The 25 greatest baseball players of all time

So I thought this was going to be easy. Who can't pick the 25 greatest baseball players of all time? I immediately wrote down my list. It totaled 31. Uh-oh. And that list of 31 left out some of my favorite all-time players, like Tom Seaver and Jim Palmer.

Then it struck me. I couldn't do this by myself. So I recruited a special "Blue Ribbon Panel" to help me decide-and they couldn't agree on 25 either. So I tallied up all the votes, and the top 25 made it.

There are still some major omissions. Yankee catcher Yogi Berra may have won 10 World Series and three Most Valuable Player (MVP) Awards, but he didn't make the cut. And neither did fellow Hall of Famer Nolan Ryan, despite his record seven no-hitters. Sandy Koufax was one of the all-time great pitchers, and Mariano Rivera may be the best reliever ever, but neither of them made it either. That's how tough this was.

So out of thousands of major leaguers, we have somehow whittled the list down to 25. They are the greatest of the great. See if you agree.
My Blue Ribbon Panel

My Blue Ribbon Panel consists of former players, a long-time baseball executive, and various members of the media.

• Four-time World Series champion, Yankee center fielder Bernie Williams
• Three-time All-Star pitcher for the Brooklyn Dodgers in the 1940s and 1950s, Ralph Branca
• Long-time major league executive Roland Hemond
• Emmy and Peabody AwardÂ-winning journalist Frank Deford
• Red Sox fanatic, television/film critic, and author Jeffrey Lyons
• Radio talk-show host extraordinaire Chris "Mad Dog" Russo
• Emmy AwardÂ-winning producer of This Week in Baseball Steve Fortunato

 

And special thanks to Baseball Hall of Fame president Jeff Idelson for his guidance on this project.

Forty different players received votes, and only 11 players were unanimous choices. Panelist Bernie Williams was partial to the players of his era. He voted for pitcher Pedro Martinez, saying, "The best I ever faced. In his prime...three un-hittable pitches." Ralph Branca said, "Pretty tough to leave out some of the great players. Can't we make it 30? It still would be tough to choose."

And that's the fun of it. How do you com­pare players from different eras? You really can't. But somehow we got it down to 25. And at the end of the book, you'll get your chance to vote for your favorites.
So here we go. Play ball!

 

BEFORE YOU GET STARTED, HERE ARE SOME BASEBALL ABBREVIATIONS EVERY FAN SHOULD KNOW!
1B= First Base
2B= Second Base/Doubles
3B= Third Base/Triples
AB= At Bats
AL= American League
AVG= Batting Average
BA= Batting Average
C= Catcher
E= Errors
ERA= Earned Run Average
G= Games Played
H= Hits
HR= Home Runs
K= Strikeouts
L= Losses
MLB= Major League Baseball
MVP= Most Valuable Player
NL= National League
OF= Outfield
P= Pitcher
R= Runs
RBI= Runs Batted In
SS= Shortstop
W = Wins

Excerpted from The 25 Greatest Baseball Players of All Time by Len Berman All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

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