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Originally Posted by ambler  I'm looking at 5
The people who have made the biggest impact on the game
1) Cartwright or Doubleday...to whichever invented the game |
It was Cartwright.
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Originally Posted by ambler 2) Babe Ruth. Who knows if the game would still exist if it weren't for him. Trivia:When he finished his career with 714, who was 2nd all time? The disparity is proportionally greater than that of any other career record, other than the HR rcoerd, that exists today. |
Agreed.
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Originally Posted by ambler 3) Branch Rickey. Jackie gets all the credit, but it was Rickey who made it possible for this to happen and did so at huge personal risk. |
Must add Jackie. He's the one who actually had his ass on the line.
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Originally Posted by ambler 4) Some commissioner...Kuhn...the man who opened up the marketplace...or the commissioner who presided over the 1919 Black Sox scandal. |
Here's where you go off the rails.
Point 1: Bowie Kuhn did not open up the market. Neither Kuhn nor his bosses (the 24 owners at the time) wanted any part of free agency. They had negotiated arbitration -- grudgingly -- during the 1972 players strike. The Andy Messersmith/Dave McNally 1975 case opened up free agency. An abitrator ruled in favor of the players. If not for that, we'd
still have the Reserve Clause -- basically indentured servitude for the players.
If you want to credit anybody for this and put them on your list, it should be first Players' Union head Marvin Miller.
Point 2: there was
no Commissioner in 1919. The scandal
led to the appointment of Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis as the game's first "Czar," if you will. Prior to that, baseball was "ruled" by a 3-man commission -- the NL Presdient, the AL President and 1 owner to break ties. This worked not at all...
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Originally Posted by ambler 5) Steinbrenner...the dubious distinction on this list. The man who created the irreparable have/have not scenario by pumping unprecedented anounts of $$$ into the game. |
Again, you're as wrong as could be. Steinbrenner didn't give millions to the likes of Wayne Garland, Bill Campbell or Rennie Stennett. Those ridiculous contracts were awarded by the Cleveland Indians, Boston Red Sox and San Francisco Giants, respectively.
Where Fat George deserves credit is in using the rules that already exist to his greatest advantage. He's also one of the few owners in the game who's more interested in winning on the field than winning at the box office -- perhaps he was the first modern owner to grasp that one would lead to the other...