Epilogue

Baseball is all about arguments and opinions and disagreements. They feed and nourish our national pastime. That’s one of the things that makes it such a great game and why a knowledge of the past enriches the experience for fans. Seen in a vacuum, the Killer B’s are just another pretty good major-league outfield. We can admire their skills and cheer them on, but we really don’t know how good they are unless we can compare them with some of their predecessors.

For some, that opportunity to compare comes with very little effort via something known as the aging process. All you have to do is wait, live a reasonably long life, and you will automatically start saying, “Yeah, he’s good but remember (fill in the player’s name)?” Or “Sure, he’s got a gun for an arm, but you should have seen the throw to the plate that (fill in player’s name) made in the (fill in the year) World Series.” Those of us in this category are blessed to have seen Willie Mays’s slashing style in the outfield and on the basepaths, standing out in every year’s All-Star Game as if he were surrounded by mediocrity. Or Sandy Koufax, the southpaw who for five years was virtually unhittable. Or Ted Williams, who was the greatest hitter since Babe Ruth. Or Hank Aaron, who quietly and courageously broke Ruth’s home-run record.

The thing is that when Hammerin’ Hank stood at 713 homers, human curiosity practically forced you to the library (this was the seventies after all, and therefore pre-Google) to look up this Babe Ruth guy. Once you knew what the Bambino had done, Aaron’s accomplishment grew in stature. And you also learned a little bit about American history, about the color barrier and the integration of baseball, and other historical facts that put Aaron’s home run feat in greater context.

It’s human nature for young people to believe that everything is at its apex of excellence right now, at this particular point in human history. The music is the best, the movie stars are the best, and so on. Nostalgia for the past requires that you have a past and young people can’t be blamed if they think that Chris Sale is the greatest pitcher of all time, or Mike Trout the greatest player. But remember, some day in the not too distant future, there will be people 15 or 20 years your junior who will be convinced that the greatest outfield in history is the one currently playing for the (fill in the team). These people may well be your own sons and daughters. You will argue, of course, and caution them that there were some pretty good ones back in 2019, but your case may fall on deaf ears. That’s the beauty of baseball. The record books are there for all to see and in many cases so is the video and audio. Do yourself a favor and learn about baseball history. Your enjoyment of the game will increase 100 percent.

Benny, Jackie, and Mookie deserve to be compared with the great outfields of the past. Failing to make those comparisons does them a disservice. As the Old Perfessor, Casey Stengel, once said, “You could look it up.”