**DiMaggio Pozterisk
Posted: June 11th, 2008 | Filed under: Baseball | 51 Comments »
**It occurs to me as I see the comments on the Junior post that Joe DiMaggio might fit a certain kind of image I have, the “So overrated he’s underrated (SOHU)” kind of player.
I’ve always thought Pittsburgh running back Franco Harris was the perfect example of the SOHU player. When Franco Harris was threatening to become the all-time leading rusher, there was a flood of stories and quotes about how Franco was horribly overrated. He ran out of bounds. He was afraid to take hits. He just took advantage of a great line. And he fumbled a lot. And so on. There was truth in all the griping — quite a lot of truth, in fact. I spent a lot of my childhood watching Franco Harris run, and no, I was never especially impressed with his toughness or willingness to plow over anyone for the extra yard. I also thought it would be sacrilegious for Harris to break Jim Brown’s rushing record.
Still, the griping just kept building and building and building until the only conclusion you could possibly draw was that Franco Harris actually SUCKED, he was WORTHLESS, he was A FIGMENT OF THE IMAGINATION. I remember that when Jim Brown pathetically challenged Franco Harris to a race, the general feeling among people I knew was that the 284 year old Jim Brown who had not done anything physically impressive since his role in the Dirty Dozen might actually outrun Franco. You might recall Jim Brown — the no doubt, no argument, greatest football player who ever lived — pulled up lame halfway through the race.
Still, the Franco bashing continued. And then one day, I went back and looked at Franco Harris’ career. He rushed for a 1,000 yards seven out of eight years — most of those 14 game seasons. He averaged 4.8 yards per carry in 1974 and 1975, the first two years Pittsburgh won the Super Bowl. And these were not especially balanced teams. In 1974, the Steelers basically had no passing attack, Joe Gilliam threw more passes than Terry Bradshaw that year. Everyone knew Franco was coming. In 1975, the balance was better, but that offense was still all about Franco — he led the conference with 14 touchdowns year.
Franco was a major player in the other two Super Bowls too … even if his yard per average went down some. Yes, maybe he ran out of bounds, but maybe that also helped him be durable. Yes, he fumbled quite a bit, but he got into the end zone and he caught some passes and he did make the single greatest play in NFL history. Yes, he wasn’t Jim Brown. But he wasn’t Jim Apple either. When Franco left the Steelers, the Steelers went in the tank. He was a terrific football player who, as much as anyone, turned the Steelers from a laughing stock to champion. So overrated he’s underrated.
I wonder now if that’s happening to Joe DiMaggio. We all know that for years DiMaggio was dramatically overrated because the Golden Age Sportswriters loved him, because he married Marilyn Monroe, because Gay Talese wrote one of the three best sports stories ever about him, because he had that classic two-handed wave at Yankee Stadium, because he sold coffee and autographs and so on and so on.
So, because of all this, he won all sorts of accolades and tributes and an MVP or two he didn’t deserve — funny, everyone talks about the MVP he took from Ted Williams in 1941 when Williams hit .406, but the real crime came in ‘47, when:
DiMaggio hit .315/.391/.522 with 20 homers, 97 RBIs in 141 games and won the MVP.
Williams hit: .343/.499/.634 with 32 homers, 114 RBIs, 125 runs in 156 games.
Still … it seems that lately DiMaggio has taken a real beating. Richard Ben Cramer’s fascinating book let us know that Joe D. really wasn’t much of a guy. Then I’ve seen quite a few stories and comments about how overrated he was as a player. How he wasn’t all that special. And, I do wonder now, if people are forgetting:
– DiMaggio had a 155 OPS+ in his career, 20th all time, — and we all know he lost three prime years because of World War II.
– He was, clearly, a brilliant center fielder. Even this has been questioned — probably because it’s easy the mock the continuous stream of “He never threw to the wrong base” quotes (I mean, the guy did make 17 errors in ‘37) — but it’s obvious from all the accounts that he was a phenomenon in center field.
