re all time best players in article apr woods ulowell edu poiriera woods ulowell edu writes this chatting about the best player of all time is pointless you can t compare players from different era s of course you can you just have to be careful about what conclusions you draw if you will notice the best pitchers stat wise were in the s and s and the best all around hitters probably came from the s to s huh the s and s were the worst decades for great pitching grove vance dean and not a whole lot else as for the best all around hitters stat wise ruth gehrig foxx greenberg hornsby cobb etc all played before the s stat wise the s were a graveyard for hitters now we have a great number of great pitchers and an equally great number of great hitters and fielders also how do you know which ones do you consider great about fielding the gloves were much smaller than they are now in the early years of baseball maybe a hitter like sheffield with the ba hr and rbi even though it was probably a fluke year can be compared to a mantle because the pitching sheffield faces is faster and not to mention better the so sheffield also has better shoes more time between pitches you can run the comparison but there are lots of things to take into account same could be said for frank thomas who is said to be the best hitter since ted williams although frank s defense does suck well can we compare them or can t we all i am saying is that you can t compare players from different era s if you want a best player try choosing best players from different era s that why we can compare players to the standard of their era and we can keep in mind era to era differences without throwing up our hands in despair way there is reasonable basis for comparison you haven t shown us what s un reasonable about the mantle sheffield comparison that you yourself did roger
