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His passing can't help that cause.

He was one of the all-time great ball players. Hammerin' Hank will be missed.

He's was a childhood hero. My dad played in the minor leagues for the Cub affiliate on Catalina Island. Saw many of the greats. To him, Hank Aaron was the best hitter he'd ever seen. Great hand and wrist strength, could snap those wrists and get the bat to move through the strike zone so damn fast. What a fuckin bullshit way to go...,

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American in something. Oh that's right he always wanted to be a lawyer since he finished so high ranked in his class.

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Clemente overlooked because he could not go for homeruns in huge dimensions of Forbes Field but he hit 3 in each World Series he played (both went 7 games). Clemente was fast, had the best arm and hit for average and got the type of hit you needed. I break it down a bit by time played. For 4 years Mickey Mantle may have been the best, for 6 to 11 years, Mays was the best, for 11 to 18 Aaron was the best. Ruth was simply the best of all time. Clemente with a ton of talent probably a little behind those three due to circumstances beyond his control.

Aaron was more consistent, but Mays' highs were greater.

Mays was faster, a superior defender, and played his home games in two very hitter unfriendly ballparks. If Mays had played in County Stadium and Fulton County Stadium, instead of the Polo Grounds and Candlestick Park, he probably would've been the one to break Ruth's record. I once saw a metric called Venue-independent hitting. I have no idea how it's calculated, but Willie Mays was number one on the list for overall hitting.

As it was, Mays had a higher slugging pct, a higher On base pct, and thus a higher OPS. Those are the batting standards that are used to judge an offensive player. His WAR is higher despite playing one less season, and playing a couple seasons when he was clearly washed up. On top of that, he lost two seasons during his prime, serving in the Army.

Both were all time greats. I was a fan of both when I was growing up. But, looking past the raw numbers, and using the advanced metrics used to compare players, Willie Mays could be the greatest all around ballplayer.

These type of comparisons are always fun. Good question Hank.

best athletes played baseball, the parks were humongous, the pitchers went nine innings, there were superstars at every position, records were kept on a 154 game basis, if you made a good play you had to do it with gloves that were made more for protection than catching the ball, infields were not perfect, and when a player misjudged a ball it was called an error. Anyone else have anything to add?

First or upper division team In other words, if you could finish in top 4, you were considered a very good baseball team..

Feller, Joe DiMaggio and others losing years of their careers to both or either World War II or the Korean War and still setting records. One side note, I was told that the Yankees and Red Sox almost traded DiMaggio for Williams since the ball parks would have enabled them to both double their home run output. Williams being lefthanded in Fenway and DiMaggio having to deal with the huge left and left center fields of Yankee Stadium as a right hand hitter.

...by mentioning them with Joe DiMaggio.

DiMaggio - ever the small, bitter fuck of a human being that he was - loathed his military service. He served exclusively stateside as a PR tool, and complained to anyone who would listen about all of the money he was losing out on.

Bob Feller, as an only child, had a family-related draft exemption that he could have exercised to get him out of service. At the time of the Pearl Harbor attack, Feller was already a star, with six years in the MLB. A true child prodigy, he was on the cover of Time magazine at the age of 17. He was so incensed by the Pearl Harbor attack that he enlisted the day after the attack, the first MLB player to do so. He served nearly four years an anti-aircraft gun commander on the USS Alabama. When he once complained about his Hall of Fame plaque making no mention of his 1941-45 service time, only to be told by commissioner Peter Ueberroth that it would be "inconvenient" to change it, Feller replied with characteristic bluntness: "Well, it was inconvenient to get shot at, too."

Ted Williams was not happy to be drafted, but when the decision was made, he served honorably. During WWII he displayed such skill during his pilot training that he was made a trainer himself. Later - in another move he fought - he was drafted to serve in Korea, where he piloted 37 combat missions, took on enemy fire and crash landed, and also flew numerous missions as John Glenn's wingman. “Ted flew as my wingman on about half the missions he flew in Korea,” Glenn told MLB.com. “(During his crash) he was on fire and had to belly land the plane back in. He slid it in on the belly. It came up the runway about 1,500 feet before he was able to jump out and run off the wingtip.

“Much as I appreciate baseball, Ted to me will always be a Marine fighter pilot.”

Feller and Williams served with honor and distinction. DiMaggio - not so much.

whether or not to mention him. Thank you.

One gave up many more years, and actually risked his life. The other played baseball and sat on the beach.

DiMag and Williams, and yes that trade was discussed..

From the early 1920s till the early to mid 60s, the 4 major sports in America were, in no particular order, Baseball, College Football, Boxing, and Horse Racing.

Newspaper columnists were a huge influence on the way each was viewed. The big city papers in New York, Boston, Philadelphia, DC, Chicago, and St. Louis reported on, glamorized, and made heroes of the various stars of the day. People would gather around their radios if they couldn't go to the sporting event in person, and they would cheer on these heroes. So, it doesn't surprise that these players, some reaching mythical proportions, would be remembered so fondly. Even those of us that didn't see some of them play, can still talk about them as if we did.

The paradigm shift started happening with the advent of television, and the population shift westward. We didn't rely on the columnists to form our opinion. We watched our heroes on the screen. We could see their flaws along with their accomplishments. While the players overall, with each generation, are more athletic, better trained, even more skilled, we don't idolize them the way we used to.

Wrigley Field he would have hit 80 home runs for about 6 seasons. Even today's so called long ball hitters never hit more further than Mantle. As for all around best I would have to go with Mays.

Aaron was an overall better hitter (by a smidge), but they were both elite. Mays' career HRs (660) suffered from playing a significant portion of his career at Candlestick Park -- it's hard to imagine how many more he might have hit at, say, Wrigley. Mays had more flair, Aaron was more laid back. Leo Durocher had Mays hitting anywhere from leadoff to 5th, whereas Aaron was always a 3-4-5 hitter. Mays is included in most all-time-best-starting-nine lists, Aaron is usually on the second team. Both are among the very best of the very best.

I will say that Aaron was a better all-around player than Mantle.

Mantle's OPS was 50 points higher, and his Fielding Percentage and Range Factor were also higher.

Hank the better hitter, only player in history with over 3,000 hits and over 700 HRs..It always seemed Hank was overshadowed by Willie, Willie playing with more of a flair, and having advantage of playing in high profile, New York City, and winning a world series in NYC in 1954, before the highly publicized moves of Dodgers and Giants to West Coast....Hank did everything well, field , run, hit, hit with power, of course but did it appearing totally at ease, so relaxed, he made it look easy And he played in MIlwaukee, ATl, not drawing the national press as much as Willie..

But I asked who was the best. In my eyes Aaron was the best. But in the day, Mays was considered the better ball played.
I'll admit I am from Boston so naturally I am for Aaron. He was my boyhood idle.

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Link: Henry Aaron

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