The Baseball 100: A project celebrating the greatest players in history

Editor’s Note: Initially, we published one essay a day to count down to Opening Day — but with the start of the season pushed back, we’ll be counting down the last 13 by publishing an essay on Monday, Wednesday and Friday of each week.

Welcome to the Baseball 100, an absurd thing that I am doing here at The Athletic. Over the next 100 days, I will be counting down the 100 greatest baseball players in history, each with an essay. In all, this project will contain roughly as many words as “Moby Dick.”

Yes, this is a nutty thing to do.

Well, to be fair, it is my third try. A few years ago, when I had a job and a family and something of a life, I decided it would be interesting and fun to rank the 100 greatest baseball players ever. At the time, I imagined writing just a few words on each player — a paragraph or two — and spreading it out over a baseball offseason.

But it didn’t work out that way. The trouble is that I am utterly incapable of writing “just a few words” on great baseball players. And so the stories began to get longer and more involved and longer and more involved until this project overtook my every waking thought. I read multiple books on some of the players. I fell down Grand Canyon-sized rabbit holes. And it kept getting bigger and bigger — after all, if you’re going to write a couple thousand words about Duke Snider, you have to write more words on Willie McCovey, and if you’re going to write that much on McCovey, how much would you need to write about Roberto Clemente?

The series stretched out for so long that I began to find the rankings out of date. And finally, I simply ran out of time and space. The first attempt crashed around No. 30.

I began the series again last year because I got very excited about this new ranking formula that that estimable Tom Tango helped me come up with. That series flamed out more quickly.

This time, the third time, is the charm. Beginning Wednesday, Dec. 18, and ending on Opening Day, we at The Athletic will count down the 100 greatest baseball players with long essays telling many stories. And I should say that this list will include several all-time greats who never played Major League Baseball. Well, you will see.

Let me say something right at the top about the rankings themselves: You may care a lot about those. You will probably get mad when you see which players I have left out, which players I have ranked way too low or way too high. You might want me to know just how dumb I am, just how little I know about baseball, just how insulting the ranking was. I totally get it. And I totally deserve whatever you are going to say because it takes some serious gall to believe that you can really rank the 100 greatest baseball players ever.

I will add this because I think it’s important to say: I don’t care much about the rankings. Yes, I spent many, many, many hours on them. I used the Tom Tango-inspired formula, added a bunch of wrinkles, did a bunch of research and made some hard judgments that I believe in.

But the point of this for me is not the ranking but the stories. Every one of these players has a fascinating story — about persistence, about confidence, about pure talent, about amazing moments, about the lengths people will go to become quote-unquote “great.” The stories are what inspired me to do this bonkers thing. And so, with very rare exceptions, I do not even mention the ranking in these essays. There are exceptions where the player’s ranking is part of the story.

But you will not see me write something like, “Duane Kuiper is the 45th best player of all time for these four reasons.”*

*I’m joking. Duane Kuiper is not No. 45 on the Baseball 100 list. That would be ridiculous. He’s No. 77.**

**I kid. 

Because of this, I will not go into great detail about my ranking. Some of it is science, but admittedly some of it also art. I will give you a handful of guiding principles:

1. I think today’s players tend to be underrated compared to those who came before them.

2. I lean toward players who were great at their peak, even if that peak only lasted a short time, and lean away from those who were consistently but not toweringly good for a long time.

3. I lean toward players who did multiple things well over specialists (no matter how great) who basically did just one thing well.

4. I take a lot of care to make educated guesses about players whose careers were shortened by things beyond their control  — World War II, for example, or baseball’s tragic and infuriating color line. I don’t make the same adjustment for injuries. As Bill James has written, there’s a big difference. The years when Joe DiMaggio or Ted Williams or Bob Feller were at war, the years when Josh Gibson and Oscar Charleston played in the Negro Leagues, they were still the best players on earth. They just couldn’t play in the big leagues because of larger issues. When players get hurt — take Don Mattingly, for example, and his back problems — they stop being the best players in the world. I wish Donnie Baseball didn’t get hurt, we all do, but he did, and he was never quite the same player after that. That’s not the same as saying that Bob Feller lost four years when he was still the best pitcher on earth.

5. I have done a lot of research about the Negro Leagues to estimate the greatness of the players there. I try to be as unsentimental about this as I possibly can. I do not rank Satchel Paige based on dreamy views. He is exactly where I think he belongs on the list.

