that there shouldn't even be room for argument.
Hitting is the most difficult skill to perfect among all skills in all sports. "Hitting is the most important part of the game. It is where the big money is, where much of the status is, and the fan interest is." Ted Williams made the statement, and he is correct. The first thing asked about a player is, "Can he hit?" Everything else is secondary.
Statistics can be interpreted to prove almost anything, but one basic fact is that Williams had a lifetime batting average of .344 compared to Bonds's current .289, which means that in a typical season of 600 official at-bats, Williams would hit safely 33 more times. Notwithstanding the recent emphasis on "OPS" and other newly-invented statistics, 33 hits, even of the one-base variety, can produce a lot of runs and win a lot of games.
Williams batted .406 in 1941, and only George Brett has come close in over sixty years. Williams won two Triple Crowns, was the American League's Most Valuable Player twice (and quite arguable could have won in 1941), won six American League batting titles, hit 521 home runs in a ball park that was not built for left handed power hitters, and missed almost five full seasons in the prime of his career serving in the armed forces. A conservative estimate is that if he hit only 35 home runs each of the five years he missed, he would have been the player whose lifetime home run record Hank Aaron broke.
Recently, Major League Baseball conducted a fan poll to determine the Major League Baseball All-Century Team. Recognizing the biases and deficiencies of such an exercise, it is interesting to note that Ted Williams was ranked third among outfielders and Barry Bonds was ranked eighteenth. Baseball's "Bible," The Sporting News, had a panel of sixteen baseball experts determine the best players of the century. Williams finished eighth while Bonds finished thirty fourth.
Finally, ESPN and the Associated Press ranked the greatest athletes, not only baseball players, of the twentieth century. Ted Williams finished sixteenth in the ESPN poll and thirteenth in the Associated Press poll. Bonds did not finish in the top 100 in either set of rankings, which probably points out the idiocy of such attempts.
Barry Bonds is one of the greats of the game and is a future Hall of Famer. He has had and is still having an outstanding career. It is sincerely hoped that the best is yet to come and that he hits more than 70 home runs this season as a San Francisco Giant. But Tim McCarver is wrong. Barry Bonds is not better than Ted Williams.
» Harold Friend is an intense Yankees fan who has followed baseball longer than he cares to remember.
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Posted August 23, 2001.
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