Infield: Jeff Bagwell (1991-2005) was a third base prospect in the Red Sox organization, stuck behind Wade Boggs, so the Sox traded him to the Astros near the end of the 1990 season to pick up aging (but highly effective) reliever Larry Andersen for the stretch drive. Andersen pitched great, Boston won its division – and Bagwell shifted across the infield and became one of the greatest first basemen of all time. He was a .300 hitter who would draw 120 walks and hit 30-40 home runs, scoring and driving in 100 runs like clockwork. Actually that’s conservative, as he would frequently top 120 in those categories. Add in Gold Glove-caliber defense and 202 career stolen bases and you’ve got a complete package. Shortstop Jay Bell (1986-2003) was somewhat underrated. He was an effective fielder, not great but at least average, and he was good for 30 doubles and 10-20 home runs per year (excepting 1999, when he went nuts and hit 38). He was a fine bunter, led the league in sacrifices twice, and was the first player since World War II to have 150 home runs and 150 sacrifice hits. Second baseman Jimmy Bloodworth (1937-51) was a strong defensive infielder but a weak hitter who was a starter on the Whiz Kids Phillies who won the NL pennant in 1950. Third baseman Sunset Jimmy Burke (1898-1905) was a very weak hitter, and he was no great shakes in the field either, but he had a long career coaching and managing in the minors and majors after he was done playing.
Outfield: Hall of Fame left fielder Jesse Burkett (1890-1905) was a terrible fielder, and as for his disposition, they didn’t call him The Crab because of astrology (he was a Taurus) or because he favored shellfish. But the man could hit - .338 lifetime, three batting titles including two .400s. He stole 389 bases and scored more than 1,700 runs. Across the outfield in right, Jesse Barfield (1981-92) was a good glove with a great arm, maybe the best outfield arm in the years between Clemente and Ichiro. He was a good hitter as well, putting up about 25 home runs per year. Center fielder Jim Busby (1950-62) was a defensive specialist, with great hands and terrific range. As a hitter, he was functional in his better seasons.
Catcher: There is a good argument to make for Johnny Bench (1966-82) as the greatest catcher in major-league history. He hit 30-40 home runs in a good year, led the NL in RBI three times, won two MVP awards, was a key player on one of history’s best teams, and was the standard of defensive excellence for his era. You didn’t try to run on him, and when you did you regretted it. He was very recognizable in his era but lacked charisma, so he came off as very wooden in commercials for Krylon spray paint (“No drips, no runs, no errors!”) and as the host of a children’s show called “The Baseball Bunch.”
Rotation: Jim Bunning (1955-71), at his peak, was a dominant pitcher with a slider that was one of the most unhittable pitchers in the game. He was a star for Detroit and Philadelphia, leading the league in strikeouts three times and, for good measure, leading the National League in hit batsmen four years running. After his Hall of Fame career, he went on to become a U.S. Senator from Kentucky, and he still has the same combative spirit even as he beings to wrap up his time in Congress – he recently made national news by obstinately blocking, over and over, a Senate action that would make sure a million Americans didn’t lose their unemployment benefits prematurely. When other senators expressed frustration with him, Bunning replied, “Tough shit.” Josh Beckett (2001- ) may never become a politician, but he is starting to emerge as baseball royalty, having won World Series titles with the Marlins and the Red Sox and racking up three postseason shutouts before his 30th birthday. Bullet Joe Bush (1912-28) had a great name for a pitcher, though you don’t often hear a guy called “Bullet” who struck out fewer than four batters per nine innings. He pitched for seven teams in his career, playing in five World Series and winning championships with the Athletics (1913), the Red Sox (1918) and the Yankees (1923). He won 196 games in his career, and if you put together a lineup of players who were his teammates at one time or another, that team would kick ass. He played with almost three dozen Hall of Famers including Lefty Grove, Walter Johnson, Ty Cobb, Tris Speaker, Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Rogers Hornsby, Mel Ott and Mickey Cochrane, and six of his managers went into the Hall of Fame as well, including John McGraw, Miller Huggins and Connie Mack. Jack Billingham (1968-80), who was reportedly a very distant cousin of Christy Mathewson, had the good fortune of being traded in 1971 to the Cincinnati Reds as part of the same deal that brought Joe Morgan (and Denis Menke and Cesar Geronimo). If the Reds had opted for a different pitcher in the deal, then it might have been Wade Blasingame or Ken Forsch or someone like that who joined the staff of the Big Red Machine. Instead, it was Billingham who landed in Cincinnati, where he won 87 games in six years, pitched in three World Series (with an 0.36 ERA) and will forever be associated with that great team. Jim Bagby Sr. (1912-23) learned the screwball from Christy Mathewson and used it to win 127 games, including 31 in 1920. (He in turn taught the screwball to his son, Jim Jr., who won 97 games and had some good seasons during World War II. Junior would go to spring training with the JB team and could fill in as needed in the rotation or bullpen.)
