Morgan walked at least 110 times each year with the Reds (less when he was missed time with injuries). Seems to me that when pitchers kept walking him even with Bench and Perez coming up, that they were not throwing fat pitches to Morgan.

I'd take Morgan. It'd be easier to find a third baseman who hit half as much as Schmidt or a rightfielder who hit half as much as Robinson, than to do the same for a second baseman and Morgan. I'd take Sandberg over a lot of hitters with better stats for the same reason (though not Schmidt of Robinson).

Of course you can check his record!

http://www.baseball-reference.com/p...

Near the bottom is a table called "Situational Hitting" which breaks down Morgan's home runs by Home and Road. In his years with the Astros, he hit 24 homers at home, 33 on the road. Significant, but not to the extent you might have thought.

You get to this page by going to the main player page, then in the "Standard Batting" section click "More Stats". And to save you some time, a few lifetime numbers:

Morgan: 122 home, 142 road
Sandberg: 164-118
Santo: 214-126
Brooks Robinson: 137-131

Joe McCarthy once said, "Am I a good manager? I don't know. I just put guys like Dimaggio and Rolfe and Dickey and Henrich out on the field every day, and you should see what happens."

You say "historically 3rd baseman & outfielders have been the big stick men in the lineup." True, but not by choice! It's just that their aren't that many big sticks among the few players able to hand second base. That's why guys like Morgan, Sandberg and Alomar are so valuable, even if their hitting numbers aren't quite up to the outfielders and third basemen's production.

"I think Joe Morgan was an outstanding player but I don't understand why you would want take a 22 year old offensive second baseman over a 22 year old 3rd baseman or a versatile fielder in a 22 year old Frank Robinson."

Not an easy choice, of course. But if you don't have Schmidt or Robinson it's not that hard to find guys who can get 60-70% as many homers and RBI. But it'll never be that easy to find another second baseman who can even approach Morgan's production. (Plus of course he was an outstanding defensive player as well, not too easy to replace.)

Not being a master of retrosheet like PB, I checked Gibson's results as a starter game by game (every decision) at Wrigley from 64 thru 68.

Take a look at the opposite case, playing in a great pitchers' park, and add on the huge strike zone that existed from 63 to 68. The Dodgers rotation of Koufax, Drysdale, Podres and Osteen, with relievers Perranoski and Regan, was a great staff, but not really as good as a quick glance appears to show.

I'm not saying we thought Santo, Williams, Banks, etc.were great and they really were lousy. I'm just saying their stats were inflated to some degree by Wrigley Field. So Santo might have been a legitimate 25-homer guy rather than a 30-homer guy, or that Williams was a .310 hitter in a good year, not a .330 hitter.

A couple guys who really got their stats jacked up over the years: Wade Boggs playing at Fenway (he typically hit .310 on the road and .380 at home), and Henry Aaron, who hit for so many years in Atlanta's "Launching Pad."

You see, I have this dreadful tendency to see both sides of an issue, so I can never make up my mind. I envy you fellows who can tell what's right and are willing to defend it passionately.

I do like to muck around with statistics, for what they're worth. I looked at the Cubs' run scoring from 1960-1973, when Santo was with the team. During that period, they scored 8.81% more runs at home than they did on the road.

Is that significant? Maybe not. During that same period, the Orioles scored 8.89% more runs at home!

When you think about it, most teams would be expected to score more runs at home, since teams generally have a better record at home than they do on the road. The difference is Wrigley's effect on the visiting team: they scored 5.88% more runs at Wrigley than they did at home against the same Cubs pitching. For the Orioles, the comparable figure is -2.00%, which I think would be likely more in line with the general average.

All of which doesn't really matter for Santo's HOF chances. You agree with me that he belongs. I'm just not passionate about it, if only because I don't get passionate about a lot of things.

Let's see; what other questions can't I settle? Morgan or Sandberg? Depends on the rest of the team, the ballpark, the manager's philosophy. I can't make a judgment in a vacuum, and other things are never equal.

And, if every MLB player was age 22 again and I had first pick, I'd probably take Derek Jeter. Great offensive shortstops are a lot rarer and more valuable than great offensive players at most other positions.

The problem was that when the Giants came to SF, Mays was portrayed as some sort of God, who would perform miracles every day. He just couldn't meet the expectations, and people were drawn more to rookie sluggers Orlando Cepeda and (a year later) Willie McCovey.

After a couple of years fans caught on to Mays' greatness and people loved him through the sixties. I remember being off at family camp in August 65, the month he hit 17 homers, and it was the only thing anybody wanted to talk about.

"People have asked me to judge the big trade of the winter meetings, and I have been reluctant to do it because Curtis Granderson is one of my favorite players. This is not entirely because he asked me to be his Facebook friend, though I suspect that makes up a percentage of it. I also like the way he plays, the way he carries himself, the way he represents the game. I like the way he wears his socks. I like the thoughtful answers he gives to questions. I like in that in 2007 he pulled off the quad-20 -- 20 doubles, 20 triples, 20 homers, 20 stolen bases."

Notice how everything is about him. People are asking HIM, Granderson asked HIM to be a friend. And if you read the whole story, he's one of those guys who always takes forever to get to the point.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willie...

Funny how my father taught me baseball history as a kid, or at least as I understood it. Mays, Mantle, Aaron, Robinson were great stars of the moment. But they weren't as good as the previous Williams/Musial generation.

I took a look at outfield assists. Early on, Mantle seemed roughly equal to Mays, as Mickey's best was 20 assists in one year while Wilie topped out at 23 one year, 22 another. However, as with other aspects of their careers, Mays kept his abilities longer. He wound up averaging about 9 assists a year, Mantle about 6.5.

Apparently, the scientific way to measure this is to examine baserunning in these situations (all with less than two out):

1) Batter singles, runner on 1st
2) Batter singles, runner on 2nd
3) Batter doubles, runner on 1st
4) Batter flies out, runner on 3rd
5) Batter flies out, runner on 2nd

Now look at the number of times the runner takes the extra base. If he's thrown out, it's a "kill". If he doesn't advance, it's a "hold".

OK. If you believe all that, Mays and Mantle have the same percentage of holds at 44.8%, against a league average of 41.3%. Mays does a bit better on kills at 2.4% to Mantle's 2.2%, with a league average of 2.1%.

Here are Mays' numbers:

http://www.baseball-reference.com/p...

You can get to Mantle's by going to his player page, click "More Stats" in the "Standard Fielding" section, then go down to the table "Advanced Fielding."

Or Ralph Kiner, who had a notoriously terrible arm?

I can't make a fair comparison because I grew up in a Giants household in which Willie Mays was the be-all and end-all in baseball and Mantle and Snider the despised pretenders. I have outgrown my antipathy to the latter two, but I will be a Willie Mays fanatic until the day I die.

Maybe we've all seen it too often, but the newsreel clip of Willie's famous catch in the 1954 World Series also includes one helluva throw back to the infield. The throw is usually overshadowed by the catch. I've seen many catches just as good, but I have never seen such a catch combined with such a throw--and that makes it unique.