As for the rest: This list is a moving target. I have done it three times using different methods and the rankings are quite different. This is because there’s no significant difference between a player ranked 72 and 48 and 31. I could swap them, for the most part, without it changing much of anything. So if you believe a player ranked 97th should actually be 53rd, well, it might be that way the next time.

And finally: The toughest part of doing this list was cutting it off at 100. There are 25 or so players who I think are just as deserving to be on this list as anyone in the bottom 50. It was brutal narrowing things down, but that’s how such lists go. I want to write about the 25 players who just missed, but I can’t do that now because it would ruin some of the suspense. So maybe we’ll do that at the end.

That is, assuming we get to the end this time.

You can bookmark the countdown’s homepage or check back here each day for updates.

And away we go.

No. 100: Ichiro Suzuki

No. 99: Mike Mussina

No. 98: Carlos Beltrán

No. 97: Roberto Alomar

No. 96: Larry Walker

No. 95: Tony Gwynn

No. 94: Roy Campanella

No. 93: Ozzie Smith

No. 92: Bullet Rogan

No. 91: Mariano Rivera

No. 90: Max Scherzer

No. 89: Mike Piazza

No. 88: Curt Schilling

No. 87: Charlie Gehringer

No. 86: Gary Carter

No. 85: Sadaharu Oh

No. 84: Cool Papa Bell

No. 83: Phil Niekro

No. 82: Kid Nichols

No. 81: Ferguson Jenkins

No. 80: Carlton Fisk

No. 79: Derek Jeter

No. 78: Clayton Kershaw

No. 77: Miguel Cabrera

No. 76: Willie McCovey

No. 75: Justin Verlander

No. 74: Frank Thomas

No. 73: Brooks Robinson

No. 72: Robin Roberts

No. 71: Bert Blyleven

No. 70: Sandy Koufax

No. 69: Monte Irvin

No. 68: Gaylord Perry

No. 67: Hank Greenberg

No. 66: Robin Yount

No. 65: Ernie Banks

No. 64: Johnny Mize

No. 63: Steve Carlton

No. 62: Smokey Joe Williams

No. 61: Arky Vaughan

No. 60: Pete Rose

No. 59: Reggie Jackson

No. 58: Jeff Bagwell

No. 57: Rod Carew

No. 56: Joe DiMaggio

No. 55: Bob Feller

No. 54: Chipper Jones

No. 53: Buck Leonard

No. 52: Adrián Beltré

No. 51: Al Kaline

No. 50: Nolan Ryan

No. 49: Warren Spahn

No. 48: Ken Griffey Jr.

No. 47: Wade Boggs

No. 46: Eddie Mathews

No. 45: Bob Gibson

No. 44: Cal Ripken Jr.

No. 43: Yogi Berra

No. 42: Jackie Robinson

No. 41: Tom Seaver

No. 40: Roberto Clemente

No. 39: Nap Lajoie

No. 38: Carl Yastrzemski

No. 37: Pedro Martínez

No. 36: Christy Mathewson

No. 35: George Brett

No. 34: Cy Young

No. 33: Jimmie Foxx

No. 32: Mel Ott

No. 31: Greg Maddux

No. 30: Johnny Bench

No. 29: Eddie Collins

No. 28: Randy Johnson

No. 27: Mike Trout

No. 26: Grover Cleveland Alexander

No. 25: Pop Lloyd

No. 24: Rickey Henderson

No. 23: Albert Pujols

No. 22: Lefty Grove

No. 21: Joe Morgan

No. 20 (tie): Frank Robinson

No. 20 (tie): Mike Schmidt

No. 18: Tris Speaker

No. 17: Rogers Hornsby

No. 16: Alex Rodriguez

No. 15: Josh Gibson

No. 14: Lou Gehrig

No. 13: Roger Clemens

No. 12: Honus Wagner

No. 11: Mickey Mantle

No. 10: Satchel Paige

No. 9: Stan Musial

No. 8: Ty Cobb

No. 7: Walter Johnson

No. 6: Ted Williams

No. 5: Oscar Charleston

No. 4: Henry Aaron 

No. 3: Barry Bonds

No. 2: Babe Ruth

No. 1: Willie Mays

*-denotes active player