BEST PITCHERS EVER? SPLIT INTO 2 LISTS

Baseball is a very strange game in one respect.

It’s the only one of the team sports in which people argue vehemently that the best players from 100 years ago were actually better than the best players of the modern era.

Certainly not American football, where as recently as the mid 1960s, there was only one player in the National Football League who weighed 300 pounds.

Or basketball, where too many players back then were slow white guys who needed a shave.

But in baseball, every list of greatest players from the pantheon lists Babe Ruth, whose career ended in 1935, as either the best or second-best player ever to play baseball.

Ruth had a .344 career batting average and hit 714 home runs, but one modern Yankee reliever who will remain nameless said he would strike the Babe out every time he faced him.

Uh, probably not.

People tend to overrate players they saw personally. The late Dick Young, one of the first great baseball writers, called it the “gee whiz” reaction and said too many people think history began the day they were born.

You have to look at players in their own era. Even if it’s just for reasons of playing conditions, nutrition, competition, travel and other factors. Ruth, Ty Cobb, Honus Wagner and the other greats on their era didn’t play night games. They didn’t compete against African-American players. They never traveled west of St. Louis. They traveled on trains, reasonable differences at reasonable speeds.

Asking how Ruth would do against Roger Clemens, or how Barry Bonds would do against Walter Johnson is just silly, and don’t forget great hitters like Ted Williams and Willie Mays who never faced either pitcher, or Sandy Koufax and Bob Gibson, great pitchers whose entire careers fell in between Ruth and Bonds.

So instead of an overall top 10, let’s do the top best pre-1947 and the 10 best post-1947. There are two pitchers worthy of consideration whose careers fell in both eras. One had his best years in the older era, the other in the newer, so that’s where they’ll be considered.

PRE-1947

Counting down from 10, Bob Feller, Ed Walsh, Eddie Plank, Carl Hubbell, Lefty Grove, Satchel Paige, Grover Cleveland Alexander, Cy Young, Christy Mathewson, Walter Johnson.

Honorable mention: Babe Ruth.

POST-1947

Counting down from 10, Juan Marichal, Roger Clemens, Randy Johnson, Pedro Martinez, Warren Spahn, Steve Carlton, Bob Gibson, Sandy Koufax, Tom Seaver, Greg Maddux.

Honorable mention: Justin Verlander, Jim Palmer, Roy Halladay, Max Scherzer.

Just one fan’s opinion.