– He did hit .325/.398/.579 with 379 homers for a war-shortened career at Yankee Stadium, which (especially then) was pretty cruel to right-handed power hitters. Another time, another place, those already special numbers might have been off the charts.
The question in the comments, referred to whether Junior was better than DiMaggio. It’s a great question, and it’s a close call. In Bill James New Historical, he lists DiMaggio as the fifth best center fielder ever, Junior as sixth. That was a few years ago, and Junior has tacked on some numbers to his totals, but I don’t think it has added any value to this question. Because I think this question is … at their best, which one would you rather have.
Would you rather have Ken Griffey in 1997:
.304/.382/.646, 34 doubles, 3 triples, 56 homers, 147 RBIs, 125 runs, 15 stolen bases, 165 OPS+, Gold Glove in center, 36 Win Shares.
Or would you rather have Joe DiMaggio in 1941:
.357/.440/.643, 43 doubles, 11 triples, 30 homers, 125 RBIs, 122 runs, 13 strikeouts, 184 OPS+, Brilliant defense in center, 41 Win Shares. Also had a hitting streak of some sort.
I think it’s clear I love Junior. It would be tough to pass on the overrated guy.
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If only Junior had married Anna Nicole Smith . . .
Some research I did at STATS in the 1990s showed that Junior wasn’t that great a centerfielder. He made the web gem catches, but he played deep and some balls fell in front of him. He was also very deferential to his left and right fielders, allowing them to catch balls that most centerfielders would handle. When Junior was young, he wasn’t all hustle all the time, perfectly willing not to catch everything a centerfielder could catch.
Ugh, the hit streak. Whoop-de-do.
Ted Williams hit better for those 56 games, too. And I think I’ve read that one of his hits should have been scored an error.
G-d, it’s the most overrated accomplishment in sports.
Not to mention Joe DiMaggio only struck out 369 times in 7,671 PAs. It took Griffey only 2,822 PAs to rack up 369 strikeouts. (My favorite is how it took Ryan Howard only 1,347 PAs.)
Anyways, I think it’s easy to overlook DiMaggio’s stats because they just don’t seem that impressive on the outset: 1,390 runs (less than Luis Gonzalez), 1,537 RBIs (less than Fred McGriff), 2,214 hits (less than Graig Nettles and Darrell Evans), and 361 home runs (less than Jim Edmonds). I know I definitely did that when I looked at DiMaggio’s stats as a kid. However, it’s important to note that he played only 13 seasons, having missed three of them due to WWII.
Of course, he only walked 790 times. That’s less than Ryan Klesko and Wally Joyner.
Emmitt Smith needs to be added to the list of SOHU athletes. I have a feeling that Kobe’s going to be in the same position10-15 years from now when people realize he’s not in Jordan’s class.
*ahem*…wait…[rubbing eyes], you’re saying [blinking like Jose Canseco], I mean…whaaa?!?!?!!
THIRTEEN STRIKEOUTS
The whole season!?!?!?!
I just peed my pants a little…
I think it’s pretty easy for Yankees to fall into the SOHU category. Mantle for sure. Probably Reggie. Dare I say Jeter as well? However, the All-Time SOHU, I think, has rather suddenly become Cal Ripkin, the very, very selfish man. (Rice is getting there, though, eh?)
I’m particularly interested in the SUHO category, Garret Anderson being a recent example who pops immediately to mind. The all-time SUHO is, of course, Dwight Evans, due to the fact that, since 1994, there is not a single record of a conversation taking place about underrated players that has not included somebody chiming in about Dewey being underrated.
Joe DiMaggio’s lack of strikeouts is an anecdote, not an accomplishment. The object is to not make outs; DiMaggio’s OBP shows he was great at that. How he did make outs is of very little concern to me.
DiMaggio was terrific. I dislike how people make up accomplishments for him to prove it.
