Swangin
New Member
To me, best "all-around hitter of all-time" would be a combination of someone who was both extremely dominant at their peak *and* had great longevity.
Something that seems to be eluding the OP is that Williams, Ruth, Mantle and Mays all were very durable and played a long time. Williams lost time due to the wars, but still played a ton despite that fact. Aaron was more durable than all of them, and yes, stayed most consistent throughout his career, but it's not like you're talking about guys who were here today and gone tomorrow. We're not talking about guys who dramatically fell of a cliff at an early age. These are all guys who had long, productive careers, just like Aaron did. Except they were better at their best to go along with it.
Hell, I'm not sure if Aaron is one of the top 10 hitters of all-time. He may just be in the Top 10, but I haven't really sat and examined the subject in a while. But he's not the best, and certainly not Top 5. Again, that's not to take anything away from him. He was a legend. He's incredible. He was a great all-around player and a fine, fine man. But facts are facts. There were guys who were better hitters when taking all factors into account (average, OBP, power, era, peak, longevity, etc, etc, etc).
Personally I just put less stock into extended careers when talking about "best hitter." To me that shows more talent or better at a certain skill. Extended careers shows me more value, or ranking as an over all career. If someone shows me Player A, that had 12 years of dominant hitting, that is enough of a sample size to show me what kind of hitter that player was. If another player (B) was productive for 22 years and had some great seasons, but never really had the numbers in any of his years as I saw from the playerA that played 12 years, I might say Player B had the better career, but Player A was the "better hitter" If that makes sense.