Baseball sabermetricians don’t completely agree on the rankings of the second basemen. If you tinker with their formulas just a bit (and the formulas don’t claim to be precise), there are five different guys who could be considered the best of all time: Ross Barnes, Lajoie, Hornsby, Eddie Collins and Morgan. The four from the 20th century (all but Barnes) are rated among the top 24 players in history according to baseball-reference.com. Little Joe may not be the best of all time, but he’s in the running, and he’s no lower than #5.
In the course of his career Morgan was a ten-time all star, and led the league at various times in runs scored, walks, on-base-percentage (four times), slugging average and triples. In his spare time he also won five Gold Gloves and stole 689 bases with better than an 80% success rate.
Here’s a weird scoopism: I haven’t ever looked this up, but I think he must be the smallest man to lead a league in slugging percentage in the integration era (1947-now). He was 5’7″, 160 pounds, and he led the NL in slugging percentage in 1976. He also led the league in on-base percentage that year. He was the obvious NL MVP that year, giving him two MVPs in a row. He then proceeded to slug .733 in the 1976 World Series, as the Big Red Machine swept the outmatched Yankees, who managed to score only eight runs in the entire series.
The eight everyday players on the 1976 Reds, with superior talent at every position and four superstars among them, are considered one of the best squads in the history of the NL. Five of their eight starters batted above .300, and two of the others were Hall of Famers (Johnny Bench and Tony Perez). The remaining guy, Davey Conception, was a better-than-average hitter in his prime, and one of the best shortstops in the league, having been selected for the all-star team nine times.
Fantastic baseball player, clueless broadcaster. Oh well. Can’t win ‘em all.
10 time All Star *back in the days when it meant something, and had a more accurate way of voting.* There were several good players to choose from each year, but Joe was usually leading the league in everything, so he was a natural to make it. It’s hard to remember any player as reliable as him. His AB’s were always so focused & consistent, whether you needed a HR or a sac bunt. He was such a great stealer that they often went to a split-screen on TV when he got on base. If you watch the ’75 Series, they did that & it created such incredible tension on every pitch to see if the pitcher would pick him off, whether he’d be going or faking, etc.
Wrong end of Ohio.
In terms of its personality, I can never think of Cincinnati as an Ohio city. They just drew the state boundary line there because there happened to be a very large river.
LOL. In my geography, Kentucky starts a little south of Hamilton (20 miles or so north of “Porkopolis”).
But to give them their due , they were useful in the Civil War.
yeah it reminds me that I miss those years when small market teams like the Reds and Pirates could put together dominating teams
Nice to see some love for Collins (as a player) and Lajoie. Even if Collins might well have been the one who yelled “Get those niggers off the field” when Jackie Robinson had his joke tryout with the Red Sox (ongoing controversy only solvable with a time machine). Generally a good GM. Lajoie was a nice guy and such a great player some city named a baseball team after him.
Morgan was famously (or infamously) anti-sabermetrics, so your first sentence is ironic. (Of course, if the other three were around they would probably have felt the same as Joe.)
Ouch, tough year for baseball greats. Morgan was also a heck of a broadcaster. RIP.
6 HOFers – Morgan, Ford, Gibson, Seaver, Brock, Kaline
and 3 Bond babes – Pussy, Mrs. Peel, and Dink in the last 6 months.
Yikes.