David Martinez on Honus Wagner

David Martinez is a member of the Society of American Baseball Research and the author of "The Book of Baseball Literacy" (published 1996 and 2000). He is also the man behind the baseball blog Baseball Mud: History, Stats, and Other Stuff, a new blog with interesting tidbits of baseball lore, literature, personalities, statistics, terminology, and more.

In one of David's posts, he discusses his opinion on how Honus Wagner is the greatest Pittsburgh Pirate of all time:

Who's the greatest? It really is no contest. Honus Wagner is not only the greatest Pirate of all time, he's one of the top five players of all time. Don't know much about Wagner? As a fielder, Wagner was the greatest of his time. As a hitter and baserunner, only Ty Cobb was better. As a positive clubhouse influence, he was unmatched. He was more beloved by fans than anybody until Babe Ruth. He was friendly with rookies and veterans alike, and he maintained his humility despite his fame.

“If I had a choice of all players who have played baseball,” long-time Yankee boss Ed Barrow, who guided Babe Ruth’s career, once said, “the first man I would select would be Honus Wagner.” And legendary manager John McGraw said: “I consider Wagner not only as the number one shortstop, but had he played in any position other than pitcher, he would have been equally great at the other seven positions. He was the nearest thing to a perfect player no matter where his manager chose to play him.”

In a subsequent post, David explains why he put Wagner on his list of the top 5 players of all time:

Other than Babe Ruth, I don't know for sure who I would list among the other top ballplayers. Probably Willie Mays, Walter Johnson, and Barry Bonds. Or maybe Roger Clemens instead of Johnson. I don't know. There are dozens of ways to crunch the numbers and each would come up with a different result.

Why Honus Wagner? He played so long ago, when the game was so different, that it seems odd to believe that a bow-legged shortstop from 100 years ago remains one of the greatest players of all time.

The way I look at it is, how much did he help his teams win and how much better was he than his contemporaries? And by that measure, Wagner is near the top of the list.

What we have is one of the greatest offensive performers of all time, playing the best shortstop, on one of the best teams of his era.

It would take a lot of convincing before I would stop revering Honus Wagner.

In his post David also compares Wagner's 1908 season to the statistics from modern day heroes like Alex Rodriguez and Albert Pujols to show how amazing Wagner's achievements really were.

If you haven't heard of David's blog before it's definitely worth a read - I discovered it through his Honus Wagner posts and am looking forward to future entries!