These three icons were unfairly ignored in MLB honors
By
Mike Vaccaro
July 15, 2015 | 11:30am
Yogi Berra waves to fans at Yankee Stadium in 2013. Photo: AP
Look, in a lot of ways these are the best kind of sports arguments because they take place in the court of opinion in which there is no right answer and no wrong answer. These judgments are designed to be subjective and hot-blooded and emotional and parochial. All of it summarized nicely by an acronym of the day: IMO.
There is no place for cool, detached reason when putting together these debates. In fact, it’s all but foolhardy to even try. So let’s just say that for this sports fan, there were three local baseball figures who got short shrift in
the festivities that highlighted the Cincinnati All-Star Game:
1) Yogi Berra
2a) Dwight Gooden
2b) Darryl Strawberry
Let’s start with the first: Baseball will never, ever admit this, but there was never, ever a chance that Yogi was going to be included in the list of greatest living ballplayers. For one thing, it’s unlikely he would have been physically able to take the field alongside Willie Mays, Hank Aaron and Sandy Koufax if he’d been selected over Johnny Bench.
More importantly: The game was in Cincinnati.
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Former Reds catcher Johnny Bench was named one of the four greatest living baseball players.Photo: Getty Images
Pete Rose was a shoo-in to be included as one of the Reds’ Franchise Four, so that was certain to obscure the other three Reds who were introduced alongside him: Bench, Joe Morgan, Barry Larkin. And while Rose, as a local kid made good (and then bad), will always have that fierce loyalty on his side, many fans of the Big Red Machine Reds save their warmest feelings for Bench.
And, look, Bench was a fabulous player. He was probably the greatest defensive catcher of his time, a time when the Reds were on national TV more than any other team not based in New York City, meaning we could weekly marvel at his arm and his receiving skills and, for several years, his ability to mash the baseball.
But let’s turn the civic tables a little bit, shall we? Remember when Thurman Munson had his superb 1976 World Series, even as the Yankees were getting crushed by the Reds (and as Bench was having, essentially, his last offensive hurrah at age 28)?
When someone brought up Munson’s name after Game 4, Sparky Anderson famously dismissed the query thusly: “I don’t want to embarrass any other catcher by comparing him to Johnny Bench,” a slight that Munson took to his grave.
OK, then. Let’s do Bench a favor and not embarrass any other catcher by comparing
him to Yogi Berra, who was a member of 10 World Series winners, who is acknowledged, almost universally, as either the fifth- or sixth-greatest Yankee of all time (depending on where you put Mariano Rivera), meaning he was also (rightfully) excluded from the impenetrable Ruth-Gehrig-DiMaggio-Mantle Yankees franchise four.
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Darryl StrawberryPhoto: Karen Levy/ALLSPORT
Bench was great. He was an all-time great. He wasn’t as good as Yogi as a two-way player, and he wasn’t great for nearly as long as Yogi was. You would have a terrific team no matter which man you have behind the plate. And in Cincinnati, this opinion will be burned in an ash heap. Sorry. I’ll go with Yogi. IMO.
Now, as for the Mets …
It’s a testament to a lot of different things that there is really only one Met who qualifies as a no-brainer for inclusion on the Franchise Four, and it’s not a coincidence his nickname for much of his career explains why: Tom Seaver was “The Franchise” for the franchise. Even if some of his best moments were foolishly handed away to the Reds (his only no-hitter) and the White Sox (his 300th win), he remains so.
The others on the list — Mike Piazza, Keith Hernandez, David Wright — aren’t nearly as interesting as the two primaries (all due respect to Jerry Koosman and Gary Carter) who didn’t make it — Dwight Gooden and Darryl Strawberry.
For better or worse, Gooden and Strawberry are destined to be more lamented for the greatness they didn’t achieve than lauded for that which they did. Hey, it’s a fan vote, and fans have feelings, and fans have resentments, and all of that goes into the chemistry of being a fan. And all of it is fair game when casting a vote for something like this.
But let’s be perfectly frank about one thing:
Dwight GoodenPhoto: AP
Dwight Gooden is — period — the second-best Met of all time. Yes, he should have been even greater, but his first eight years as a Met — 1984 through 1991 — read like a typo: 132-53, 2.91 ERA, 21 shutouts, 1,541 strikeouts. And they certainly compare favorably to Seaver’s first eight years (146-87, 2.47, 29, 1,856). So that means someone has to leave the list.
But what of Strawberry? He is another who suffers by comparison to what we wanted him to be. And yet what he was as a Met is staggering; you could argue Wright’s best year as a Met (probably 2008) would qualify as Strawberry’s
fifth-best, depending on how you view advanced stats.
Hernandez always will have a visceral tie to Mets fans. He was the one who turned a joke operation into a contender, by himself at the start. It probably explains why Mets fans invested so much in Matt Harvey, because in many spiritual ways he channeled Hernandez’s mindset. From day one in 1983, Hernandez demanded his teammates care as much as he did, a quality Harvey showed up with in 2012 at a time when that was in rare supply in the Mets clubhouse.
Piazza? He had four years (1999-2002) that are virtually unmatched anywhere else in Mets everyday player history. But there is still a nagging truth that his very best days happened 3,000 miles away, in Los Angeles.
Me? I think Seaver and Gooden are shoo-ins. I totally buy into what Hernandez means as a historical element, so he’s number three. And, not meaning to pile on the injured captain, but the fourth slot is a 50-50 proposition for me between Piazza and Strawberry. In the end, I pick Piazza, but I’m willing to be very wrong about that, too.
IMO, of course.
