Players' Choice: Major League Baseball Players Vote on the All-Time Greats. Foreword by Vice President George Bush.

By Eugene V. McCaffrey and Roger A. McCaffrey

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• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0816013624
• ISBN13: 9780816013623
• Release Date: April 1987
• Publisher: Facts On File (1987)
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 1.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 6.3" x 9.4"

Customer Reviews

Baseball greats -- ranked by the players themselves

The authors mailed surveys to living players (in the mid-1980's), and they received many, many responses. The players were asked to select a "first" and "second" all-time team of players at each position, as well as an all-time defensive team; and also to pick players for many other categories such as "Best fastball," "Best breaking ball" (etc.), "Best pinch-hitter," "Most underrated," and, one of the most interesting categories, "Never reached his potential." We are given the complete slate of answers by many of the well-known players who responded, as well as the full list of responders. The authors do an excellent job of presenting and commenting on the results, and so the book isn't just a compilation of surveys -- it's a nice piece of baseball literature.As might be expected, the rankings are slanted toward the more-recent players, since the responders were predominantly more-recent players (for obvious reasons) and they tended to select players they saw. However, a considerable number of old-timers also participated, and many of the more recent players did also select players from earlier eras -- so, to a good extent the results reflect baseball's entire history. Some of the rankings are quite different from what we find in other books, but in no instance did I find myself thinking the rankings were "bad" or "wrong"; it was more like, "Hey, I didn't realize that!" The results, and the authors' discussion of them, seem to bear out that the players themselves really do know best.This book was a great effort, and it is a unique contribution to the baseball history literature.