Bullpen: Jeff Brantley (1988-2001) had 172 saves, including a league-leading 44 in 1996. He was a good reliever, but a little too prone to the gopher ball to be an elite closer. He’ll start out as the closer here, but there will be plenty of arms ready to take over if he falters. Jim Brewer (1960-76), another screwball specialist, saved 132 games, mostly for the Dodgers in the late 1960s and early ‘70s. His screwball was so sharp that it frequently produced a “reverse platoon” effect, which is good because it will help make up for the shortage of lefties in this bullpen. Jim Brosnan (1954-63) was an intellectual reliever whose diary “The Long Season” predated “Ball Four” (by a certain other J.B. who didn’t quite make this roster) by several years and was produced without the use of a ghostwriter. Brosnan won 55 games and saved 67 in his career. Joe Beggs (1938-48) had a 2.96 career ERA and retroactively led the NL in saves in 1940 with seven. Joe Boever (1985-96) was a junkballer who bounced around seven teams and spent a brief period as a closer, partly because people wanted the chance to call him Boever the Saver. He had 49 career saves. Juan Berenguer (1978-92) was a starter for the 1984 championship Tigers and a reliever for the 1987 championship Twins. Joe Borowski (1995-2008) had a decent career with 131 saves, but for many fans his legacy will be that he became the ultimate proof of how misleading the save stat can be. In 2007, pitching for Cleveland, he led the AL in saves with 45 despite giving up huge numbers of hits, a lot of home runs and putting up an ERA over 5.00. But, doggone it, he had led the league in saves, so the Indians couldn’t very well take him out of the closer role just because he’d gotten royally rocked, so he started the 2008 season in that same job and essentially pitched batting practice for a few weeks before the team threw up its hands and released him.
Bench: Sunny Jim Bottomley (1922-37) was a Hall of Fame first baseman who is reduced on this team to pinch-hitting and asking the very durable Jeff Bagwell how he’s feeling today. Bottomley was a .310 hitter who led the league in RBI twice, played in four World Series and won an MVP award. He once had 12 RBI in a single game, a major-league record. Outfielder Jason Bay (2003- ) is pressing for playing time in left or right. He is, like Burkett, a terrific hitter but a problematic fielder, and if he took the right field job from Barfield, we worry that even a great center fielder like Busby might not be able to make up for the defensive deficiencies around him. Still, Bay can hit all day long, so maybe he and Burkett will form an absolutely deadly platoon combination in left field. Catcher Johnny Bassler (1913-27) would start on a lot of initial teams, but he’s on the bench (behind Bench) here. Bassler had no power, but he was a .300 hitter who drew a lot of walks and finished in the top 10 in the MVP voting for three straight years. Infielder Jeff Blauser (1987-99) hit 122 career home runs and was a regular on the Atlanta teams that won all those division titles. The good news is that he can play all three infield spots, but the bad news is, he wasn’t exactly a Gold Glover. (If the team decides to go in the opposite direction, slick fielding Jack Barry, the light-hitting shortstop from Connie Mack’s famed $100,000 Infield will replace Blauser.) Jimmy Barrett (1899-1908) was a talented but hot-tempered guy who played center field for the Tigers until the even more talented and more hot-tempered Ty Cobb came along and took the job. Barrett was a good hitter who led the American League in on-base percentage in 1903, and he had 126 outfield assists between 1900-04, which suggests that he could be a defensive sub in left and could have some good pre-game “throw the ball from the warning track” contests with Barfield.
