It is an affront of the worst kind. It is an insult to the intelligence and knowledge of baseball fans. It is stated without thought and has been perpetuated almost reflexively. To what does “it” refer? It refers to the attempts to foist a myth on the baseball community. It refers to the attempts to paint Rickey Henderson as the greatest lead-off hitter in baseball history.
To say that Rickey Henderson is the greatest lead-off hitter in baseball history is ludicrous, inaccurate, and illustrates a deep lack of thought (as well as a lack of deep thought). The statement immediately makes one question the speaker’s credibility, and that can be suicidal when the speaker is a member of the media. All one must do is compare Ty Cobb’s record with Rickey Henderson’s to regain perspective.
Ty Cobb had a lifetime batting average of .366. Reflect on that. He didn’t have a “career year” in which in hit .366. He had a LIFETIME AVERAGE of .366. That fact has been heard so often that it is taken for granted and seems to lose some of its significance. It is similar to saying that the United States national debt is X trillions of dollars. It is an unreal figure and incomprehensible until one makes an effort to examine its meaning.
Ty Cobb was the greatest lead-off hitter in baseball history. It must be granted that Cobb did not always lead off, but he did so enough in his 24-year career that he qualifies as a leadoff hitter.
A lead-off hitter must get on base. That is the basic premise with which all agree, and no leadoff hitter was better in reaching base than Ty Cobb, who reached 5,438 times by means of a hit or a walk. Rickey Henderson has reached base about 5,000 times. Henderson walked more than Cobb, but Cobb had more than one thousand hits than Henderson, and he didn’t just hit singles.
Ty Cobb had 724 doubles to Rickey’s 486, and an incredible 295 triples to Rickey’s 62. Cobb was a lead-off hitter who hit more than 200 doubles and more than 200 triples than the man many in the media want to believe is the greatest lead-off hitter of all time. This reference is not to singles -- it is to EXTRA BASE HITS.
Cobb’s on base average was .433 and Rickey’s is .404. That is not as close as it sounds because .029 points is a substantial margin over the course of a career. Rickey out-homered Cobb by a margin of about 285 to 117, and that is a vital statistic, which brings up slugging average.
It is probably surprising to many, especially advocates of Henderson being the greatest power lead-off hitter of all time, but Cobb’s slugging average was .512, compared to Henderson’s .423. That is a significant difference that is often ignored. The man who is considered the greatest power lead-off man in baseball history has a slugging average .089 points lower than Ty Cobb. The enormous differential graphically illustrates that slugging is more than hitting home runs.
Rickey Henderson has stolen 1385 bases. That negates some of Cobb’s huge edge in extra base hits, but Cobb did steal 892 bases. It is recognized that a stolen base turns a single into a double and a double into a triple, but the primary function of a lead-off batter is to REACH first base. Taking all the above-mentioned factors into account, the only thing Rickey could do better than Cobb was hit home runs.
Now one must discuss the logic of comparison. Who was the greatest player of all time? There is no definitive answer, but those mentioned most often include Ruth, Cobb, Wagner, DiMaggio, Williams Aaron, Mays, Mantle and Clemente. In 1975, Casey Stengel stated that "I never saw anyone like Ty Cobb. No one was even close to him as the greatest all-time ballplayer. That guy was superhuman, amazing."
The choice is subjective, but one fact is certain. Rickey Henderson’s name is not near the top of the list. It is safe to conclude that Ty Cobb was a better baseball player than Rickey Henderson. Placing Henderson in the lead-off position in the batting order does not make him better than Cobb.
Logically, if Cobb is better Henderson, he would remain the superior player regardless of his spot in the batting order. Ty Cobb was the greatest lead-off hitter in baseball history, and any other conclusion, as Mr. Spock would say, would be illogical.
» Harold Friend has been a Yankees fan longer than he cares to remember and is fascinated by the uniqueness of every single baseball game.
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Posted September 4, 2001.
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