I don’t get this one. ALL I’ve ever heard is how freaking great Joe D was.
Let me try to apply SOHU to the world of film to see if I understand the concept correctly. What do you think of Titanic as a SOHU movie? I remember spending the whole year after it came out bitching and moaning about how it should never have won the Academy Award, nor should it have gotten any acting nominations, during a year featuring films such as As Good As It Gets, Good Will Hunting and most of all, LA Confidential. Even now, I think it’s fair to say that all of those later movies had maybe more plausible characters and stories and that in comparison to them Titanic was a little melodramatic. But this was argued so many times that I think eventually the people arguing forgot that–the Titanic was a pretty enjoyable movie. Not just the special effects, but all the secondary plot lines; hell, even the Jack-and-Rose melodrama was fun to watch. But 13 Academy Awards? So overrated it’s underrated?
Not to take this off on a tangent – but I just happened to read a book listing the top 100 plays in NFL history. And #1 was the Immaculate Reception. However, the book came out last year. And I realized when reading it, we’ve got a new champ.
Now, I know we need time for historical perspective. I also admit that I am a Giants fan. But if you look at the plays in terms of degree of difficulty, I don’t see how the Manning-Tyree catch is any lower than the IR. And it happened in the Super Bowl. It led to an enormous upset, and it stopped the Patriots from going 19-0. I know they didn’t score on the play, and it was only 3rd down, but it was highly unlikely they would have scored had Manning been sacked or Tyree not held on. (And I hate these arguments, so I won’t say there was no doubt they’d score after that…but I don’t think there was a lot of doubt.)
Joe, please blog more about the Chiefs. Yes, they’re a crappy team, but then again so are the Royals, and it’s fun to read your take on them. But the Chiefs don’t have a lot of great coverage, and we know that you can provide some.
Seems like for a 70’s/80’s Cleveland guy, there’s a lot to write about with the Chiefs– no playoff wins in a million years, blowing the home-field- advantage-throughout-the-playoffs thing 4 straight times in agonizing ways, even with perhaps the biggest home field edge in the league, etc., etc.
Chiefs fans are very loyal, (you’d have to be to stay with this team) and I think we deserve more good writing about the team after all we’ve been through. We traded a draft pick to acquire Herm Edwards, a crappy coach who was going to be fired anyway! And this was after trading a draft pick to acquire the previous coach, who never won a playoff game. Live and don’t learn. Come on!
josh in dc, is it an accomplishment for a pitcher to strike out lots of guys, or does it not matter because how outs are made is of little concern to you? are nolan ryan’s 5714 strikeouts not an accomplishment? i know you were just trying to be pithy, but the words accomplishment and anecdote seem misplaced here. and i don’t see why it would bother you that i think striking tons of guys out, or striking out extraordinarily infrequently, adds to a player’s terrificness.
you said that Joltin’ Joe was subject of one of the three best sports stories ever (by Gay Talese)…
The intellectually curious but uninitiated of us may wonder: what are the other two?
Even if his lack of strikeouts doesn’t impress you, you must admit that it’s pretty crazy for a hitter with good power to have almost as many *triples* as strikeouts.
“Death of a Racehorse,” by W.C. Heinz, and “Thursday Afternoon NFL Dick Joke Jamboroo: Week 9: The Budding Legend Of Derek ‘Horse Balls’ Anderson, by Big Daddy Drew.
When Joe DiMaggio retired, he was 6th all-time in HRs, with 361.
He had 369 career strikeouts.
361 home runs. 369 strikeouts.
Did I mention that it was 361 to 369?
All the research shows strikeouts are great for a pitcher (that his greatness will continue, as opposed to flukey) and relatively irrelevant for a hitter.
Can open, worms everywhere …
Nolan Ryan is easily the most overrated baseball player since Tinkers-to-Evers-to-Chance. I don’t know what pitcher finishes second to him on that list.
Tyree vs. Harris.
