The Two Franchise All-Stars (MLB)
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by user Manny Stiles
Everyone can name a tremendous list of players that played their entire career with one team - Johnny Bench, Robin Yount, Tony Gwynn, Cal Ripken, Mike Schmidt Don Mattingly... on and on...
And you probably are aware of my fascination with guys that had extremely short tenures with franchises - a.k.a. "The Pete Rose Game"
When randomly perusing stats, every once in a while a new trivia question will pop into my head. Problem is, the trivia I am curious about rarely has an easy answer - for instance - Was there ever a switch hitter that hit a cycle one game strictly as a righty and one strictly as a lefty?
Today I am pondering, WHO are the Two-Franchise All-Stars and WHO has the perfect two-franchise career?
Here is the criteria: The player had to be somewhat significant. They MUST have played for two franchises as close to equally as possible - so Ozzie Smith is a better Two-Franchise player than Willie Mays because Say Hey played one and a half seasons with the Mets, Ozzie played 4 with the Padres... so the closer to 50-50 the better!
So Christy Mathewson might actually be the WORST player in this game thanks to his ONE game played as a Cincinnati Red. (I'll always remember him as a Red!)
This also rules out players like Babe Ruth, Warren Spahn and Jimmie Foxx who dabbled with a third franchise.
So here's the editable list of quality 2 franchise careers
C - Carlton Fisk, Mickey Cochrane,
1b - Rod Carew, Mark McGwire,
2b - Eddie Collins, Frankie Frisch
SS - Honus Wagner, Ozzie Smith, Arky Vaughn
3B - Scott Rolen, Home Run Baker,
LF - Barry Bonds, Manny Ramirez
CF - Ken Griffey Jr., Sam Crawford
RF - Vladimir Guerrero,
SP - Lefty Grove, Mike Mussina, Bob Welch, Catfish Hunter, Tom Glavine, Andy Pettitte, Christy Mathewson, Lefty Gomez
RP - Tug McGraw, Trevor Hoffman, Troy Percival,
Bench - Willie Mays, Paul O'Neill, Billy Williams, Dwight Evans, David Ortiz, Ron Santo, Frank Malzone, Bobby Grich, Ryne Sandberg, Steve Garvey, Mark Grace, Ty Cobb, Hank Aaron and Yogi Berra.
Honarable mention - Harmon Killebrew wore three unis, but only for two franchises.
It's pretty tough to decide who has the "BEST" (closest to 50-50) career... It might be Tug McGraw...
Can you think of any I missed? I might try a basketball and football one of these later...
I have a gut feeling the Three Franchise All-Stars would be a VERY good team as well!
