by Davis Horner

Created on: September 17, 2008

Greatest Baseball Players (1901-1950):

Ty Cobb: The chip on his shoulder was larger than the bat he carried. He was an angry man, regretful of a harsh childhood in Royston, Georgia, and he brought that rage onto the baseball diamond. He was hated by other teams and by his own teammates. He is famous for his flying spikes while sliding into base, and some believed that he found delight in causing physical injury to opposing players. He was prone to violent flares of temper, on and off the field, and was once suspended from baseball and fined for attacking a crippled man in the stands who had been heckling him. His only desire was to be baseball's greatest player.

And he was. By the end of his 22 year career, Cobb held records in virtually every batting category: hits, runs scored, runs batted in, stolen bases and extra base hits. Most of these records held for decades. His lifetime Batting Average of .367 has never been surpassed, even approached. He played in an era when baseball often became a contact sport, where games were won by hitting safely, running the base paths, and scoring one run at a time. His mastery of the game was complete.

Babe Ruth: There were several years during the 1920's when Babe Ruth was the world's most famous American. His incomparable skills as a power hitter in baseball were matched by his expansive and gregarious personality and his larger than life escapades during the Jazz Age. As a ballplayer he singlehandedly redefined the game and its strategy, and played perhaps the largest part among players in reviving the sport after the shock of the Black Sox scandal of 1919. Off the field he was a celebrity, as idolized as any silent screen film star of the age.

Babe led the American league in Home Runs in 12 different seasons, and batted for a lifetime average of .342. The New York Yankees acquired him for Boston - at a bargain - where he had been one of the most successful pitchers in the American League. They switched him to the outfield so he could hit every day. I have often wondered why the Yankees hardly used Ruth as a pitcher. In all his years with the Yankees, he pitched only five games, and won them all.

Babe Ruth, perhaps more than any player in any sport, defined greatness and celebrity in athletics.

Walter Johnson: He was arguably the greatest pitcher of all time. He was a quiet man, business-like on the mound. He played his entire career with the Washington Senators, a club whose losing seasons outnumbered their winning ones.

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