Skipping across the diamond from third to first, we search for our starting first baseman; I thought it would be easier. As I scrolled through all of the top first baseman across multiple websites, I saw some familiar names. Albert Pujols and Miguel Cabrera were two of them. First off, they’re still playing and thus not in the Hall of Fame yet. Secondly, I would never select either of those guys; a Cardinal?!?! Well, I guess there would be a couple I may consider, but Poo-Holes? Never. And then there’s Cabrera, who we unfortunately became very familiar with in his rookie season, in the postseason back in 2003. Yeah, that ain’t going to happen.
I think of some Cubs first baseman. My first was Leon Durham; does anyone else remember his Pepe’s commercial with Lee Smith? He was solid, yet like one of his predecessors at Wrigley Bill Buckner, will mostly be remembered for the groundball that he didn’t catch in the 1984 NLCS. Mark Grace was one of my favorite Cubs of all-time. He may be on that All-Time Cubs team, but can’t be the guy that starts on this team. He can… it is my team… but… nah. Derek Lee is another one; Anthony Rizzo another. The Cubs have had some pretty good first baseman; you know, Ernie Banks used to play first as well…
I’m going with Lou Gehrig. Everybody remembers Cal Ripken Jr, the guy who holds the record for most consecutive games played; whose record did he break? The Iron Horse aka Lou Gehrig. Of course, everyone knows his name, due to ALS, the Lou Gehrig disease, that is still prevalent today; it took his life at the age of 37… crazy. A guy known for his durability in the game gets taken out at a young age due to this disease. But what about his playing days? What does everyone know about those? I admit, I didn’t know as much as I should have.
Let’s just say he was Robin to Babe Ruth’s Batman for those early World Series winning Yankee teams. 6x World Series champ, 2x MVP, and the first Triple Crown winner on this team. I just talked about George Brett’s career batting average of .305… do you know what Gehrig’s was? Try .340… yeah, really. Just short of 3K hits at 2,731, just short of 500 home runs at 493, just short of 2K RBIs at 1,995… surely if he wasn’t slowed by this injury later in his career, he would have reached all of those milestones. I looked at some of his individual years… he had seasons with 185, 173, and 173 RBIs again; that’s just nuts! He had 13 straight years with 100+ RBIs; love a guy who can drive in the runs. I guess that won’t be a problem on this team with Aaron 1, Ruth 2, and Gehrig 7; boo ya!
Yeah, Lou Gehrig wasn’t a guy I thought about much before making this list; he wasn’t a guy that came to my mind as one of the top players in baseball history. Well, I got schooled a bit, and I couldn’t be happier with my selection of the guy to man first base on my all-time team. Time to get to the middle infield.
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