A-Rod vs Honus Wagner is it a fair comparison?
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My answer to that is a huge not even in the same league. Honus Wagner was called by Ty Cobb the greatest player to walk on the baseball diamond. Well, that was before Ruth came onto the scene, and started hitting everything out of the park.
Wagner did anything and everything ever asked of him on the playing field. Considered by many to be the greatest shortstop in history he could also play outfield and did on occasion during his Pittsburg years. He won only one World Series that being 1909 but led the National league in hitting 8 times. Only Cobb and Gwynn have won more. 2nd player to 3,000 hits and hit .327 lifetime playing from 1897 to 1917.
I never got to see him play because I wasn't born until 1919 but my father and grandfather talked about him for years and I got to know him through them in the late 20's and 30's. Everytime we went to Pittsburg Dad and I with grandpa would spend as much time as we could with Honus and talk baseball for hours upon hours until the wee hours of the morning. He like most of the older players I got to know later on were very special people. Almost all to a man were nice, quiet and peaceful individual whose biggest loves were mostly fishing, hunting and baseball but not necessarily in that order. Honus coached until the late 40's and still was giving his great knowledge to the younger generation even if they didn't play for the Pittsburg Pirates. He could talk about hitting and fielding and ways of playing different players even if he hadn't seen them but a couple of times before. One summer he and dad got to talking about Ruth and why it seemed all the pitchers weren't too happy to face him. He told us that when Babe was at bat there wasn't any way to really pitch to him or around him except to walk him. Honus use to say that Babe had the quickest hands he had ever seen. I asked him about Cobb and he laughed and told me that he didn't want to get into any questions about him because as great as he was he wasn't like by most of the opposing players or team mates.
Dad use to say that Honus was like a smaller Babe and was extremely hard to pitch too because he didn't have any giant weaknesses and could hit anything pitched to him. During his playing days the pitchers did anything and everything to a baseball before they pitched it. But he must have done something right for 20 years because he had 3415 hits in his major league career. He was one of the first 5 into the Hall of Fame in 1936 and besides hitting .327 lifetime had 1732 runs batted in.
A-Rod is a great player in his own right but I will go with what my grandpa and father use to tell me about how good Honus Wagner was on the diamond and A-Rod hasn't shown me anywhere near what Wagner did. Todays' games pitching is extremely watered down and more players are playing today that wouldn't have made it to the big leagues 40 years ago that he is hitting against many pitchers that aren't in the same league as ones Wagner faced in the early 1900-1917's games. Everyone keeps saying you can't compare eras, but I don't entirely agree with that statement. I have seen players from the 1920's until the present day and player for player it isn't close to the same talent level now as it was then.
I have heard all kinds of people talk for years about that statement and I remember watching the Babe and Lou and Mel Ott and Jimmy Foxx and many others play and the talent and ability isn't anywhere near the same and that includes some of the players like A-Rod. Ted Williams didn't have any weaknesses at the plate, but A-Rod can't hit a pitch up and in or low and away with any kind of average. In the 1930 season I saw a very overweight Babe hit the living you know what out of the pitching in the American league. 1941 Ted Williams hit .406 against the Williams switch. As great as A-Rods' statistics are today he doesn't hold up to anything Honus Wagner put up. Fielding Wagner by a mile and hitting with the exception of the homeruns Rod is only a close second. Maybe I am wrong but I watch Rod hit and strikeout with much more regularity than Wagner and when Joe Jackson says nobody covers as much ground in the field and Honus Wagner than maybe the younger generations should start looking at what it was like playing without lights, dirty balls, rainy fields and pitchers that could do anything to get you out.
