Hank Aaron, who died today at age 86, has as strong a claim as anyone to being baseball's GOAT (greatest of all time). Let's run through some statistics, indicating his place on the all-time list:
Games played—3298—3rd (behind Pete Rose and Carl Yastrzemski)
At bats—12364—2nd (behind Rose)
Runs—2174—4th (behind Rickey Henderson, Ty Cobb, and Barry Bonds)
Hits—3771—3rd (behind Rose and Cobb)
Home runs—755—2nd (behind Bonds)
Runs batted in—2297—1st
Total bases—6856—1st
Extra base hits—1477—1st
His lifetime batting average was .305. While in his 20s, he won three gold glove awards. His cumulative career statistics were compiled without benefit of any eye-popping season. He never won the Triple Crown. He was league MVP just once. He played for one World Series champion, the 1957 Milwaukee Braves, and in his career played in only 17 post-season games—he batted .362 in those games, 25-for-69 with 6 homers and 16 RBI. He never hit more than 47 homers in a season (but hit at least 30 fifteen times). His biggest RBI year was 132 (but he averaged 100 per season over his entire 23-year career). Compared to his National League contemporaries Willie Mays and Roberto Clemente, he seemed almost determinedly unflashy. He wasn't at all physically imposing—6 feet tall, 180 pounds—and, in my memory, was so relaxed in the batter's box as to appear almost sleepy. He'd wait longer than most hitters and then flick his quick hands: in keeping with everything else, no tape measure shots, just one vanilla home run after another, about 35 a year for more than 20 years.
I think I've talked myself into it: he's the GOAT. Look over those eight pretty fundamental statistical categories again. He's no farther down the list than fourth, all-time, on any of them, and he's at the top of the list for RBIs, total bases, and extra base hits. Of the players whose names appear ahead of his in more than one of the categories, two, Rose and Cobb, were compared to him just banjo hitters, and another, Bonds, used steroids. Mays was better than Aaron in the field and on the bases. Ted Williams walked more, had an even higher slugging percentage, and, were it not for time lost to military service, might have had career numbers to rival Aaron's. Everyone's case for being the GOAT requires some special pleading, but the case for Aaron seems to me the most straightforward. The guy with the third most hits had the second most homers, the most total bases, and the most RBIs.
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