Wednesday, January 14, 2009

How Good was Hank Aaron?

I now get the MLB Network on Cable. You better believe my productivity is about to go down. Seriously, if they ever come out with an SEC Network, I may never have a reason to watch ESPN again except for live sports programming.

Anyway, I got caught up in this documentary about (as Joe Morgan simply calls him) "The Hammer." To answer the title in the subject line, he was better than we recognize. On his radio show, Dan Patrick often calls him the must under-rated player in baseball history. Nobody really celebrates Henry Aaron except when it's a conversation about Civil Rights. Babe Ruth, Ted Williams, Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays, and even others come up in conversations about the greatest of all time before Aaron does.

Just go look at his stats. Number one all-time in RBI's. Number three all-time in hits. Even if you take away all of his homeruns, he STILL had 3,000 hits. And I won't bring up the whole debate about steroids, but there's no question that he earned every one of the 755 he hit.

He was good. Maybe the best ever.

1 comment:

Jordan said...

What also stands out is that he batted .305 for his career when Bob Gibson and Sandy Koufax and other were putting up insane pitching numbers. He was also durable and played 22 seasons, playing 150 games in most of them.