Franco’s play literally won the game, which is an important difference. It also was a huge milestone for what would become one of football’s greatest dynasties. And Harris is a legitimate Hall of Fame player.
Tyree’s play was the pivotal play of what I think was the greatest game in football history. I was at that game and I swear I started physically shaking after that play. That’s never happened to me before.
On the other hand, as big game heroes go Tyree is more of a Bucky Dent or Aaron Boone. And we don’t know if the Giants will go on to win more championships.
Not everyone will agree but for me the massive stage of the Super Bowl is a factor. The fact that 150 million people saw Tyree’s catch and were all freaking out at the same time is special even if it has nothing to do with the play itself. Tyree’s catch has a “where were you when it happened?” quality. No American sports fan will forget it.
As a Steelers fan it’s sacrelige for me to say it, but I think Manning-to-Tyree is the greatest NFL play of all time.
“what are the other two?”
Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu by John Updike
The Last American Hero by Tom Wolfe
I think the strikeout debate misses the point. While we know bigger deals are made of strikeouts for hitters than they should be (Adam Dunn is a really good hitter, even if he strikes out 180 times a season), it’s still REALLY fucking impressive that Joe D. only struck out 13 times in a full season.
Think about trying to hit major league pitching. (Supposed to be the hardest thing to do in sports, right?) And now think about not missing many swings. So few, in fact, that you only whiff on a 2-strike count a handful of times (I don’t have the numbers in front of me) in hundreds of plate appearances.
It’s not as impressive as an OPS+ of 184 (!) or 41 Win Shares (!!), but striking out 13 times in a full season does illustrate that the dude had a great eye, and could straight-up hit the ball. It doesn’t define his great season, but it certainly helps flesh it out.
Although I like the idea of SOHU, its existence cries out for the corrollary SUHO (“so underrated he’s overrated”). I think a Garrett Anderson or David Eckstein fits the bill here.
Here’s a BP article (which I believe is free) that gets into the apparent contradiction of why strikeouts “matter” for pitchers but not for hitters.
http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=6615
josh from dc,
what thomas said.
Someone above mentioned Mantle as a SOHU, which seems odd to me. I think Mantle is so good he is almost impossible to overrate. There is obviously a lot of room for discussion of just how good he was, but I think the only guys in baseball history who, at their peak, were unequivocally and unarguably better than Mantle at his best are Barry Bonds and Babe Ruth.
SOHU: Dwight Freeney
Everyone whines about him not being able/trying to play the run. His main job by far is to rush the passer since the Colts never blitz. Since the Colts started playing the Tampa-2 they’ve always been better against the pass than the run that’s just part of the scheme. Allow long drives as a tradeoff for preventing the big play. Make the offense work for it and execute all game, all but the best offenses won’t be able to do it. Freeney is nearly impossible to run outside on and the entire D around him is even more undersized than him. They’ll never be elite vs the run and he isn’t asked to be. He’s asked to terrorize the QB and own elite left tackles like the recently retired Jonathan Ogden (Freeney always ate him alive).
SOHU:
Hot Pockets
Bill Clinton
Reality TV
“We Built This City”
The thing that amazes me about Dimaggio’s hit streak isn’t the 56 games though that’s incredible enough… It’s that after his 0 for 3 to end the streak, he immediately started a 17 game hit streak.
I don’t think I overrated Joe. He was awesome, and certainly a hall of famer, but I never put him in the ohmygodhesnothuman category.
Are strikeouts for batters becoming SOTU? The ability to make contact consistently isn’t more important than OBP or anything, but all else being equal, I’d much rather have a player who can make contact consistently. It gives you more freedom to do hit and runs and it probably increases the likelyhood of getting on base due to errors.
By the way, Ted owns the record for most games reaching base (not by errors or FCs) at 84 I think.
