Five Things You Should Know: The Best Hitters I’ve Ever Seen
Sports are always a great source for arguments. Who could have beaten whom. My guy was better than your guy. Ditka vs. a hurricane. And the debates rage on. In the spirit of that, I thought I would throw out a list of my own. I tried to come up with the five best hitters I’ve ever seen. I intentionally avoided a few obvious names because of the steroids era. The steroids mess has swept up almost an entire generation of players in scandal and speculation. Until the dust settles, it’s going to be difficult to judge that group. So, I simply ignored them. Plus, longevity should count for something. So here are the five best hitters I’ve ever seen:
- Tony Gwynn – Over 3,100 hits, a lfietime .338 batting average (seventeenth best all-time), and eight batting titles. Can you name any other Padres besides him?
- Wade Boggs – Five batting titles and a .328 career average, plus over 1,400 walks.
- George Brett – Three batting titles, a career average over .300, and he hit .390 in one season. Plus, he has one of the all-time great explosions when he comes screaming out of the dugout after losing a homerun in a play-off game against the Yankees.
- Rod Carew – seven batting titles, a career .328 average, and a season where he nearly hit .400 (.388 in 1977).
- Paul Molitor – If Molitor could have stayed healthy, who knows how many hits he might have ended up with. As it stands, he had over 3,300 hits and a lifetime average of .306.
- Pete Rose – He’s the hit king of major league baseball. I know that he gambled on the game and is banned, but his bookie slips didn’t swing the bat for him.
- Don Mattingly – He’s Donnie Baseball for pete’s sake. I know the numbers really don’t put him in the top, but I watched him in the minors and he had a few years where he was one of the best in the game.
June 9, 2009 at 11:59 am
Good post and I can’t argue with you much.
I would replace Mattingly with Ichiro. Ichiro’s hand-eye coordination is incredible, he owns the MLB record for hits in a season, and he has almost 1,900 hits into his 9th MLB year–despite playing his first nine professional seasons in Japan.
Further, that video several years ago of him hitting a ball that bounced to plate into right for a single is priceless.
June 9, 2009 at 12:11 pm
Thanks for stopping by. I think you’re right about Ichiro. I actually had placed him on the list and then pulled him off at the last minute. The only reason I left him off is that he’s only played in the States for about nine years, so obviously some of his numbers suffer a little. I think he is probably the best pure hitter in the game today.