Manager: John Boles never played in the majors, or even in the minors, but he was a college coach who became a major-league coach and player development executive who eventually achieved his career goal of managing in the majors. He managed the Marlins for two full seasons and parts of two others. Wayne Huizenga wouldn’t let him manage all the high-priced talent in 1997 (he brought in Jim Leyland), so we’ll never know if Boles could have won the World Series with that team.
Outfield: Hall of Fame left fielder Jesse Burkett (1890-1905) was a terrible fielder, and as for his disposition, they didn’t call him The Crab because of astrology (he was a Taurus) or because he favored shellfish. But the man could hit - .338 lifetime, three batting titles including two .400s. He stole 389 bases and scored more than 1,700 runs. Across the outfield in right, Jesse Barfield (1981-92) was a good glove with a great arm, maybe the best outfield arm in the years between Clemente and Ichiro. He was a good hitter as well, putting up about 25 home runs per year. Center fielder Jim Busby (1950-62) was a defensive specialist, with great hands and terrific range. As a hitter, he was functional in his better seasons.
Catcher: There is a good argument to make for Johnny Bench (1966-82) as the greatest catcher in major-league history. He hit 30-40 home runs in a good year, led the NL in RBI three times, won two MVP awards, was a key player on one of history’s best teams, and was the standard of defensive excellence for his era. You didn’t try to run on him, and when you did you regretted it. He was very recognizable in his era but lacked charisma, so he came off as very wooden in commercials for Krylon spray paint (“No drips, no runs, no errors!”) and as the host of a children’s show called “The Baseball Bunch.”
Rotation: Jim Bunning (1955-71), at his peak, was a dominant pitcher with a slider that was one of the most unhittable pitchers in the game. He was a star for Detroit and Philadelphia, leading the league in strikeouts three times and, for good measure, leading the National League in hit batsmen four years running. After his Hall of Fame career, he went on to become a U.S. Senator from Kentucky, and he still has the same combative spirit even as he beings to wrap up his time in Congress – he recently made national news by obstinately blocking, over and over, a Senate action that would make sure a million Americans didn’t lose their unemployment benefits prematurely. When other senators expressed frustration with him, Bunning replied, “Tough shit.” Josh Beckett (2001- ) may never become a politician, but he is starting to emerge as baseball royalty, having won World Series titles with the Marlins and the Red Sox and racking up three postseason shutouts before his 30th birthday. Bullet Joe Bush (1912-28) had a great name for a pitcher, though you don’t often hear a guy called “Bullet” who struck out fewer than four batters per nine innings. He pitched for seven teams in his career, playing in five World Series and winning championships with the Athletics (1913), the Red Sox (1918) and the Yankees (1923). He won 196 games in his career, and if you put together a lineup of players who were his teammates at one time or another, that team would kick ass. He played with almost three dozen Hall of Famers including Lefty Grove, Walter Johnson, Ty Cobb, Tris Speaker, Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Rogers Hornsby, Mel Ott and Mickey Cochrane, and six of his managers went into the Hall of Fame as well, including John McGraw, Miller Huggins and Connie Mack. Jack Billingham (1968-80), who was reportedly a very distant cousin of Christy Mathewson, had the good fortune of being traded in 1971 to the Cincinnati Reds as part of the same deal that brought Joe Morgan (and Denis Menke and Cesar Geronimo). If the Reds had opted for a different pitcher in the deal, then it might have been Wade Blasingame or Ken Forsch or someone like that who joined the staff of the Big Red Machine. Instead, it was Billingham who landed in Cincinnati, where he won 87 games in six years, pitched in three World Series (with an 0.36 ERA) and will forever be associated with that great team. Jim Bagby Sr. (1912-23) learned the screwball from Christy Mathewson and used it to win 127 games, including 31 in 1920. (He in turn taught the screwball to his son, Jim Jr., who won 97 games and had some good seasons during World War II. Junior would go to spring training with the JB team and could fill in as needed in the rotation or bullpen.)