“Bill Clinton”
clinton gets a good rep thanks to the economy during his tenure but his foreign relations were terrible. he pretty much just GAVE AWAY FOR FREE a bunch of our territory to the chinese, et al. he wasn’t a very great president at all.
Good topic. And I think Titanic and Jeter are the perfect example of SOHU.
Since I’m a younger guy (ok, I’m 32), I think Bob Dylan is the SOHU of music. I’ve spent a lifetime being told how great Dylan was, even watching him win Grammys for mediocre albums. So it’s become kind of the thing to bash Dylan (and the Stones) as overrated. It’s easy to lose sight of why they were great in the first place. Nirvana is reaching that point.
Sabermetric fave Bobby Grich is my choice for SUHO.
The Richard Ben Cramer book on Joe DiMaggio is good on the first read, but it leaves a bad aftertaste. You get the idea at several points that Cramer is taking shots at Joe for not agreeing to be interviewed, and you can’t help but notice that the parts where Joe looks worst are all internal monologues written by Cramer, who did not interview Joe DiMaggio for a book written from Joe DiMagio’s perspective.
Thomas – no need for the f-word. I usually let my daughter read Joe’s blog.
Sorry Gin, I usually leave it out. I just really wanted to emphasize the point. You must have flipped a few weeks ago with the Pat Jordan swear-off posts.
Also, this is totally off subject, but can we get a ruling on when it’s ok to officially start calling a game a no-hit bid, or perfect game bid? I’ve heard a couple times tonight that Kazmir “had a perfect game going into the 5th” when it was broken up (by a HR no less). That seems quite a bit early to call it a perfect game bid. I’d say you can only start mentioning such a bid once you’re into the 7th.*
*Though, clearly, you can’t mention it specifically if you’re in the stadium and cheering for whomever has it going.
stepbaker: Dylan (and maybe Nirvana too) was that once-in-a-generation explosion, the full power of which can only be felt by those who were actually immersed in the culture of that time and place in history. He was part of something special that was larger than himself or his music, and when you listen to his early albums now you only get a faint shadow of what people heard 40 years ago. Maybe Joe D. was the same way, I don’t know, but I’d take Griffey any day, although my reasons are entirely subjective.
In the 70’s I worked as a bellhop at a hotel in Pennsylvania when Joe D came to town for a charity golf tournament. Not only did I carry his bags, but I arranged, at the request of his personal assistant, some – shall we say “companionship” for the evening. When he checked out he tipped me TWO FREAKING DOLLARS!! I “sold” his two dollars to a fan of his for $5, went home and threw my Mr. Coffee in the trash.
Griffey on the other hand, threw a ball to my son at the ‘94 ASG Homerun Derby in Pittsburgh.
I agree that it’s pretty cool that DiMaggio struck out so rarely.
(Off on a tangent, er, Joshterisk: as much as I hated Sheffield as a Yankee, I thought it was unbelievable that someone could swing as hard as he did and miss so rarely. That was awesome. I also enjoyed the dichotomy between Sheffield’s twitchy batting stance and Godzilla’s, who has that slow bounce. Back-to-back in the lineup, no less. If I were a pitcher, I would hate Sheffield for all that movement.)
SOHU:
Prince
LeBron
Shakespeare
Titanic, sure
Bobby Cox
SUHO:
Sonic Youth
Tom Waits
Wes Welker
RalphPaul – Maybe Joe D wasn’t impressed with the companionship you arranged.
Next time you rent a prostitute for an American icon I suggest you step up your game!
Josh in DC:
The streak, any streak of that kind, is actually so wildly improbable and nigh-unto impossible that it’s pretty hard to overrate. Maybe making the Kessel run in under twelve parsecs approaches how absolutely unimaginably unlikely such a thing was to ever happen, but the streak is still even more impressive than that. And given the way that it gripped the citizens of an actual nation, who weren’t really in it for the math, I think one has to give it both geek and nongeek props in a major way.
Haha, ouch Mikey! It’s true, she wasn’t Marilyn Monroe.
Does anyone think that Pete Rose is a SOHU in sabermetric circles? It’s true that he was never as good as everyone said he was, but the guy is like 11′th in career win shares; playing forever probably should count for something!
SUHO candidates:
Wayne Chrebet?
John Starks?
Anyone who was ever labeled “Gritty.”
For the record, I can’t tell if Cal Ripken is SOHU or SUHO… I think at one point he was SUHO, probably before “the streak,” when he promptly became SOHU.
If you’ve ever played a lot of baseball, trying to play at the highest level you could, until you finally got to the one level where you were so completely overmatched by the pitching that you could no longer even make a team, then you have to be impressed by anyone hitting home runs more often than they struck out, playing against the greatest pitchers in the world.
I just don’t understand how you could NOT be impressed by that.
He’s terrific. There, I admitted it: Joe DiMaggio was a terrific ballplayer.
I just think the case for him begins with playing centerfield and batting third (I think?) for a team that basically never lost. Others base the case on the hit streak and the HR/K ratio. That’s not a number I care about for anyone else. (Does anyone know, off the top of his or her head who ELSE hit more than 200 homers with fewer than 400 strikeouts? Is there a list somewhere?)
I’d imagine it was cool, having the entire county following the hitting streak. They were overrating it, too. I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: Ted Williams was a better hitter for those 56 games, too.
Comparing him to Junior (which is what started this), DiMaggio had all the benefits of avoiding many of the best ballplayers in country, who were denied access because of the color of their skin. He probably never faced a righty specialist out of the bullpen. And he got to play, what, half his games against the Washington Senators, Philadelphia A’s, and St. Louis Browns? That couldn’t hurt.
Ah, whatever. Nevermind.
“he did make the single greatest play in NFL history.”
I dunno. Manning to Tyree pretty much beats that, if you ask me.
“DiMaggio hit .315/.391/.522 with 20 homers, 97 RBIs in 141 games and won the MVP.
Williams hit: .343/.499/.634 with 32 homers, 114 RBIs, 125 runs in 156 games.”
That’s just robbery right there. Ofcourse, New York was by far the best team, and Boston was kinda so-so. How many times have we seen guys from better teams with the MVP over a guy from a worse team with better numbers?
The BBWAA everybody!
The idea that DiMaggio was overrated is kind of absurd. He’s easily one of the 30 best ballplayers ever. He never helped himself by wanting to be called “The Best Living Ballplayer” though, since he clearly wasn’t.
“On the other hand, as big game heroes go Tyree is more of a Bucky Dent or Aaron Boone. And we don’t know if the Giants will go on to win more championships.”
True. But everyone I’ve talked to anywhere says that that was the absolutely pivotal play of the game (with the flubbed interception by whatshisface second), and it did lead to the defeat of what everyone was already hailing as “The Greatest Team Ever!”.
Hehehe, I can’t help but chuckle when I think of how white Dan Shaughnessy must have gotten because of that play. There went his pretty 19-0 book. The idiot.
“SOHU:
Prince”
Hey now!
Joe had 9 World Series rings. That stat is what sets him apart from Jr. and why I’d choose him for my team.
I’m pretty sure that the votes for DiMaggio were based on the standard BBWAA belief that the MVP is, essentially, the best player on the best team. If that’s your criteria, then DiMaggio is a pretty darn good choice. Where it says that OUGHT to be your criteria, I have no idea.
By the way — Alex Ovechin won the NHL’s Most Valuable and Most Outstanding Player awards yesterday. I bring this up because I think it’s pretty cool that they have both awards in the NHL.
Joe D had a great season in 1941, but you have to discount his numbers to account for the fact that he didn’t have to compete against African-American ballplayers at that time. Frankly, I’d put an asterisk next to all pre-integration statistics for that very reason.
Didn’t the great Joe D lead all outfielders in errors in 1937?
Lemme Know if you can.