Bullpen: Jeff Brantley (1988-2001) had 172 saves, including a league-leading 44 in 1996. He was a good reliever, but a little too prone to the gopher ball to be an elite closer. He’ll start out as the closer here, but there will be plenty of arms ready to take over if he falters. Jim Brewer (1960-76), another screwball specialist, saved 132 games, mostly for the Dodgers in the late 1960s and early ‘70s. His screwball was so sharp that it frequently produced a “reverse platoon” effect, which is good because it will help make up for the shortage of lefties in this bullpen. Jim Brosnan (1954-63) was an intellectual reliever whose diary “The Long Season” predated “Ball Four” (by a certain other J.B. who didn’t quite make this roster) by several years and was produced without the use of a ghostwriter. Brosnan won 55 games and saved 67 in his career. Joe Beggs (1938-48) had a 2.96 career ERA and retroactively led the NL in saves in 1940 with seven. Joe Boever (1985-96) was a junkballer who bounced around seven teams and spent a brief period as a closer, partly because people wanted the chance to call him Boever the Saver. He had 49 career saves. Juan Berenguer (1978-92) was a starter for the 1984 championship Tigers and a reliever for the 1987 championship Twins. Joe Borowski (1995-2008) had a decent career with 131 saves, but for many fans his legacy will be that he became the ultimate proof of how misleading the save stat can be. In 2007, pitching for Cleveland, he led the AL in saves with 45 despite giving up huge numbers of hits, a lot of home runs and putting up an ERA over 5.00. But, doggone it, he had led the league in saves, so the Indians couldn’t very well take him out of the closer role just because he’d gotten royally rocked, so he started the 2008 season in that same job and essentially pitched batting practice for a few weeks before the team threw up its hands and released him.
Bench: Sunny Jim Bottomley (1922-37) was a Hall of Fame first baseman who is reduced on this team to pinch-hitting and asking the very durable Jeff Bagwell how he’s feeling today. Bottomley was a .310 hitter who led the league in RBI twice, played in four World Series and won an MVP award. He once had 12 RBI in a single game, a major-league record. Outfielder Jason Bay (2003- ) is pressing for playing time in left or right. He is, like Burkett, a terrific hitter but a problematic fielder, and if he took the right field job from Barfield, we worry that even a great center fielder like Busby might not be able to make up for the defensive deficiencies around him. Still, Bay can hit all day long, so maybe he and Burkett will form an absolutely deadly platoon combination in left field. Catcher Johnny Bassler (1913-27) would start on a lot of initial teams, but he’s on the bench (behind Bench) here. Bassler had no power, but he was a .300 hitter who drew a lot of walks and finished in the top 10 in the MVP voting for three straight years. Infielder Jeff Blauser (1987-99) hit 122 career home runs and was a regular on the Atlanta teams that won all those division titles. The good news is that he can play all three infield spots, but the bad news is, he wasn’t exactly a Gold Glover. (If the team decides to go in the opposite direction, slick fielding Jack Barry, the light-hitting shortstop from Connie Mack’s famed $100,000 Infield will replace Blauser.) Jimmy Barrett (1899-1908) was a talented but hot-tempered guy who played center field for the Tigers until the even more talented and more hot-tempered Ty Cobb came along and took the job. Barrett was a good hitter who led the American League in on-base percentage in 1903, and he had 126 outfield assists between 1900-04, which suggests that he could be a defensive sub in left and could have some good pre-game “throw the ball from the warning track” contests with Barfield.
Manager: John Boles never played in the majors, or even in the minors, but he was a college coach who became a major-league coach and player development executive who eventually achieved his career goal of managing in the majors. He managed the Marlins for two full seasons and parts of two others. Wayne Huizenga wouldn’t let him manage all the high-priced talent in 1997 (he brought in Jim Leyland), so we’ll never know if Boles could have won the World Series with that team.
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